Piscataquis Monumental enters its 55th year

    DOVER-FOXCROFT — The Piscataquis Monumental Company Inc. has entered its 55th year in business in 2013 offering a wide variety of monuments and markers that can be custom designed to fit peoples’ wishes. Piscataquis Monumental also offers services such as monument lettering, cleaning and repair work.

    Piscataquis Monumental has a large inventory that includes both custom and traditional monuments, smaller markers, headstones and slants, mausoleums and columbariums (structures to store cremated remains), veteran and civic memorials and other items such as signs and benches.

    Much of inventory is made from various types of granite while others are made out of marble and slate. Many of the basic gray granite pieces come from quarries in Barre, Vt., and Ethan L. Annis — who also is the vice president of Lary Funeral Home where he is the third generation of his family to work at the business including helping at Piscataquis Monumental since he was a teenager — said Piscataquis Monumental gets stones from across the globe.

    “We have granite from India and China, different African counties, Canada and other places including Maine Granite quarried in Deer Isle ,” Annis said. “People want to make connections to home areas.”

    Piscataquis Monumental specializes in custom-designs for monuments, such as personalized images of a person’s beloved camp, hobby or automobile. The monuments also can include custom lettering, in both the words on the stone and/or the style of lettering used.

    A folder of images at Piscataquis Monumental contains numerous examples of custom monument designs such as an image of a husband and wife looking down from the clouds at their summer camp, a portrait of a 10-year-old girl along with a copy of a picture she had drawn, a fish jumping out of a lake and a replica of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” Geographic features can be designed into monuments, such as the shape of the top resembling Borestone Mountain.

    The monuments are adorned with images through methods such as ceramic inset, with the picture taken directly from a photograph or drawing and etched onto the stone by computer generated lasers. Hand etching techniques can include shading that cannot be produced by computer.

    The various designs can include color, as colored etchings are becoming more common. The lettering can also be in color, with one type being gold leaf which essentially lasts forever.

    “Technology changes all the time and we can go more in-depth with custom work,” Annis said. “We can now color etch some different types of granite, it looks really nice.”

    Cemetery work is performed on site by Piscataquis Monumental staff, which includes Annis and his father Eric L. Annis, who is the owner of Lary Funeral Home, and they do work on site including setting the stones and digging foundations.

    Other business staff include Carol Blanchard, the office manager for Piscataquis Monumental and Lary Funeral Home, who works with monument sales; and Merle Herring, who works in the shop on Summer Street in Dover-Foxcroft during the warmer months and does much of the lettering work. Many of the images are done by craftsmen in both Maine and Vermont.

    Herring has been with Piscataquis Monumental for over 45 years, and works on stone lettering using techniques such as sand-blasting and manual to create raised or sunken lettering. “Merle’s a very talented man, not a lot of people can do what he does,” Annis said.

    With sand-blasting, a portable compressor is used to blast a stone fixed with a rubber stencil. Sand, by the force of compressed air, is used to create the sunken lettering indentations on the stone. The letters are blasted into the stone while protecting the surface.

    Raised lettering consists of the opposite with lettering created by indentations made around the letters. Herring is one of the few craftsmen who still does this.

    Annis said that Daniel Rosebush is working in an apprenticeship both with Piscataquis Monumental and with Lary Funeral Home. “Dan has caught on very well and is doing an excellent job,” Annis said, as Rosebush has previously worked with the businesses for the last several summers in joining Ethan and Eric Annis with the maintenance work. “He has a great eye for the work and has certainly proven his talents working in our shop,” Annis added.

    In addition to the various monuments, Piscataquis Monumental also carries products such as benches, bronze plaques and signs, which also can serve as memorials. Piscataquis Monumental has done the work on a granite sign for the South Dover cemetery, and has done a sign for Foxcroft Academy that is located in front of the school and includes the founding date of 1823. The Foxcroft Academy sign includes a brick base to keep with the architecture of the school building.

    Annis said six Piscataquis Monumental benches were put in at Foxcroft Academy’s new tennis courts last year and another is scheduled to be placed by the Piscataquis Chamber of Commerce’s office next to the Piscataquis River in Dover-Foxcroft.

    “We set a series of signs at the Foxcroft Golf Course,” Annis said, mentioning the grey granite markers with black granite insets at the holes along the course can be individually etched with the names of sponsors such as businesses or in memory of loved ones.

    Piscataquis Monumental has displays in Dover-Foxcroft, next to the shop on 62 Summer Street and across the road from Lary Funeral Home. The display has different monuments to show some of the possibilities. Displays are also located on Elm Street in Milo across from the funeral home and Pritham Avenue in Greenville.

    In Millinocket is a 24-foot long veteran’s memorial featuring 2,000 names, composed of five granite pieces all worked on in the Dover-Foxcroft shop.

    Piscataquis Monumental dealers are located, in addition to Dover-Foxcroft, in Milo and East Corinth. “We do monument work anywhere from Jackman over to the Newport way and over to Lincoln,” Annis said, mentioning this geographic area includes the region served by Lary Funeral Home.

    “The funeral home obviously ties into this and I think that makes us special as a funeral home,” he said. “We can make things happen rather quickly if that’s what people wish for.”

    For more information on Piscataquis Monumental, please call 564-3391 — or in Milo at 943-2231 or 695-2430 in Greenville — or go to the website at www.piscataquismonumental.com.