Warming to Wicker Coffins
SHEFFIELD, England (Reuters) - Demand for hand-woven wicker coffins has tripled since British pop star Adam Faith was buried in one in March, a funeral director said Tuesday.
Requests for the caskets soared after newspapers published photographs of Faith's wicker coffin covered in flowers, said John Mallatratt of Peace Funerals in Sheffield, northern England, where wickerwork coffins cost $670, about twice the price of the solid pine option.
"Every time there's a funeral with a wicker coffin more people see them and fall in love with them," Mallatratt said at his funeral parlor, which also offers woodland burials and ceremonies on vintage steam trains.
The wicker coffins take two days of skilled work to craft, and with only 40 weavers left in Britain, supply is limited.
But demand is growing -- a sign of Britons' changing attitude to death.
"It's changing, but slowly. There's still the notion of 'we ought to do the proper thing' and 'what will the neighbors think?'," said Mallatratt, whose parlor now supplies the funeral trade with the coffins.
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I can hear the pine casket company's advert rebuttal. "Be sure with pine. Remember, there's no rest for the wickered."
And the angel said to the new arrival: "Have you read Marx?" Rueful response, "Must be the coffin."
"The bereaved walked slowly behind the appalled bearers."
And the new arrival explained to those who had gone before. "It all started with my wife's being hard of hearing. I can assure you I did not say I wanted to be buried in a basket."
Now the world can go to heaven OR hell in a hand basket.
It's a common enough plai(n)t. And I DO wish I'd thought of that one!!!
we'll have to take the cane to you for missing it...
Wattle they think of next?
You're a bunch of raving loomatics.
**cough**
[somebody stop that coffin!]
One that my late former father-in-law used to say was, "You're never satisfied. Whaddya want - portholes in your coffin, and brass handles?"
No just an escape hatch just in case, or a hatchet, or at least a cel phone . Like Terry Pratchett's Zombie who posted information pamphlets on "rights for the vitally challenged" on the inside of coffins.
A wicker coffin??? How can this be true? I just read the book, "Stiff" and now am very familiar with what happens to a body after death. It basically melts away... Why would anyone want to be buried in something that they would end up leaking out of???
RE:... Why would anyone want to be buried in something that they would end up leaking out of???
you'd rather have your bones swim in your own purtifaction?
some of us sort of believe, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.. (i plan on being creamated, no sense taking up 6 feet of earth and 20+ years just to become ashes.. )
in years past (think of Hamlet) they used to just bury the dead in simple wood coffins, and every 20 to 30 years recyle the 'church' yard and use the space again.. the grave digger was doing just that, when he unearthed yorick's skull (one of the thicker bones in the body, and slower to decompose) the misc. bones that were unearthed were all packed into a single coffin and reburied (usually--sometimes, the bones were set into displays..especially in catacombs of italy, but also in many other parts of the world.
the idea of having space in a grave yard for perpetuity is pretty silly if you ask me!-- yes, a wicker coffin, melt away, turn back to earth, and be done with it.
(NYC 'potter's field " turns over the graves about every 30 years.--it was seen in a movie last year(with michael douglas, -- i forget the name... but the female lead was played by a girl who acted disturbed, "i'll never tell" was her sing song line in the movie-- and her father had been buried in potters field.. the dramatic end of the movie is all on Harts Island, were potter's field is located. (working there is a city jail release program.. prisonerss can sign up to dig the graves (trenches really) and are trasported by boat from Riker's Island to Hart Island-- the water of Long Island sound are deep, and have very strong currents, so its hard to escape) it is considered a choice assignment, as the island is quiet, country like, and no one stares at the prisioners. The dead come in by ferry, from City Island (all of these island are considered to be part of the Bronx), and can be found on most NY city maps (but not alwasy named.)
I think that the Parsees have it right. Just leave the body to the birds. Sweep up Uncle Jimmy Plumberwalla's bones at a later date. All you need are high walls to discourage the crows from lifting the bigger bones, anyway, out of the funeral compound. No need for land for graveyards, even for 20 years.
