It's seldom that I get excited about urns, but this concept, by Ukrainian designer Anna Marinenko, has me seriously considering cremation. Still just a prototype, these urns are not available yet, but hopefully, they will be soon. Combining an elegant, modern modular design, and a timeless spooky / cute aesthetic, the urns pack a symbolic punch.
They are universal like a pall, and personal like an programed iPhone, providing a tent for our remains after the earthly one has become dust.
Part Tupperware, part spaceship, part tchochke, part reliquary, this urn arrives with an instant familiarity that makes it seem like it's always been with us. It a design that seems so obvious in hindsight, that it makes me wish it was my own idea!
I'm not sure what the planned dimensions are, but from the look of the capsule, the urns would need to be at least a foot tall or more to hold the standard volume of an adult's cremated remains.
If smaller (and I would suggest that these urns be made available in both sizes) it would hold only a keepsake portion.
In addition to the porcelain model, there are designs for metal urns in a silver tone and a gold/ bronze tone.
There seems to be a bit of a resemblance between the ghost and the gentleman in the photo below (the frame is also the work of Ms. Marinenko).
For more information about this exciting design, and other intriguing product design, interior design and visualization work, visit Ms. Marinenko's site or her livejournal page
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| Designer Anna Marinenko |
(All images are used by permission, and are the creation and property of Anna Marinenko)
for other innovative urn designs, visit:
Fireman's Urn is a work of love: The Final Honor
for other innovative urn designs, visit:
Nadine Jarvis: Challenging Post Mortem Traditions
Fireman's Urn is a work of love: The Final Honor
3 comments:
Patrick, what a perceptive eye and an eloquent keyboard you deploy on these matters. Would you like to pop over here and see if you can pass them on to a few funeral directors I know?
Hmnn, my jury's out... Spooky cute is good. A tad Disney? A family of them all looking different ways, or straight ahead, would be a spectacle. Nope, my jury's still out and looks as if it's going to be some time...
Sorry, as urns, I don't like them at all.
Cute modern design yes. And they are spooky, which would serve well were they intended as momento mori's. But they are not that, and I don't think urns should scare survivors or remind them of their own deaths.
Above all, they are depressingly uniform, off the assembly line, and that is what I detest most in our contemporary "death care".
In contrast to memorial urns, these urns point in the direction of the individual's possible future as spirit, "ghost", not their past.
But to put an absolutely uniform face onto the spirit of each deceased does not reflect what one would at least hope will be the reality - IF we move on elsewhere, then our spirits will be as individual as we were in life.
Thus for me these urns are depressingly nihilistic, making nothing of our individuality.
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