PRODUCERS OF SLATE FLOOR TILE, FLAGGING, STRUCTURAL SLATE AND ROOFING, MONUMENTS, AND SLATE SINKS Monson, Maine 04464 207-997-3615 Middle Granville, New York 12849 518-642-1280 SHELDONSLATE.COM SHELDON SLATE is a family-owned business with four generation of experience. We mine and manufacture our own slate products from our own quarries. The range of our colors will complement any kitchen or bath. Our slate is heat-resistant, non-porous, and non- fading. It has a polished/honed finish and is very low maintenance. Let us help you design and build a custom sink, countertop, or vanity. Custom Inquiries are handled through the Monson, Maine, division. 76 p o r t l a n d monthly magazine In the Frame Of all Littlefield’s contemporaries, perhaps Edward S. Griffin (1833-1928) led the lon- gest and most colorful career. At 15, he be- gan carving piano cases in his father’s wa- terfront shop and didn’t set down his paint- brush until the time of his death, aged 94. Griffin’s wooden figurehead dragons, merchants, monsters, and mermaids graced almost 60 years of Casco Bay sailing ships. His fine finished interior works filled Port- land’s civic buildings (mostly lost in the Portland Great Fire of July 4, 1866), and his carved crucifixes and altar works filled churches from Boston to Cuba. As wooden ship work faded, Griffin turned to clay and paintbrush. His carved wood models of the Portland Fireman (1898, Central Fire Station) and Capt. Jacob S. Win- slow Memorial (1902, Evergreen Cemetery) were later cut in granite and still stand today. As his classic woodcarver’s art faded in the days of steam and steel, Griffin never lost faith in the power of art. “If I had my life to live over again, I would be a sculptor,” he reflected in 1920, still in his Fore Street studio. Griffin’s son was the famed American impressionist Walter Griffin, whose paint- ings of the Maine scene fill galleries from Portland to Paris.