Coffin-maker thinking outside the box

When we die, most of us will end up in a brown box, but the more eccentric among us may want something a little more personal.

That is why 15 years ago Ross Hall launched a business called Dying Art, designing custom caskets that reflect the personality of the people who would eventually be laid to rest in them.

Some he has created include a Lego casket, a giant block of Dairy Milk chocolate, and a sailboat complete with mast.

The idea came to him when he was writing out his will, he told RNZ's Afternoons.

"I got to the little part in it where it said, 'Do you want to be buried, or do you want to be cremated?'

"And I thought, 'I don't want to take up too much space, I'll get cremated'. And then I thought to myself, 'I really don't want a brown box'.

"My life has been far too colourful to have a brown box. And I started thinking about, what did I want? And I thought, well, 'maybe I want a red box with flames on it, because that's probably where I'm going to end up'."

Hall owns a design company and so set his creative team loose on creating bespoke caskets.

"We designed up 20 different caskets and took them around to the funeral homes, because I worked out that I needed to work through the funeral homes, because it was just makes it so much easier when the family's grieving."

It had been a slow-growing concern, he said.

"But as time has gone on, the funeral industry has changed so much, and funerals have become a lot more of a celebration rather than a boring ceremony.

"People have got a lot more adventurous in their thinking about it. And we probably do two or three [caskets] a week, some weeks we do five."

The boat coffin was one of Dying Art's more memorable creations.

"We had a client come to us whose Dad was a mad sailor. And he said, 'I want to make my dad a boat'. And I said, 'we've got this one'. He goes, 'I'm a boat builder. I want to make it myself'.

"So, we helped him make it, it ended up about 4.5 metres high because it has a keel on the bottom and a mast.

"There's no two ways about it, that is a statement when it walks outside the church."

Other coffins, heartbreakingly, were much smaller, he said.

"We just did one recently for a little guy, and he was into Godzilla. And they're such little boxes, you know? It's pretty tough doing kids' ones."

Nevertheless, the business, a side-line to his main design company, gave him personal satisfaction, he said.

"The gratitude that we get from families after the event is fantastic, the feedback we get is great.

"It's feel-good feeling, I feel like I can give something back."