How I got into making urns.
My journey as a professional woodturner began in 1994, my creative side is more drawn to creating hollow forms and vessels than the turning of chair legs and stair balusters etc. It is a passion to create simple uncomplicated shapes and flowing lines.
The use of contemporary-coloured stains to enhance the hidden figure in the use of white woods such as Sycamore, Silver Birch, Maple, Horse Chestnut and Poplar is often overlooked by other turners – they see these woods as too bland and uninteresting but the use of contemporary coloured staining allows the hidden figure to be enhanced and has become my ‘signature’ over the years. On occasion, I gave my pieces threaded lids.
And then one day, a lady at an art exhibition said she had been looking for something beautiful to keep her husband’s ashes in. Having worked as a carpenter and joiner, she felt he would appreciate his resting place more than if he was placed in a cardboard tube supplied by the funeral home.
My first ‘urn’ was made for a doctor friend who had also been an amateur woodworker. A little unsure on how much volume an urn needed, and hoping what I made would be big enough, I was relieved when it all worked perfectly. His family were scattering his ashes in a small woodland they owned and seventeen years later, the urn still sits on a shelf in his wife’s dining room – every time we visit, I sneak a look at it.
I made another one for a friend who was a well known actor whom I’d met at a woodworking show, he was a hobby woodturner and subsequently came on two of my turning courses. About a year later I became the UK distributor for a range of top end woodturning lathes and accessories from Australia. He bought one and a load of accessories which I duly delivered (the lathes weighed 300kgs). When he moved to the Isle of Wight a few years later he asked me took look after it for him while he and his wife built an eco home on the thirty acre plot of land they owned. Three years later he had built a workshop and was ready to have his lathe back, when I delivered it and all the add ons, I asked him why he’d bought all the extras which he would probably never use and he replied “I just wanted to help you out with with the new business.” Sadly he died 18 months later, the cancer he’d had twelve years previously came back.
I wanted to give him something back. When I delivered his lathe he had given me a load of wood from a tree that had to be felled to make way for his workshop so I thought, what could be more appropriate than to make an urn from a piece of that tree.
His wake was at the house they’d built and I didn’t want to make a big song and dance about the urn so I waited until most of the mourners had left before I quietly gave it to his widow, she immediately said it should have been on display at the crematorium and showed everyone. I was embarrassed at the amount of compliments and plaudits I received, for me it was a gesture of appreciation of the friendship I’d had with him. He had wanted his ashes to be scattered in the woodland on the property but his widow said the urn was going to sit on a high shelf in the kitchen. ‘I can keep an eye on him there.’
When I got home I told my wife what had happened, she suggested I make a few and take them a local funeral director, so I made an appointment to visit and they were blown away by my work, they’d never seen anything like them before. They told me about the NFE, the biannual industry trade show which happened to be six weeks later and half an hour from home. I booked the smallest stand I could and set about making enough urns to have a decent display, I was able to get sixteen made before the exhibition.
The response, sales and comments I received were way better than I had hoped for. “These aren’t just urns, they’re unique pieces of art”
Making urns has become the main part of my woodturning business, from small keepsakes to singles and large companion urns, supplying the trade and selling directly to the public. Almost all the wood I use comes from a few local tree surgeons who would normally chop it up for firewood. Meeting the bereaved can be very heart rending but also very heart warming. It is such a tremendous privilege to be part of people’s lives at such a personal time.
I welcome customers to visit my studio to either choose a finished urn or commission one from the stock of approximately one hundred and fifty part turned pieces I have built up, it also gives them an appreciation of the making process and how unique each urn is.
I am always humbled that someone wants to keep the ashes of their loved on in a piece of my artwork.
Article by Phil Irons
Published in farewells Edition 15
