Parrish Marker

It’s a rare and interesting challenge to design a stone for someone you never met nor knew very much about. Such was the case with Ms. Parrish.
I was approached by a funeral director who asked if I could design a marker for a woman who’d passed. She had some funds leftover on her funeral account, and the family member that he was in touch with said he could put them towards a marker for her.
The only instructions given to me were that the memorial stone had to be of rose color to match her name and that the marker is 2-0 x 1-0 x 0-4 per the cemetery’s restrictions. While this wasn’t exactly a lot to go on, I saw it as an opportunity to come up with something truly original.
In addition to the rose-colored granite, I chose to feature a rose and cross prominently in the center of the design. To achieve this I had the cross and shape carved rose design raised on a hand-tooled background, creating a rich contrast. This along with the family name, are the focal point of this piece. Splitting her first and middle names between the left and right sides respectively allowed the design to achieve a very nice symmetry.
When the family members were shown the design, they said it was better than they could have hoped for.