I always thought that cremation was the way to go too... But here in Georgia we got to rethinking this idea when Mr. Ray Brant Marsh who ran the Tri-State Crematory was found with some 339 bodies decompsing in sheds, in the pond and elsewhere on his land. First he said the incinerator was broken, but it wasn't. Then when the police found pictures of bodies in various states of decomposition on his computer, it seemed that he was not just a crook who took money from people for nothing, but also deeply disturbed.
Well, doesn't that just burn you up? Well, no, I guess sometimes it doesn't, even when it's supposed to!
Here in Georgia Funeral directors are seriously looking into alternative methods of corpse disposal due to the bad publicity this whole affair has generated. There is a new method called "water reduction" (or "tissue digestion" if you are speaking about livestock.) In a few hours the equipment can dissolve the tissues of a corpse and reduce it to 2 or 3 percent of its body weight. What remains is a pile of decollagenated bones that can be crumbled in one's fingers. Everything else has been turned into a sterile coffee colored liquid that can go right down the drain. This method makes good sense since it destroys pathogens and prions and does not pollute the air like incinerators do. And since no natural gas is used it is about 10 times cheaper than incineration. (Yes.. all this I learned in the book Stiff.)
tross, you are going to fit in well here... so tell me, why is it you are interested in losing the title stange?
a bit too close to the truth for your liking? tell us more about stiff (i haven't heard of it) i am rereading Salt...
and salting bodies went out of style with the egyptians...
"Stiff, the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers" by Mary Roach. It's about all the ways we use cadavers; from medical school practice dummies to car crash tests to a field full of decomposing bodies out behind the University of Tennessee Medical Center. This is where they study the rate of decomposition of corpses in various locations like under trees or out on the lawn, clothed or unclothed. Without this facility and the research that is conducted there, forensic specialists would not have been able to tell how long a body had been dead when the police find one.
I actually asked for this book for my birthday this year and my Mom got it for me. (Hmmm... maybe I should stop posting so I can keep myself a stranger, because maybe I am, more-so than others...)
I actually read a review of the book in Entertainment Weekly and it piqued my curiousity. I do have a morbid curiousity about death and things like that. The book is really facinating. I may not want to see with my own eyes the things that she describes, but that's what's so great about books. You can learn about anything.
keep myself a stranger, because maybe I am, more-so than others...)
Wait'll you get to know us a little better before you make that claim. Stranger is relative.
sounds interesting.. one of our family stories, is about an elderly cousin, Annie, who died aged 93, in the mid 1980's. as a young girl, she wanted to be a doctor. but as the daughter of irish immigrants, she had neither the money nor the connections to make it happen.. she settled, reluctantly, on nursing. She attended nursing school at NY Bellevue hospital. she keep up with alumni newletters, and read that there was a shortage of cadavers.. so, when she died, she finally got to go to medical school! she never got past anatomy.. but fugal to the end, part of the deal was that the school paid for her burial afterwards.
her memoral service and wake was a grand one.. not often a funeral is also a commencement cerimony too! (one of her kids (age 60 or so) was a bit embarassed at first.. but she was always the most conservation one in the bunch, the rest of the family thought it par for the course for Annie.
Stranger is relative.
That's keeping her *honest, Father.
re:Everything else has been turned into a sterile coffee colored liquid that can go right down the drain.
what you don't put it out in the garden and use it at fertilizer? seems like a bit of a wasted life.. i would much rather be pushing up daisies than, working my way through a water treatment plant..
Stranger is relative.
It's also *comparative.
"i would much rather be pushing up daisies than, working my way through a water treatment plant.. "
I don't know... think about it the next time you have a glass of water... Doesn't Aunt Mary taste good? Puts a new spin on the slogan, "Mmm Mmm good to the last drop..."
Hmmmm. That would shed new light on "taking the bitter with the sweet".
It's also *comparative.
Uh-oohh... it's starting rub off, Mom.
i would much rather be pushing up daisies than, working my way through a water treatment plant..
