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December 20, 2004

A grave matter | A mother-daughter duo create products with images rubbed from historic gravestones

By Dorothy Ogrodowczyk
Old New England cemeteries aren't spooky; they're alive with history and art. They contain records of how colonial settlers lived and died, and they are the earliest public art galleries in the New World. So say Paulette Chernack and Cassandra Davidson, founders of Gravestone Artwear, which creates T-shirts, velvet clothing and pouches, and note cards screen-printed with images of gravestone rubbings. The images come from real graves found across New England, as well as designs they've created to represent graves of famous characters like Ichabod Crane.

The mother-daughter duo founded Gravestone Artwear in 1995 as a way to share their love of old cemeteries. When Davidson was young, she and Chernack visited cemeteries near their home in southern Maine and rubbed gravestones, appreciating the art and symbolism. As a high school sophomore, Davidson learned how to screen-print designs onto fabric. One of her first creations was a T-shirt screen-printed with the design of a death head ˆ— a skull with wings, one of the earliest gravestone designs in the New World ˆ— from a gravestone in Salem, Mass. She says she got many compliments on the shirt, and started making them for her friends. As a student at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, she sold them at a number of student art shows. "I didn't realize how much money I would make," she says. "That's what propelled me to think about this as a business."

Davidson left Mass Art in 1995, deciding to make a career out of the hobby. Chernack, who was about to retire from her job with the York school department, thought her daughter could use some help running the business, and decided to make the leap along with her. "It's so hard for me to sell my stuff, and she does it really well," says Davidson of her mother.

Chernack and Davidson's York Village studio is appropriately housed in the building formerly occupied by G.F. Austin, an undertaker and embalmer who worked there in the early 1900s. Their shop serves as a retail store, workshop, storage building and office. Chernack, 61, keeps the books and handles publicity and marketing. She also designs and sews the velvet clothing and pouches. Davidson, 30, screen-prints T-shirts and other fabric items with designs from her grave rubbings. They sell their creations and other new age, goth and medieval items, such as runes, tarot cards, incense and chain mail, in the shop. The space also serves as a lounge for their dog, Finn, a big, black terrier who greets customers and sleeps on the couch.

Rubbing a gravestone requires a few supplies ˆ— Aqaba paper, a thick fibrous paper that's hard to tear, the company's proprietary hard wax, masking tape and a natural-bristle brush for cleaning away moss or bird droppings. Chernak and Davidson used to buy these supplies from Old Stone Enterprises, a small gravestone-rubbing supply company in Boston. According to Davidson, the owner, whose father founded the business, didn't share his father's passion for gravestones, and sold the company (including the wax recipe) to Gravestone Artwear in August for an undisclosed price. Davidson and Chernack invested another $12,000 in Old Stone, purchasing new inventory and supplies. They expect to recoup the purchase price within a year and half, and the total investment within three years.

Gravestone carving "is a wonderful lost art form," says Chernack. "Some of the stones we have designs from are over 300 years old." But many of the them are broken or chipped by the elements and by graveyard landscapers, who often damage the gravestones with their equipment. Before printing a gravestone image onto a shirt, Davidson doctors the image to reflect what the carver intended. She does it by hand, she says, because "I like to pour my soul into it and look at the rubbing and see how the lines were carved."

During this time of year, she says, they print about 300 shirts a week; business slows down in the spring. They take about eight gravestone-rubbing trips a year, searching for designs and carvers not already represented in their collection of more than 1,000 rubbings.

The duo sells their wares to goths ˆ— black-dressed devotees of the Victorian and Edwardian eras ˆ— and tattoo and body piercing studios, but also to historical societies, genealogical enthusiasts and even the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Most of their customers buy wholesale, but they get some retail business in their shop and on their website. And they do custom orders as well. When the Jordan family, of Portland-based Jordan's Meats, held a family reunion in 1998, Gravestone Artwear printed T-shirts with the gravestone of their ancestor, Major Dominicus Jordan, who died in 1749.

"We have wonderful customers," says Chernack, but other people are more uptight. They look in, she says, and say the shop's offerings are weird or simply run away. As for customers who are strange-looking themselves, "they're the nicest," she says. "You can't judge people by how they dress."

Gravestone Artwear

York

Owners: Cassandra Davidson and Paulette Chernack

Founded: 1995

Product: T-shirts, velvet clothing and pouches, and note cards screen-printed with designs from gravestone rubbings

Employees: Two

Revenues, 2004: $125,000

Contact: 800-564-4310

www.gravestoneartwear.com

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