A Golden Beauty

John — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:30:00 +0000

When I was growing up I always had a fascination with caskets. I’m sure it is because I associated them with my dad/hero and visiting him at the funeral home. However, I was never allowed to touch them….who wants to buy a casket with some 6 year old’s fingerprints on it anyways? I think that I was around 14 years old when my day of graduation came. I can even remember the smell of the casket room at Wood Funeral Home as my dad showed my how to properly prepare a casket for showing. First, fold the out the edge material making sure there are no unwanted wrinkles. Next, place the pillow at a slight angle to help the casket look comfortable. Next, place the overlay on the closed half of the casket and line up that material with the edge material evenly. Finally, raise the bed of the casket so that it doesn’t look like a bottomless pit (yes, most casket beds raise and lower by crank). The lesson learned that day was not that paying attention to the details would help sell the casket, but instead that the families we serve deserve to have every detail paid attention to. I still couldn’t legally drive a car and I hadn’t kissed a girl, but at that point I started to became a man…..more or less.

With that in mind I present to you my second favorite casket of all-time….The Promethean Bronze by Batesville. You will probably hear me refer to Batesville often as they are the biggest (and best) manufacturer of caskets in the nation. The Promethean is the epitome of excellence in a metal casket. The casket it built of 48oz Bronze. As a semi-precious metal, bronze is rust-resistant and the most expensive of the casket metals. The bronze is then plated with 24k gold. Awesome. The finish is hand polished and very very shiny. The interior of the casket will come just about any way that you order it. As I recall, this is one of the few caskets that is made totally by hand and by order at the Batesville plant. Expect to pay at least $20,000 for this unit of excellence. Now you ask, does anyone really need a gold-plated bronze casket? Of course not, but it sure is pretty.

The pictures are a couple of stock photos I was able to find. The most recent notable I know of that was buried in the Promethean Bronze was James Brown. The photo I chose doesn’t show the “Godfather of Soul” in it, but for those interested, just google “James Brown Casket” and look at the images (by the by, the mortician did an excellent job).

My Undertaking » Caskets

A Golden Beauty