This funeral urn was created for a fellow woodworker at the request of his wife. I met her at his studio and picked through his wood stash and brought several boards home to consider as i designed his urn. The wood I ultimately chose was cherry and was an obvious offcut from a project he was working on. I could see his layout marks and notes he had made to himself on both the offcut I chose and the other boards for his project. I love the fact that his urn is made from the wood he last handled.
Creating a funeral urn is, in my mind, a different task from creating any other object. There is a sense of reverence that goes into designing and making it. The shape I created feels like the comforting shape we make with our hands as we cup them to gently hold something fragile. I wanted to create a safe and sacred interior space to house his ashes.
The sides of the box were created from 9 thin plies of cherry, sequentially cut from a thick plank, using a technique known as laminate bending. I applied glue between the individual laminations and clamped them over a curved form to give them their shape. Once the wood had set into its new, curved shape I further refined the form and shaped the edges.
The wood for the urn’s sides is figured cherry. I call it ‘pearled’ because of the way the light plays off of it when held at different angles and its pearlescent quality. The lid is also cherry, but I turned it black using a process call ebonizing. This is a technique that creates a chemical reaction in the wood and causes it to turn black, much like the black stain seen around a nail in an old piece of oak. I cause this chemical reaction by sequentially applying two solutions. One is a concentrated solution of black tea and the other is vinegar in which I have dissolved steel wool. This reaction happens at a cellular level resulting in a deep, rich black, much different from what can be obtained with a stain or dye.
The interior of the box is gilded with copper leaf. Gilding is a technique of surface embellishment that goes back to the ancient Egyptians. In short, the substrate is prepared, a special adhesive known as ‘sizing’ is applied, followed by the application of a thin metal foil. The metal was traditionally 23K gold, but copper, silver, palladium and other metals are often used today. I love to gild the interior of an urn. It creates a muted metallic interior that seems to glow with its own light source. I also feel it is a metaphor for that quality that expressed itself as the love, kindness and compassion we felt from our loved one.
The last bits of embellishment include a pyrography texture on the outside edge of the lid, a pyrography design on the top of the lid (which again feels like an embrace and echoes the shape of the urn) and a bit of gilding to tie the outside to the inside.
To protect the piece I chose an Osmo finish. It is a European finish which is a non-toxic blend of various oils and waxes. It leaves a lovely satin sheen that I find particularly pleasing and touchable.
In memory of John Lawrence Dill, November 16, 1959 — December 5, 2021.
