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Strange casket cases
15/02/2007 15:07 - (SA)
Nottingham, England - Richard Mullard chuckles when he thinks about his funeral. It's not that he thinks death is a laughing matter - he just relishes the thought of someone trying to fit him into a hearse while he's wearing skis and lying in a sled-shaped coffin.
Mullard is one of dozens of people who have turned to British coffin maker Vic Fearn & Co. with requests for custom caskets. Past creations include a Louis Vuitton duffel bag, a corkscrew and a pink ballet slipper.
The 47-year-old Mullard, who has made several expeditions to the Arctic, decided about 10 years ago that he wanted to be buried in a replica of the sled that carries his equipment.
"As I get older, that's going to be put behind me and forgotten to some extent," he said. "But the people who get to know me from now to then, they won't know about this important aspect of my life. But that will be made public at my funeral."
Vic Fearn, which has been in the coffin business for 140 years, started making theme coffins in the 1990s when a customer requested a coffin shaped like the cockpit of a World War II Spitfire fighter plane.
"I thought it was a bit strange," said company director John Gill.
"But I dare say since then people have said, 'If someone can have a cockpit, then I can have a car or a barge or whatever'."
Rolls-Royce Phantom coffin
The company's workshop is filled with both traditional coffins and theme coffins. A Rolls-Royce Phantom coffin is the company's latest commission, and it cost the buyer £3 500 (R49 000), about 10 times the fee for a traditional coffin.
An even more expensive request came from a recent customer who asked for a Ferrari, which Gill quoted at £5 000 (R70 000) because of the difficulty of replicating the car's complex curves with wood.
Examples of the company's work, including a skateboard and an egg, were featured in an exhibition at the Museum fuer Sepulkarlkultur in Kassel, Germany, in 2005.
Gill said the theme coffins aren't a result of any innovation on the company's part.
"We've never had an idea in our lives," he said. "We ourselves are just manufacturers. We don't have this type of innovation. It's the people out there who come knocking on our doors."
It takes two or three men at least two weeks to complete a theme coffin, and Gill said the company typically builds one a month. Each usually starts with a photograph, which is the basis for scale drawings.
Inspiration from ancient civilisations
The builders said they enjoy making theme coffins and that their customers' requests aren't necessarily weird.
"We're moving into modern times," said Wingrove Warner, who works on both theme and traditional coffins. "This stigma of death is going out the window."
Though the coffins may be seen as a modern rebellion against funerary norms, Mullard said he took his inspiration from the burial rituals of ancient civilisations such as Egypt.
"I liken it to the way the ancients used to take items with them," Mullard said.
"The idea was that I feel comfortable with that equipment and I want to take them on my final trip. Having said that, I don't believe I will for one minute go on some afterlife trip, but I might be surprised."
- AP
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