The Tapstone cairn mark — five hand-drawn stones stacked and balanced.

This symbol means there’s a story here. Hold your phone against the mark. Nothing to install.

The mark is engraved, stamped, or printed on objects that hold audio experiences — a wooden disc, a signed canvas, a gallery label, a memorial.

It is a cairn: stacked stones, balanced one on another — the kind left along a trail to show someone the way.

Two forms

Both are the mark

The Tapstone mark in its filled treatment — five solid hand-drawn stones stacked in a balanced cairn.
Filled
The Tapstone mark in its outline treatment — five hand-drawn stones stacked in a balanced cairn, drawn as open contours.
Outline

The form follows the material — a stamp pressed into wet clay leaves a line, a mark burned into wood fills it in.

The mark in the world

Photographs

The Tapstone cairn mark laser-engraved into a balsa wood disc, held between finger and thumb — five stones stacked and balanced, burned as solid shapes into the grain.
Laser-engraved balsa
The Tapstone cairn mark printed on a round white sticker and pressed onto dark stone — five stones stacked and balanced, drawn as open outlines.
Printed sticker
The Tapstone cairn mark drawn freehand in black ink on white paper — five stones stacked and balanced, each an open outline.
Drawn by hand
The Tapstone cairn mark laser-engraved into a cherry wood disc — five stones stacked and balanced, burned as solid shapes into the grain.
Laser-engraved cherry
The Tapstone cairn mark laser-engraved into a cherry wood disc as open outlines — five stones stacked and balanced, their contours meeting where each stone rests on the one below.
Outline in cherry

This page grows as the mark reaches more surfaces. Every image here is a photograph of a real object.