Helping Seniors Live Healthier Lives

Choosing A Cemetery Monument To Last

If you have ever walked through an old graveyard, admiring the older monuments, some of them standing proudly, others weathered and nearly unreadable, you know how important the material will be when it comes time for you to purchase a cemetery monument. Today, there are three materials that are most commonly used in cemeteries: marble, bronze, and granite.

Marble is a very traditional material for cemetery monuments. It has the advantage of being very attractive; older cemeteries often have many marble memorial. The softness of marble, which is a sedimentary stone, also allowed for it to be more easily quarried, cut, and engraved than harder stones for a long time.

Many of these older marble monuments, however, show noticeable erosion today. If the marble is going to be in a cemetery in an area with air pollution, such as in or near a city, or in an area with regularly rough weather, it may not hold up well over time; however, a marble monument in a rural area that won't be subjected to much wind or rain might be very attractive.

Bronze is an alloy of tin and copper; unlike stone monuments, the fact that bronze is a metal means that it can be cast into many intricate shapes and can have very baroque designs or inscriptions. It is a personal preference whether the idea of a metal monument sounds appealing or not.

Bronze can also be combined with stone in a memorial; for example, a base of granite with a bronze headstone combines the somber and reserved feel of stone with the opportunity for a complex cast-metal top. Bronze also makes a good material for vases attached to stone monuments.

Granite has replaced marble as the stone of choice for use in cemeteries. Unlike marble, granite is not sedimentary – it is a very hard igneous stone, and it holds up very well to weather and other environmental erosion. While the hardness of granite made it more difficult to carve in the past, today's tools allow it to be cut and polished fairly easily.

Granite also has the advantage of being a very affordable material, available in many different and attractive colors. A heavy granite memorial with intricate artwork carved into it through a company like Genesis Granite will hold up beautifully for many years to come, allowing future generations the opportunity to wander through our own graveyards and admire the monuments left behind there.


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