The John Stevens Shop

The John Stevens Shop was founded in 1705 by mason John Stevens born in Oxfordshire, England in 1647. Stevens emigrated to Boston, MA in 1698 and then moved to Newport, RI in 1700. Five years later he founded his shop at 29 Thames Street. Although masonry foundations and the trade of all manner of goods were the bread and butter of the business, early on Stevens found that there was a need for gravestones in the small town of Newport.

Today artisans have unlimited reference sources to refer to when designing and producing work. In Stevens case he had no sources, no mentor and little experience when he began designing and carving stones. Uninfluenced by historic standards he was able to develop an idiosyncratic style that gave the stones a unique quality. At the beginning of this period the work was crude and naive, but it did not take long before Stevens found a style that was quite pleasing to the eye and remarkably well balanced for one without any formal training in art.

John passed this vernacular style along to his son John Stevens II, who, like his father, had a natural artistic bent. He built upon the foundations of his fathers' abilities and produced what are arguably some of colonial America's finest gravestones. These pieces, like some of his father's best work, are marked by a beautiful attention to letter form design, a highly original approach to ornamental design and carving, and a wonderful symmetry between the two.

John II had a son, John III who took up the trade and, for some time continued to produce work along the same lines of his father's. However, later on he became very interested in the iconography of portraiture. The common death's head motif gave way to stylized images of the departed. What is perhaps the most important aspect of this latter work of John III's is the influence of the typographic standard that swept New England at the end of the 18th century. Up to this point John I, John II and John III drew letters in conjunction and in harmony with the ornamental carving. This was what made the stones work so well as a whole. With the ever increasing presence of printed material the typefaces of John Baskerville and William Caslon became the letters of choice and the wonderful lettering work of the Stevens' shop gave way to this trend.

Indeed, many of the colonial carvers throughout New England who had developed their own styles now followed this typographic model; designing inscriptions as though they were pages of type and simply adding ornamental work afterward, or vise versa. The John Stevens Shop did the same. And although some artistic standards remained through the Victorian era, by the early 20th century the shop was no different than any other monument business in America.

In 1926 John Howard Benson bought the business from the last Stevens. Benson was born in Newport in 1901. He studied at the Newport Art Association, the National Academy of Design and the Art Students League in New york City. Stanley