When ceramist Chris Smedley was asked by a client if he could make a unique commemorative piece using the ashes of the client’s father, he didn’t know what to expect. When he set about experimenting by using the ash in a glaze, he found that it produced a range of colours from green to blue through to purple. “These effects,” he suggests, may “come from minute traces of metal oxides that collect in our bodies during our lifetime.” Fascinating!
Liking what he saw, Chris, in partnership with Kieran Challingsworth, established Commemorative Ceramics in the crowded and ever-expanding market catering to people looking for creative and befitting ways with ashes. There’s plenty of room here for more good ideas.
You like? I like. A lot. They deserve to do well.
Prices from £300. Good value, I’d say. Better still, there’s a promotion to celebrate the launch of the enterprise running til 31 October 2010: 25 per cent off the entire range.
Find Chris and Kieran’s website here.
Very attractive!
Interesting how we prefer “abstract personalization” these days. This urn is certainly unique but in an abstract and random manner. It is not in fact personalized since it cannot be identified with the deceased without specific knowledge. This parallels the desire for trees as memorials instead of engraved markers. Both may be unique but neither are recognizable “as the individual”.
A portrait is different in that it contains recognizable elements, indeed the most recognizable, the face.
Why do why shy away from real personalization these days? Has our sense of self depreciated? Or is it seen as egotistical to want to leave a personlized memorial?
Interesting questions.
Very interesting questions.
I suspect that the answers are as varied as people are.
Your suggestions are fair.
And then there’s always “well I didn’t want it to be too upsetting” and, of course, the classic “I wanted something a bit different.”
I wish this company well. Not least because, with a slightly shorter neck, this vase would be frighteningly similar to my own shape!