>
Ohhhh, gag, retch, barf, yeck! And here the Doctor told me to drink lots of water .... I'll be buying Poland Spring bottled water for awhile. There goes the budget.
Thanks a lot you guys! (snarggle, gasp, gulp.)
I keep telling you I am just a delicate flower! Howcum nobody believes me? Huh? Howcum?
Ahhh... The refreshing taste of natural spring water... straight from the spring... with the fish in it... and the dead fish in it... and the fish poop in it... and the decaying plant life... and the bugs... Ahhh... nature...
The refreshing taste of natural spring wate
Ahem. It's been filtered through layers and layers of rock and gravel and sand and cetera. I mean if you gone go drank outta them rivers just down stream of the plastics factory ya gots ta expect what you gets.
I'm just making a point (or then again maybe not!) about the differences between spring water and tap water. Both are obviously filtered many times. But if people stopped drinking tap water because we were flushing sterile cadaver juice down the drain, we might just have to remind them that the tap water they drink right now is filtered from all the liquids (and solids) that go down all the pipes in your house now. All the pipes... Hmmm... maybe we should all start drinking spring water...
Hey Tross
just as the discussion got REALLY strange you shifted to newbie. You're stuck with us now!
Personally I like the idea of creamation, with the ashes put in an ebbing tide, like we did with Dad. Very approprate for a saltchucker. (that's West-coast Canadian for someone who loves th ocean)
As for water. You have to boil it before you make tea anyway.
Before my wife's Uncle Doug died, he stipulated that he wanted his ashes to be spread on Lake Tekapo, one of the Southern Lakes (and currently down to the bones in terms of water because of a dry summer and high electricity demand).
So a bunch of friends and relatives turned up at the boat launching ramp at the south end of the lake on the appointed day, and we all piled into a launch owned by one of his sons and headed off out into the middle of the lake to do the deed. To cut a short story shorter, it was windy. Very strong, very steady katabatic winds coming down off the Southern Alps. Not an uncommon phenomenon. The norm, in fact.
I'm not sure just how much of the urn's contents (well, it was a plastic-lined brown paper bag, actually) wound up on and in the lake, but I do know that a fair amount of Uncle Doug ended up travelling back to various corners of New Zealand later that day ...
If he hadn't already been dead, Doug would have killed himself laughing. He was that kind of guy.
The family motto now runs along the lines of "Ashes to ashes, dust down the shower plug'ole!".
Yup, you've got to pick your day when scattering ashes. A friend of my sister wanted to scatter his mum off the high dunes at Sleeping Bear in Leelanau County. He forgot to check which way the wind was blowin' the day he took her out. The wind was blowing in from off Lake Michigan. Mom brought tears to his eyes one last time that day, not to mention grit in the teeth etc.
I'm thinking maybe my kids should tie me up in little bags with fish line and a small stone in each one. Just think of the catharsis they could find in calling me an old bag over and over
I can see them now, tossing me off a cliff yelling "There goes Mom, stoned again!"
Well ... you'll all think that I do nothing but get rid of rellies, but when my uncle died and was being buried (intact), we got to the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" bit. A few people threw some soil onto the coffin. His grieving widow said to one her grandchildren, "Go on, dear, throw some dirt on Granddad's face. It's the last opportunity you'll get and you shouldn't miss it."
My sister and I had to turn away. It was the first thing that day that brought tears to our eyes and, since we have very similar senses of the ridiculous, we were holding our sides and gasping. It was helped along somewhat by the fact that we both had pretty much the same opinion of the old basket as his grieving widow ...
Creamation where in the corpse is folded into dairy products and whipped to stiff peaks.
Thanks Alex, for the sick-and-twisted laugh out loud I needed after today.
It has always been my intention to continue to serve my fellow man by being buried next to a library in the far north, with just my bum sticking out above the frozen ground, as a parking convenience for bicycle riders.
You'd soon get tired of it, John
All part of the cycle of life.