Tombstone Crafting
A hands-on exploration of memorial history & craft
Gravestones are more than markers - they're love letters written in stone. Join us for a two-part class series exploring the history of memorial craft and creating your own meaningful tombstone.
2 Classes over Zoom
October 23 + 30, from 5-6pm MT
Led by Lauren Carroll & Lauren Seeley
PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN
$11-$33
Walk through any old cemetery and you'll find stories carved in stone. A weeping willow draped over a child's grave. Secret grave-sworn recipes. Lovers laid to rest side by side. Gravestones weather storms and seasons, honoring a person even when history forgets the details of their life.
For centuries, we've poured our grief and devotion into these permanent markers. From humble fieldstone cairns to elaborate Victorian monuments dripping with symbolism, tombstones reflect how we grapple with loss and what we hope endures.
This class series invites you to explore this rich tradition and create your own stone - whether for someone you've lost, a beloved pet, or even as a way to contemplate your own eventual resting place.
2 evenings of Community & Co-creating
Evening ONE
Tombstones Galore!
We'll explore how gravestone craft evolved and the visual language carved into stone. Early American markers were simple slate with death heads and hourglasses. By the Victorian era, grief got elaborate - weeping willows, broken columns, sleeping lambs. Regional styles varied wildly, from Puritan austerity in New England to ornate ironwork in New Orleans.
The symbols carved into stone created their own language. Flowers, angels, tools of trade - each told part of a life's story. We'll look at real examples and talk about what makes certain stones resonate across time.
Evening TWO
Craft your Tombstone
Time to get our hands busy creating! We'll craft tombstones together in real time and create uniquely meaningful markers.
What to prepare: Basic supplies (cardboard/foam board, carving tools or markers, paint/decorative elements), any personal touches you'd like to include - names, dates, symbols, or phrases that matter to you, and an idea of whose stone you're making. Here are some pre-made headstones or headstones
Don't worry about having "perfect" materials. We'll work with what we have and focus on the intention behind the creation.
This is a class for you if:
You're mourning someone and want to create a lasting memorial. You're fascinated by cemetery art and death culture. You're a deathworker who wants to understand memorial traditions more deeply. You're thinking about your own death and curious about designing your own marker. You want to explore grief through your hands.
No experience with stone carving or memorial craft required. Curiosity about death culture and willingness to create are all you need.
enroll
Tombstone Crafting
Two evenings over Zoom | October 23 + 30, from 5-6pm MT
PAY-WHAT-YOU-CAN
$11-$33
Use the following codes to select your price when you enroll:
Pay $33 - no code needed
Pay $22 - tombstone22
Pay $11 - tombstone11
Your teachers
Lauren Seeley
Lauren Seeley is an artist, death and grief doula, and death educator whose work weaves together death literacy, spiritual practice, and end-of-life care. Her interests and research span the tender edges of both human and pet end-of-life care, LGBTQIA+ and trans-centered deathwork, memory care, ritual and ceremony, and the many ways we honor the dead through funerary and disposition practices. Lauren currently works at a funeral home in Brooklyn, NY, where she holds space for the living and the dead, and facilitates the Silent Book Club of Death, Brooklyn’s quiet little refuge for readers who aren’t afraid to sit with the big questions.
Lauren Carroll
Lauren Carroll, co-founder of La Mort, is a Death Educator & Holistic Funeral Director who is passionate about weaving community and family back into the death space. Her work centers around re-aligning our culture with Mother Earth and helping humans remember how to love one another. She is a former board member for the National Home Funeral Alliance and co-founded The Deathwives. She lives on an urban farm at the base of a mountain where she tends to her animals, raises her two children, and dances around bonfires on the full moon with friends while listening to Nick Cave.
Our Teaching / Learning / Creating Style at La Mort
We leave behind the polished, gate-keepy approach to education. We teach in ways that carry story and experience. We listen. We laugh (a lot). We go off-script sometimes. We cry (with you)(for those you’ve loved)(for those we’ve loved). We like science and studies and logical frameworks, but also mysticism and poetry and all that stuff. We really love to honor history and those who came before. We move through some serious curricula, but don’t take anything too seriously. We dedicate ourselves to seeing you, and want you to feel seen. We deeply honor our intuition and yours. We lead with integrity (always). And we welcome the odd-balls and misfits, because it takes one to know one.