memorialisation

The Separation Line

7 August 2012
Charles
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Categories: memorialisation

The Separation Line was produced over a fourteen-month period between 2010 and 2011 and observes how the repatriation ceremonies of Wootton Bassett provided a rite of passage, representing an insight into the ongoing experiences of British soldiers returning from War. During the two hour gathering and subsequent ten minute ceremony, lay all of those contradictory features which afford humans the capacity to laugh and cry together; the language of commemoration.
Representing the actual duration and structure of the ceremonies the film, composed from fourteen ceremonies, attempts to bring an audience into the midst of the repatriations, positioning the viewer as onlooker, witness, participatory performer and drawing upon a range of sensory situations and observations that define this collective experience.
For further information please download the research chapter The Separation Line as pdf, included in the publication “Border Visions: Borderlands in Film and Literature”, to be published by Scarecrow Press later this year or visit katiedavies.com

London’s Pyramid of Death

26 July 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: burial, cemeteries, memorialisation

Posted by Belinda Forbes

In the second of BBC Radio 4’s series Unbuilt Britain, Jonathan Glancey describes one of the most audacious buildings ever planned for London – it would have been the largest pyramid ever built.

Church yards were so crowded at the beginning of the 19th century that corpses were literally bursting out of the soil.  Some people believed that a necropolis for the dead might be the answer.  In 1829 the architect Thomas Willson came up with a proposal for the storage of millions of dead bodies in a pyramid situated in Primrose Hill, North London, one of the highest places in London.  Constructed from brick with granite facings, it would have been 94 storeys high and the base would have covered 18 acres.  In his prospectus, Willson claimed that the mausoleum would have made about £10,000,000 – an enormous amount in those days.   He hoped that people would enjoy looking up at this splendid monument as they ate their picnics.

The City of London Archive holds Willson’s drawings and ground plans.  Catharine Arnold, author of ‘Necropolis: London and its Dead’ said that the pyramid was to have been ‘compact, hygienic and ornamental’.

At the time of Willson’s plans, there was a fashion for anything Egyptian so his proposal was not as outlandish as it seems.  Thomas de Quincy, in an opium induced trance, dreamed of meeting Isis and Osiris and ‘being buried…in the heart of eternal pyramids.’ However, public opinion stopped this monumental pyramid of the dead from being built.  It was regarded as too over-bearing.  The idea of a garden cemetery was the preferred option of the General Cemetery Company. If the pyramid had been built, it would have cast a great shadow over the park of Primrose Hill.

Jonathan Glancey’s fascinating programme is available on BBC iPlayer here.

Mourning glory

24 July 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: ashes, Dress codes, Etiquette, funeral customs, funeral trends, memorialisation

By our funeral historian, Richard Rawlinson

Ashes into Glass is a jewellery company that inserts cremation ashes into crystal glass rings, pendants, earring and cufflinks. See the results here

“It has helped me feel a little calmer about losing my dear Mum by knowing that a little part of her is always with me,” says Teresa Evans Mortimer in one of the customer testimonials.

There’s something rather Victorian about companies marketing their products specifically at the bereaved (bereaved people). Queen Victoria made jet beads soar in popularity along with lockets holding curls of hair from deceased loved ones. 

Stationers such as Henry Rodrigues of Piccadilly offered black bordered note paper and envelopes, and the London General Mourning Warehouse advertised in The Times (1 November 1845) that “millinery, dresses, cloaks, shawls, mantles, &c., of the best quality can be purchased at the most reasonable prices.” Such an emporium would be a Goth’s paradise today.

Then again, when Victoria died, the Secretary to the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade, wrote to The Times (26 January 1901) to suggest that the 12 months of Court Mourning would profoundly impact on the retail drapery trade which ordered colourful cloth three or four months in advance. 

Ironically, although expected to mourn, women were generally advised against attending funerals. Cassell’s Household Guide for 1878 discourages the practice pointing out that it is something done by female relatives in the poorer classes.

An affair of the heart

13 July 2012
Charles
1 Comment
Categories: memorialisation

From today’s Daily Telegraph:

Dedicated Winston Howes, 70, spent a week planting each oak sapling after his wife of 33 years Janet died suddenly 17 years ago.

He laid out the fledgling trees in a six-acre field but left a perfect heart shape in the middle – with the point facing in the direction of her childhood home.

The labour of love has now blossomed into a mature meadow – a peaceful oasis where Winston can sit and remember his wife of 33 years.

His meadow cannot be seen from the road and has remained a family secret until a hot air balloonist took a photograph from the air.

Source

Briefest of Lives

4 July 2012
Charles
6 Comments
Categories: memorialisation

Here is the entire brief life of Dr Richard Stokes:

Scholar to Sir William Oughtred for Mathematiques (Algebra). Made himself mad with it, but became sober again, but I feare like a crackt glasse. Became Roman Catholique. Married unhappily at Liège, dog and catt, etc. Became a sotte. Dyed in Newgate, prisoner for debt, April 1681.

