NewWays for Environmental and Social Change

In an erstwhile goat shed in Banham, in deepest south Norfolk, Tony Carter is making coffins. And he is very busy.

These coffins are not your ordinary chipboard and veneer jobs for which some in the funeral business would charge an arm and a leg. Nor certainly are they lavishly trimmed oak or other hardwood which has been decades in the growing only to be buried out of sight or, worse still, burnt.

For Tony Carter is a basket maker and his coffins are made of year-old willow withies from the Somerset Levels. This is willow cropped every year - a renewable resource - and it is even odourless when burnt, all of which makes a coffin of willow weave the ultimate sustainable, environmentally friendly, means to the End.

Not entirely unheard of in the history of human death, willow weave has nevertheless seen something of a resurrection lately, due substantially to the vision of graphic designer, Gemma Nesbitt, who saw coffin-shaped fruit and vegetable baskets in the street markets of West Bengal. Back in England, she sketched an adaptation and then scoured the basket making fraternity in search of an able - and willing - craftsman to execute it. Tony was her man.

They have called the coffin the chrysalis and the explanation can be found in the literature of the Natural Death Centre, a charity which advises on alternatives to the mainstream - and sometimes indeed overpriced - services offered by the undertaking industry. It quotes the OED definition of a chrysalis as:

i) The state into which the larva of most insects passes before becoming an imago or perfect insect. In this state, the insect is inactive and takes no food and is wrapped in a hard sheath or case. ii) The shell or case where the perfect insect bursts.

The NDC adds that belief in reincarnation is not essential for potential users. But, both for those expecting to pupate and those not, the result is another in the growing list of options for a green departure.

And the word is spreading which is why Tony Carter is so busy. It all seems to be part and parcel of a gradual lifting of what many have regarded as the last social taboo - the lighter advance contemplation of arrangements for when one pops one’s clogs, kicks the bucket, pegs out or, as my Australian friends would say, carcs it.

The trend has been accompanied by a growing proliferation of “alternative” burial grounds where graves are marked with newly planted trees on a site which will eventually become a nature reserve.

For those inclined to consider such detail at all, the prospect of lying under - or being scattered among - growing trees, without having helped to destroy one in the process, carries a greater sense of liberation than being wedged into a congested cemetery amid serried ranks of expensive headstones.

Getting there in willow weave fits the concept. Willow rots or burns more quickly than most alternative coffin materials with the probable exceptions of cardboard (cheaper though with a question mark against its production’s energy requirement) and papier mache which is still pretty much a niche market. “And I will be able to breathe in my chrysalis” one buyer told me, having bought hers well in advance.

And buying in advance is another growing trend. The chrysalis takes two or three days to make and another day for delivery, a time frame that can cater for the majority of conventional, non-pre-planned, funeral requirements in this country.

But more buyers are now acquiring theirs years before their expected demise and in the meantime are using them as house decorations or even furniture. Stuffed with blankets or duvets, they make good seats or sofas and, stuffed or unstuffed, they make a decent conversation piece, not to mention a prop for the occasional dinner party piece. Indeed, a launching party to wet the coffin’s lid with some decent bubbly seems to be another occasional trait among early buyers.

The design of the chrysalis has necessarily involved some adaptation of standard basket making techniques.

The base, which carries most of the weight, has a frame of hazel sticks around which the willow is woven. Hazel is preferable to willow for the main bearers because it is easier to bend. Willow old enough to give the required strength would need to be soaked for days to be sufficiently pliable and, because a majority of coffins are still required for just-in-time delivery, that time is not always available.

Then, when the sides are built onto the base, the upright willow withies are attached by the technique known as scalloming which involves the tying of the withies around the outer hazel stick of the base. This gives far more strength than the usual basket maker’s method of piercing the outside frame member with a bodkin and inserting the upright into the hole.

That extra strength is crucial. After all, the average chrysalis has to cater for a slightly higher payload than a run-of-the-mill picnic basket. The breaking up of a picnic basket on the beach is one thing but the breaking up of a chrysalis in action does not really bear thinking about. Scalloming and the inherent strength of willow weave ensures that this cannot happen.

Tony gets his hazel locally in Norfolk but he gets his willow withies from his native county of Somerset because that is where the best quality is to be found, growing in plantations and cropped each winter to provide 80% of UK production.

Having been made into a chrysalis, however, it can then finish up in any part of the country because orders have shown no geographical pattern. Indeed, the only common threads among buyers seem to be environmental awareness and, in the case of advance purchasers, a touch of jocularity at the inevitable and a penchant for modelling the purchase for the amusement - or otherwise - of others.

Contacts:
Tony Carter / The Basket Workshop
121 Hargham Road
Attleborough
Norfolk
NR17 2HQ

Tel - 01953 457893
Fax - 01953 457705
The Natural Death Centre - 0181 208 2853