The biggest cliché for death is that it’s “the great leveller,” but the unspoken taboo of talking about the death has led to a global culture of silence about the inevitable.
A few people may leave behind detailed instructions about their funerals, but it takes brave souls to opt for bizarre or rather unique ways to display their personalities and dreams even after death, to celebrate the art of dying. For them, death is not equated with a polished mahogany casket lined with satin. It means the final journey in a crazy and bespoke coffin that celebrates their lives and brings a smile on the faces of the mourners.
Some of these bizarre coffins, revealing the stories of their creation in the famous Paa Joe workshop in Ghana and Crazy Coffins in Nottingham, are being displayed at an exhibition in Southbank Centre as part of its four-day festival, Death: A Festival For Living.
With talks and debates on death, death rituals, obituary writing, assisted dying and performances of funeral music, documentaries, and poetry recitals, the festival takes a close look at death and at unusual coffins.
“I don’t think this is macabre,” says David Crampton, director of Vic Fearn Ltd, also known as Crazy Coffins, which has been in the business of creating unique coffins since 1990. “Most of the time it’s people saying, ‘This is me, this is my life, and I want to celebrate it’.”
These coffins take about two weeks to build, on average, and can cost between £800 and £5,000.
The coffins on display include a cocoa pod, a Rolls Royce, an airplane, an egg, a corkscrew, a Viking ship and even a ballet slipper.
A family commissioned a vintage Rolls Royce, Silver Ghost 1917, for a coffin and even delayed the funeral to allow enough time for it to be built by the Nottingham-based bespoke coffins firm. “A picture of the exact Rolls Royce was supplied by the undertaker, acting for the family. The body was laid out in the Rolls in a conservatory overlooking a large garden for the funeral and later buried in the grounds of the garden,” according to Crazy Coffins.
The firm has also built an egg shaped coffin for a woman who plans to be buried in the foetal position as a symbol and celebration of birth and reincarnation.
The coffin shaped like a guitar has a tragic story: It was commissioned by the family of a teenage boy, killed in a domestic accident. They chose to bury him in a replica of the guitar he loved.
Moreover, there is romance in coffins too, as the firm created a coffin in shape of Orient Express for a British railway enthusiast Brian Holden.
The coffin was created “in romantic celebration of the train journey he used to take every year on the Orient Express with his late wife. The fabric that lines the coffin is the same that is used to upholster the seats on the train and the couple can be seen waving from one of the windows”.
Adventurous Richard Mullard plans to be buried wearing his skis and has commissioned a replica of a Laplander’s sled with boots to fit, so that his funeral resembles one final expedition to the frozen north.
Meanwhile, some of the Ghanaian coffins include a lion and cocoa pod costing up to three years’ worth of wages, made by artist Paa Joe, who considers his creations to be artistic.
However, Crazy Coffins, with some 30 employees, considers the clients to be the real artists.
“Each client has a vision of how a funeral should be. Each client is his or her own theatre director. We play a subordinate part jus carpenters do in the conventional theatre by making up the sets,” Crampton said.