176. Colonial Gravestone Rubbing
Early settlers were extremely isolated during the Colonial period, and yet that isolation—that imperviousness to outside influences, to so-called sophistication—often resulted in remarkable human expression. Nowadays we call it folk art.
The imagery on hand-carved gravestones in early New England would have been instantly legible at the time: the Death’s Head, the Angel, the sun at the horizon line, hourglasses and the fruits of the Kingdom of Heaven. There was grief but also faith in such stones, faith that existence, in some mysterious way, does not end with the death of the body. And there’s a surprising lack of the punitive, carrot-and-stick vision of the afterlife we associate with the “sinners in the hands of an angry god” Puritans. No, most of these forms are elemental, ancient, even—spirals and simplified faces that evoke prehistoric carvings thousands of years old.
The carvers themselves were almost always anonymous tradesmen—farmers, blacksmiths, cobblers, even sailors—who did stonecutting on the side and mostly worked locally. In the 1960s, the married artists Ann Parker and Avon Neal, distressed by erosion and vandalism of these gravestones, set out to make rubbings of them before they disappeared altogether under the accumulation of severe winters and neglect.[1] Each rubbing involved multiple layers of colored inks applied with silk pads, resulting in a depth and beauty that exceeds typical rubbings of crayon or charcoal. These delicate works on paper preserve a fleeting period of earnest, and to our eyes, rich and strange artistry.
Special thanks to the Amon Carter Museum for help with images and information.
Links:
Here Lyeth: Grave Rubbings by Ann Parker and Avon Neal – Exhibition on view at the Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, TX, June 6 - November 8, 2026.
Art: Where the Rub Comes In - TIME, March 21, 1963
A Portfolio of Rubbings from Early American Stone Sculpture found in the Burying Grounds of New England by Ann Parker & Avon Neal, 1963. National Gallery of Art
This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.
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[1] Parker and Neal's gravestone rubbings were supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation and published in three differently-sized editions of 50 (small, medium, and large), each with 14 rubbings included. The Amon Carter in Fort Worth owns all three editions, as well as three larger-format rubbings of full gravestones including inscriptions. Parker and Neal went on to study scarecrows, harvest figures, and snowmen as ephemeral folk figures, as well as Egyptian folk paintings of the Hajj pilgrimage. Fascinating stuff.
