Early Gravestone Art in Georgia and South Carolina

xiv, 246 pp. Black-and-white photographs throughout. Combs explores the rich legacy of gravestone art still to be seen - in some cases surprisingly well preserved, but in many others weathered, chipped, or defaced - in the two states, and in particular in the coastal cities of Charleston and Savannah and in the towns of Midway, Georgia, and Georgetown, South Carolina. She discusses the techniques and styles of the individual carvers, comparing their southern markers to those they executed for northern clients; traces common patterns of imagery, such as the winged soul's head that gradually replaced the winged death's head motif prevalent at the beginning of the [twentieth] century; and chronicles the transformations in taste and in the attitude toward death that gave rise to neoclassical elements in markers and that later, toward the end of the century, began the transition toward the sentimental conventions of Victorian gravestone art.