John Aubrey, Brief Lives, 1693

Great biz idea for somebody

21 June 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: memorialisation

Why (oh why) has no one developed a waterproof teddy bear for child graves? Can’t be rocket science, surely?  Come on, you budding entrepreneurs! 

Can you help?

20 June 2012
Charles
2 Comments
Categories: ashes, memorialisation

Space burial is about sending a portion of cremation ashes into space, then releasing them so that they can orbit the Earth. 

Up in Glasgow, Tom Walkinshaw is developing his own space burial programme. It’s ambitious stuff. He’s won an award from Glasgow Caledonian University and he has the support of the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust.

Tom is carrying out a survey to find out more about what people want, and he has appealed to the readers of the GFG to tell him what they think.

We very much hope you’ll help him out. You can do that by going over to the survey — it’s very short — here. 

Find Tom’s website here. 

Thank you!

New life for old dead people

11 June 2012
Charles
9 Comments
Categories: memorialisation

It may have passed us by here at the GFG-Batesville Tower. We can wear thin. Exciting innovation, breathlessly announced in gushing PR-ese, sometimes gets the yeah-yeah. 

We’re talking about the US trend for putting QR codes on headstones. Has it crossed the Atlantic yet? If not, why not? We concede that it may have. 

It’s a terrifically good idea. Cheap, too, at around £35 a throw. You take a QR tag measuring roughly 1 inch x 2 inches. You stick it on a headstone or any other memorial — it’s not just for buried dead people. You point your smartphone at it and it takes you to a webpage containing the life story of the dead person plus photographs of said dead person plus links (optional) to social network sites and a really good online memorial site like MuchLoved. 

At a stroke it solves the problem that has beset the memorialisation of everybody save the enduringly famous. Burial grounds the world over currently commemorate amnesia. They are full of people who, even those with the biggest tombs, mean nothing to anyone. Why? Because the inscriptions on their headstones/obelisks/mausolea are insufficiently informative to make them remotely interesting. 

And yet there are loads of exceedingly interesting dead people out there, from age-old B-list celebs to civic worthies to extraordinary ordinary people. Add ’em up, that’s almost everyone dead and buried. 99.999%. Tell us more about them, what they were like, and suddenly a graveyard becomes a really good and satisfying read. 

The appeal is obvious to the contemporary bereaved. But it’s greater than that. Many of our burial grounds stretch back over centuries. So here’s a job for local historians. Research the life stories of the occupants of your burial grounds, then slap a QR tag on their headstones. The general reader will bless you. Imagine parties of schoolchildren zooming around with their smartphones, history coming to life before their eyes…

Check out some QR code memorialisation specialists here and here and here. 

The Art of Portrait Sculpture

7 June 2012
Charles
3 Comments
Categories: Art and death, Death masks, memorialisation

“Death Mask Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1769-1830”

Can be seen at Presence: The Art of Portrait Sculpture

With portraits by artists from Giacometti to Ron Mueck, Presence is a terrific gathering of people carved, cast, modelled in clay or turned to stone. The Observer’s Laura Cumming takes a look at some of the works on show

Presence: The Art of Portrait Sculpture is at the Holburne Museum, Bath, until 2 September

Capturing a life

29 May 2012
Charles
8 Comments
Categories: memorialisation, Memorialising

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

From 7 Up in 1964 to 56 Up today, this remarkable documentary series has been filming the same group of people for a biblical seven days of their lives every seven years for almost five decades. Catch 56 Up on ITV at 9pm this Monday, and, if the last two episodes are anything to go by, expect the participants to keep stressing that we’re only getting a tiny, distorting glimpse of the life journey that’s made them who they are. This historic social record has got me musing about how difficult it must be to capture the essence of someone in a funeral eulogy. 

As a student I once told my grandmother I had a Saturday job in M&S in order to save up for a holiday on the continent. Her response has stuck with me. ‘When I was young, I had a boyfriend who took me dancing in a hotel on the weekend,’ she began. ‘My mother enquired how he could afford to treat me in this way. When I asked him, he confessed he lived very frugally during the week. So in my day, we went without in order to have a bit of luxury whereas you take jobs so you don’t have to make such sacrifices. And let me add I think your way is better!’ 

At her funeral several years later, I was struck by the realisation that I would never have the opportunity to really know her story, fears or desires; the inner workings that made her unique. Sure, there were some anecdotes I cherished, but so much was missing. I wouldn’t have wanted such insights shared at her funeral either. 

It’s another thing to take up genealogy or employ one of many online companies such as The Memory Works – here – which offer personal and family biographies as leatherbound keepsakes. A lot of elderly people wish to leave a record of learning, love and legacy for future generations.