A third-generation stone carver and calligrapher, Nick Benson (b. 1964) creates elegant hand-carved tombstones and architectural lettering for public buildings, memorials, and monuments. He owns and operates the John Stevens Shop, a historic stone carving establishment in Newport, Rhode Island. The shop was run by eight generations of Stevenses until 1927 when it was purchased by Benson’s grandfather,  John Howard Benson (1901-1956), a distinguished calligrapher, sculptor, author, and teacher, who was at the forefront of the renaissance in American stone carving between the wars. Benson learned his craft from his father John Everett Benson (b. 1939), a renowned letter carver who has left his mark on such national treasures as the John F. Kennedy Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and the National Gallery of Art. A master in his own right, Nick Benson was commissioned in 2000 to design and carve the inscriptions for the National World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC which will be dedicated in May 2004.

Note: The complete interview with Nick Benson appears in Monuments: Life in Memory.

JD: How much stone cutting did the World War II Memorial involve?

NB: There are 4,682 letters in total—a lot of lettering—in twenty-two inscription locations. The letters vary in size from three-quarters of an inch tall to more than 19 inches.

JD: What kind of granite was used?

NB: It’s a North Carolina granite called Kershaw. One of the reasons [memorial designer] Friedrich St. Florian chose it is because it has an incredibly large grain. Even from a distance, you can see the character of the granite. Finer granite, especially with such large, bold architectural forms, would get lost.
JD: Will the lettering be stained?

NB: Yes. The stain is painted into the interior of each letter with a brush, very pain-stakingly. The stain penetrates the stone, but is transparent so that you can see the quality of the granite through the stain itself. It’s important not to turn this three-dimensional sculptural form into typography. You want these inscriptions to be beautiful, sculptural elements that will partake of the architecture scale of the monument, so you can’t think of the lettering graphically—black on white. Which is what everyone does today. Big mistake.

JD: Do people read inscribed letters as they would text in a book?

NB: They do. The key thing about carved letters in stone, what’s called the “lapidary letter,” is its sculptural quality.

JD: What cuts do you ordinarily use?

NB: I mostly always use V-cut. There are many different types of cuts. People have done all kinds of crazy things—square cuts, pillowed bottoms, double-edge cuts—with the interior treatments of the letter. But, again, you have to do what’s going to work best with the monument. The same goes for the letter design. The actual process of carving the stone is not a terribly difficult skill to learn. You can become a competent carver in three or four years, a fine carver in one or two, but a very good carver in three or four years. The difficulty is in the design of the letter itself.

JD: How do you move forward in a situation where a single mistake can be fatal?

NB: That’s where the skill comes in. You have to know what you’re doing. You’re taking out such small amounts of stone at any given time that it’s not as if you’re going to mistroke and blow out the center of an O. It doesn’t work that way. The strike of the piston and hammer against the chisel is fairly light, and you’re taking off small bits at a time.

JD: How long have you been cutting stone?

NB: Twenty years. My dad taught me. He got me into the shop more than twenty years ago. I started in 1979. I was fifteen and needed a summer job. I wasn’t interested in taking over the family business. My father was hard on me and got me moving quickly, making finished work for him, and carving at the shop level which is a particularly high level of craftsmanship. He has the highest standards of anybody you’re going to find, bar none.

JD: When you look at a block of text are you conscious of individual letters or the entire composition?

NB: Both.

JD: Which comes up first?

NB: The entire composition is key, but the proportion of the letter, the design of the particular letter form itself, is extremely important too. Equally important is the cadence of the text, how the negative space is used, word spacing, line spacing—all of that is absolutely crucial to good inscriptional carving. And very complicated and subtle. That’s the type of thing that people don’t see. The inscription will be easy to read, the letters will look pretty, and they won’t give it a second thought.

JD: When it’s done well, stone cutting is invisible. Do you think of it as art or craft?

NB: I’m an artisan, not a fine artist. I am practicing a very specific craft. In the realm of that craft, there is a certain amount of leeway for artistic interpretation within relatively specific rules. The inscription work on this monument was made to be highly legible, easily read, with no strange idiosyncrasies that would have people scratching their heads and wondering.

JD: My son, who is studying Chinese, told me that in China if a woman has a choice between a handsome man and one who writes beautifully, she will always choose the man with the beautiful handwriting.

NB: I’m not surprised. They’ve got such a reverence for calligraphy over there, and everyone has some skill with the brush. People here appreciate calligraphy, but it doesn’t receive the same reverence. Maybe at some point, people will start studying penmanship again. Wouldn’t that be nice?

JD: Do you judge people based on their handwriting?

NB: Not at all, because when I was a kid, my handwriting was atrocious, nearly illegible.

JD: What happened?

NB: Study, study, study and perseverance. Hermann Zapf, the great type designer, said, “My friends would go out and drink and dance while I stayed at home and bravely drew letter form.” You’ve got to put in the time.