Images found on the gravestones and memorials in Dundee’s Howff cemetery are to be shared with the rest of Europe.
Regarded by many as having one of the most important collections of tombstones in the country, the Howff is the subject of a project being undertaken by Dundee and Angus College students Trudi McVey and Eleanor Begg.
Trudi and Eleanor are enrolled on the portfolio preparation programme at the Gardyne Campus and jumped at the chance to become involved in the European project with the title Symbols culture of death and cultural life: new audiences and creations around European cemeteries.
One of the objectives of the project is to collect images from burial sites across Europe and produce prints that will eventually form an exhibition.
When Trudi and Eleanor have prepared their preliminary sketches they will travel to Aviles on the north coast of Spain to take part in a week-long printmakers’ workshop, creating materials for the exhibition.
Trudi said: “I actually lived in Spain, for a year, teaching English, so this is a chance for me to combine going back and doing something I love, printmaking.
“This project really appeals to me as I actually like being able to find meaning in the most bizarre things.”
Eleanor said: “I was already doing a project about a wee boy who drowned in a curling pond in Balruddery Meadows in the 1820s.
“So when the chance came to do more historical research with this project I was really keen to become involved.”
Trudi and Eleanor have been busy filling their sketchbooks with images of carvings on monuments and tombs dating from the 16th to mid-19th Centuries.
They will be joining other European partners from Spain, Ireland, France and Italy during the April holidays.