Died in Kansas
Doug Clouse
Some gravestone lettering from the 1870s and 1880s is as complex as the “artistic” print design of the same period, which I have written about with Angela Voulangas (our book). Letters curved, fit in containers, stretched, and mixed with a variety of ornaments, like artistic letterpress printing. The best examples of this kind of gravestone lettering that I have found are in and around Wichita, Kansas, where my father grew up. Most of these examples were made by a company called Kimmerle & Adams. My interest led to two visits to Wichita, several days of photography, gravestone rubbings, a lecture at Cooper Union’s type@cooper program, and another at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. I composed my favorite rubbings of the word “DIED” into a print.
