Art: Coffins to die for
Authors: Colin Martin
Journal: BMJ (2005)

Unsuspecting visitors to Brewery Arts, a contemporary crafts centre in the Cotswolds, might be in for a shock. The gallery, which usually exhibits ceramics, glass, textiles, and furniture, is showing work that is decidedly different from its usual Arts and Crafts fare—a collection of unconventional, life size coffins. Although they have already been exhibited in Germany and some will be shown in Zurich (in a wider exhibition, named Cemetery: Design) they were built by a long established coffin manufacturing company in Nottingham. Most gallery visitors seem to be taking the coffins in their stride: some of the more outre designs generated peals of laughter rather than a sepulchral hush during my visit.​visit.




Figure 1



The Skateboard, made for an 11 year old boy




Comments recorded in the visitors' book—“I nearly died laughing” and “What a way to go!”—indicate that a degree of levity is becoming acceptable at funerals, which have traditionally been conducted as solemn rites. Whether or not these highly idiosyncratic coffins represent a loss of piety is largely a matter of personal taste. A wine lover's coffin, cork-shaped and overprinted with “full-bodied” rather than an estate name, is irredeemably tasteless kitsch.

It is difficult, however, to maintain a rigidly aesthetic viewpoint regarding The Skateboard (2002), after reading that it was commissioned by the parents of an 11 year old boy after his death while skateboarding, to replicate the one he played on daily. The compartment for his body, housed between the board's wheels, is heartbreakingly small. Similarly The Guitar (2004), commissioned by the aunt of a teenage boy, replicates his well loved instrument.​instrument.




Figure 2



The Ballet Shoe, commissioned by a nurse




Such commissions provide bereaved families with opportunities to articulate their grief at children's lives cut short. On the other hand, some older people are preparing for their own deaths and funerals, by commissioning coffins that celebrate their individuality. A nurse and midwife with a lifelong interest in dance recently commissioned The Ballet Shoe (2005). She will live with the coffin, until it is used in her final curtain call. Such commissions seem motivated by people's modest wish to be remembered by families and friends for particular aspects of their lives, rather than egoism, representing an individual stance against the anonymity of death.

Several artists are now designing coffins, either on commission or speculatively. The Sled (2000) refers to the practice of burying treasured or useful possessions with the dead. Its designer, Richard Mullard, plans to be buried on his replica of a Laplander's sled, with skis and ski sticks lashed to his body and wearing boots, for a final expedition to the frozen north. Mullard also designed The “Red Bull” (2001), constructed from flattened drink cans, which won a prize for originality and craftsmanship in a general design competition sponsored by the manufacturer, who seems to have missed the irony that the dead are beyond stimulation by caffeine-rich soft drinks.

Despite the 21st century designs on offer, my preference remains “a very plain box,” which was how a contemporary described the coffin in which William Morris, a staunch advocate of appropriate design, was buried in the Cotswolds. Perhaps in plain oak, with neatly dovetailed joints, in reference to my admiration for simple Arts and Crafts furniture.