Painted Tombstones

By Ruth Ellen Gruber This is a cross-post from my Jewish Heritage blog – By Ruth Ellen Gruber During my recent trip visiting Jewish heritage sites in Slovakia, I came across some artwork that demonstrated the way Jewish gravestones were often painted in various colors to emphasize the carved ornamentation. (I have posted on this [...]

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Stone-carver images

By Ruth Ellen Gruber The wonderful imagery on East European tombstones was created by talented and extraordinarily creative stone-carvers who are now, for the most part, anonymous. Everyone so often, a photograph of a more recent traditional stone-carver turns up. Sergey Kravstov has sent me the image below. The illustration is from the catalogue: The [...]

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A stone-carver’s thoughts on tradition and symbolism

By Ruth Ellen Gruber A few days ago, I posted this picture of a tombstone-carver, taken in Ukraine in 1916. Tombstone carver at work, 1916 (image from Bildarchiv, National Libraray, Vienna) The one finished tombstone that you can see is very simply carved, but clearly painted in at least three colors. It also appears that [...]

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New photos have gone up

By Ruth Ellen Gruber I’ve just put up some new photos on this site — mainly in the Ukraine  (Sadhora and Stari Sambir) and Romania (Suceava, Piatra Neamt) sections. I’ll be putting up some more images soon.

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