Taphophile Tragics #1 - The monumental mason

These four statues are from the Gore Hill Memorial Cemetery, on the north shore of Sydney. The graves upon which they have been erected were laid down between about 1900 and the end of World War I.

Nowadays, if a statue is required, it is chosen from a catalogue, and manufactured from a mould. The material poured into the mould is a mixture of powderised Carrara Marble mixed with a fibreglass resin, forming a bonded marble. This can then be processed to give the appearance of bronze, marble or stone. An even less expensive method is to use a fibre-reinforced white Gypsum material called 'hydrostone'.

However, going by the dates of these memorials, I suspect each statue here to have been hand-chiselled by a mason.


In Europe, cemeteries have a higher proportion of statues than they have here in Australia. Very few statues here are based on the life of the departed. They usually depict a religious scene or a view of a Greek or Roman god. Below is one statue based on the life of the deceased. It is in South Head General Cemetery in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. Phil Garlick died in 1927. My guess is that this was hand-chiselled from a block of marble.


This post is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics meme.