As I said earlier, John Baskerville, a type founder who designed the typeface today known as Baskerville, and was responsible for developing new paper finishes and ink that would showcase his controversial type designs, also cut at least two gravestones. One may have been a sampler/display piece. Both are lost.

That's a combination of two of my loves -- typography and funerary art, particularly stone cutting.

Two cutters have been instrumental in giving me pointers, tools, and books so I can learn to cut slate. One is Doug Coffin of Belfast, Maine whom I was "in love with" when he drew a marvelously witty (Maine humor) strip called "Cronies" for the Maine Times back in the '70s, and Fud Benson, sculptor, stone cutter, fiddler extraordinaire (he can sing and play fiddle at the same time, as can Cindy Kallett), all 'round dandy fellow, and owner (with his son) of the Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island -- oldest continuously operating gravestone operation in the United States. See A Bit on John Benson

Linn