This workshop is being offered by Ridge Association [not MOCA], which cares for Ridge Cemetery in Martinsville, a portion of St. George, Maine. Members of the MOCA workshop committee have volunteered to help organize the event.
Those of you who attended the Union MOCA meeting heard Joyce Davies, who is affiliated with Ridge Association, tell us about this project. Two MOCA members with workshop experience recently visited the Ridge Cemetery and met with Davies. The back portion of this cemetery has been transformed since 2014 - it has been cleared of brush and undergrowth that totally obscured most of the stones.
Last year Joe Ferrannini, from Hoosick Falls, NY, was contracted by Ridge Association to work in the cemetery for several days. Joe is MOCA’s conservator of choice for workshops and he will be returning to continue work in the Ridge cemetery.
He suggested that a four-day conservator-led workshop would allow more work to be accomplished and also give participants skills to take back to their own towns and cemeteries. Ferrannini asked if MOCA would assist in this project and, although it is not a MOCA workshop, it will follow the same format MOCA has used in the past – beginning on Friday with a classroom presentation by Ferrannini, a cemetery walk-through, and then demonstrations and hands-on practice cleaning stones, straightening stones, resetting dies into bases, making new bases, epoxy repair, pin replacement, and other important skills needed to preserve the stones in this cemetery.
This is a unique opportunity to learn about gravestone preservation and acquire essential conservation skills as well as practice through hands-on experience.
Learn how to:
- Properly and safely clean and repair gravestones
- Straighten leaning stones
- Reset fallen stones
- Build and rebuild bases
- Repair broken stones using epoxy
- Infill
- Use a tripod for resetting monuments
- Ensure what is happening in your local cemetery is safe for the stones
Ideally participants will attend all four days, but that’s not always possible. We cannot forecast what activities will happen on which day, as the instruction and practice are based on what onsite damage we find as we work in the cemetery.
There is NO registration fee for this workshop.
Ridge Association urges workshop participants to donate generously as they are able to help cover workshop expenses of about $1,000 per day. Any funds collected in excess of program expenses will be donated to the MOCA workshop fund.
Don’t hesitate to register based on your ability to donate, however. Our goal is to promote the use of correct materials and practices when working in cemeteries and to encourage workshop participants to share the skills they learn.
Donations will be accepted each day of the workshop. Checks should be made out to MOCA.
