Design e patrimônio cemiterial: tipografias e imagens nos cemitérios dos ingleses no Nordeste.

Abstract

The present work aims to investigate the visual attributes and meanings in images and typography at the tombs of the Englishmen's Cemetery, in the cities of Recife, Pernambuco, and Salvador, Bahia. As a methodological contribution, a case study and field research were carried out through sheets prepared for the collection and graphic analysis. The sheets are composed of information describing the typographic style, composition, and arrangement of the tombs, as well as the characterization of the engraved images and expressions, such as epitaphs. The results describe the typographic styles found in both cemeteries, as well as the recurrence of these styles, in which we noted differences in the use of typography between the nineteenth and twentieth century, as well as it was also possible to observe the differences and similarities between the two cemeteries. As for the images, numerous representations of flowers, objects, and symbolic representations corresponding to the presence of Jews and Masons were counted. Moreover, the result shows how these images identify individuals: representations of characteristics while in life, such as religion and profession; images of death, as well as of sadness or hope in eternal life, sometimes reinforced by the narrative of the epitaphs. The study concluded that the funerary spaces of the English in Northeastern Brazil present a vast image representation, in which different meanings are attributed, but that it is not restricted only to the English culture, but to the presence of different nationalities that compose both cemeteries, presenting different ways of communicating, and that these graphic languages have undergone changes, as well as the preference of typographic styles have changed over time.