"A funeral urn should not remind you of a funeral or even an urn. An urn should be something quietly beautiful and deeply resonate - something to gather your loss and your love, and to help you carry these things forward into your own evolving life."
- sculptor/designer David Orth |
Crafting a Bronze Cremation Urn:
the Search for a Requiem
The woodstove glows and huffs in the winter. In the warmer months I open the door wide onto the garden. Today I am in the shop to make an urn. I start over at the beginning with as much heart, mind. & soul as I can spare.
I grab a sheet of solid bronze and drag it across the shop - it is heavy - as is my search. Can this weight be shifted or transformed? A good, practical question - but also a difficult human riddle. I turn to the bronze and ask this simple, probing question with my hammer. The bronze is solid, but I have learned that if I ask it carefully, with an open heart and an alert mind, it will stretch and move and turn.
Slowly, over the anvil, a timeworn surface emerges. A mallet coaxes out some curves and facets. The bronze is still heavy, but it starts to glow from within - with something that must be the opposite of heaviness. Things are coming together - practically, metaphorically - both things. Finally the closely fitting parts are seamlessly fused together with a small, blinding arc weld as hot as the sun.
An opening is formed on the bottom of each urn and a cover plate fitted carefully and bolted down tight. Grinding, sanding, and burnishing bring a satin sheen to the urn and prepare it for the patina. The ancient patina solutions are applied over and over until the bronze itself glows with patience, depth, and human feeling.
Each urn is crafted to the highest standards. Each urn is unique, personal, and expressive. Metalcraft is loud and fiery; but in and around all the noise and sparks there is the quiet heart of the matter. I do not know if a bronze urn will ever sound the depth of honest feeling I hear in a Brahms or Faure requiem.
Nonetheless, it is in my heart to try.
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