Carved In Stone
Mike,
There is so much flagstone and granite in the Boulder area, the city government uses it for trail and park signs. So do churches (“Carved in Stone” must have biblical significance, I guess). City schools all have their stone signs, and a number of business and private individuals do, too. Many, if not most, stone signs have some kind of artistic design in addition to the words. I’ve singled out a small fraction (40 out of 1000s) that have some artistic flourish to them. Many have some deep significance I haven’t uncovered (like the Mason’s Time Capsule, to be opened in 2080).
A few signs are carved in Marble, which is soft and easy to cut, so it has been used for some intricate designs (The Time Capsule, and the Kingsridge sign). But acid rain (yes, Virginia, even the cerulean skies of Boulder do drip some acid rain) will do them in within a century or two. The flagstone and granite signs, however, will survive until the next 500-year flood in Boulder Canyon washes them out into Kansas.
Enjoy them while they last!
–rakkity
I like your thumbnails. It’s like opening a box of cereal and finding a surprise in the bottom. How did you do that?
Comment by michael — June 21, 2007 @ 6:38 am
I second the praise for the thumbnail hints. But there’s something odd to me about many of these that smacks of silkscreening and not the incised shapes & letters authenticity of yore. Perhaps the one with the URL tells the tale — it’s a form of etching made possible by a modern technology. Not that it couldn’t have been done by hand, but it would have “read” differently, somehow, methinks. Still, kudos to Sir Rakk for the legwork and bytework.
Comment by el Kib — June 21, 2007 @ 7:32 am
cool. rock on!
Comment by BirdBrain — June 21, 2007 @ 9:19 am
Yes, it’s done by etching, but by acids or sand blasting–I don’t know which. Except that the granite stones must be done another way–a lathe? a computer-driven router?
How to get different thumbnails? Simple: Have Jalbum do its thing in the normal way, then replace the thumbnails in the thumbs directory with the pictures of your choice, sized the same, or close, to the original thumbnails. The names must be unchanged, of course.
Comment by rakkityed.schmahl — June 21, 2007 @ 6:14 pm