Protecting The ‘Dying Art’ That Offers Careers For Life

Now in his fifth decade on the job, the Director of Headstone World in Napier is keen to ensure the skills he’s learned don’t die out with his generation, advocating alongside BCITO and others to bring more young people into the industry.

It’s about preserving the history of the trade, which goes back thousands of years, and the history of New Zealand as well.

Drive into almost any town in the country, and you’ll probably see a stone monument somewhere at its heart. They’re also everywhere in churches, museums and cemeteries, from cenotaphs and statues to headstones, angels or plaques.

“I feel really privileged to have the opportunity to memorialise a life for a family. What I do is going to represent a person forever, and that’s quite cool,” Kim says.

“Our parent company was started in the 1800s, and I had the importance of history ingrained in me from the beginning. However, while the younger generation is getting a better understanding of the importance of these monuments and what they represent, there’s not so much talk about how they get there.”

There are only around 150 monumental masons left in New Zealand, even fewer with qualifications. As President of the New Zealand Master Monumental Masons Association, Kim has worked hard to gain recognition for the trade’s place in the nation’s culture, including advocating alongside other industry partners like BCITO to attract more people and get government heritage advisors to lend their support.

“It’s unofficially acknowledged that you should have no less than 15 years of experience to touch a New Zealand monument. We’re concerned that unless our skills are passed on, we’ll have to bring masons from overseas to work on our national memorials. There are only five of us left in the country who can do lead lettering, for example, which is on so many old monuments,” Kim says.

A major client for monumental masons throughout the country, Manutū Taonga Ministry for Culture and Heritage is responsible for the preservation of over 3,500 war and historic graves and memorials in New Zealand. The Ministry’s Becky Masters-Ramsay, who leads the team responsible for national monuments and graves is in no doubt of the value of qualified monumental masons.

“We rely on monumental masons for our regular maintenance programme. It is crucial that the skills and knowledge of our current monumental masons are passed on to younger stonemasons, who will play an important role in preserving New Zealand’s heritage for future generations.”

For those willing to give it a go, Kim says the trade is extremely rewarding. As well as getting to give something special to families and advise councils up and down the country on restoration projects, it’s hugely creative, and every single creation is different. Also, with so few left who can do lead inlay, or carved lettering, the work is considered high-end, making it a great opportunity for someone to literally carve out a well-paying career.

Kim admits he didn’t have any special skills when he started. His father told him he needed a trade, so he applied to a job centre, and eventually got an interview at a headstone place just around the corner, which he’d never noticed was there. When the boss, Noel Mears, told him there was no qualification available, he hesitated. Noel came around to his house to reassure his dad, and just like that, the job was his.

From the beginning, he was hungry to learn as much as he could and pass it on. Only two years later, having asked his new boss if there was a chance he could create a qualification himself, Kim was appointed to a working group to do just that.

“When BCITO picked us up from Creative Trades, we really gained traction. As an industry we were really fortunate they cared so much about getting people qualified. The quality really lifted and I don’t think we’d have survived as we have today without their advocacy and support with training,” he says.

Having mentored around 12 apprentices, Kim is especially keen to get more Māori and Pasifika peoples to join. When he started out, he was one of the only Māori in the industry, and representation is still low despite the majority of burials these days being from those communities.

“It’s a trade that’s not much talked about in building and construction. But there’s a lot of longevity in us ‘death industries’. If you want to, you can have a career for life,” he says.

BCITO needs more apprentices keen to tell the story of New Zealand’s history. For more information on what’s involved, contact us at info@bcito.org.nz.