Parting Stones - better than a covered jar?

[Rae Reich]

 

[neilestrick]

My wife thinks it's creepy, but I think it's pretty neat. Maybe a little creepy. Definitely creative.

[Mark C.]

As a person who has dealt with 4 family members ashes  over my lifetime and 3 cats (I creameated myself) I think this process is more of a gimmick than a needed reality

This google hit sums it up well

Parting Stone's service costs $595. Crowe and his investors see huge potential in the business of transforming cremated remains into small mementos that can be distributed to family and friends, and placed in meaningful places – say, next to a lake.

Ashes can be turned into glaze or broadcast or retained in many forms. The stones look more like a fired cast dental material and my guess is that whats it is. You know like a porcealain crown which by the way is about as far from porcelain as you can get-Yes its white cooked (low fired) material but not porcelain.

There is a feel good thing about the stones (momentos as they call them) but they are really ashes mixed with a liquid procduct and low fired. I think wedging the ashes into a more durable clay body and firing to me as more appeal . But to the masses this sounds so nice-My parents as the add says are stones now.Now how many times as a kid did you with your parents where turned into stone!Many time is my guess especially as a teenager .

 

[Hulk]

stone age, heh

I sure appreciate family and friends specifying what they want (ahead of time, hmm, gotta put that on my todo list), then I/we/whoever don't/doesn't have to decide - very likely someone won't like it, in my experience, always, someone bent outta shape.

While on remains subject, if to travel to final spot, take with yourself, for not all carriers will handle them, and the one who will "lost" my Mom for six plus weeks - had to fake it with an mt urn at graveside. All good now tho'

Another tip, be prepared to tell the cremation folk what to do with any precious metals - you Tell Them - before they ask - bad enough without... (gold at twelve hundred/oz, plez just shutup).

Another other tip, shop around; the (shall not be explicitly named, ahem) mortuary right across the highway from the assisted living/memory care/skilled nursing facility quoted price for cremation more than double that of the mortuary here in Los Osos, plus pickup/transport fee, which further away place did not charge...

 

[Callie Beller Diesel]

I’ve had to provide urns for 6 family members on my side, 2 on my husband’s and for 2 dogs. It’s an honour, and it sucks all at once. 
 

Different people seem to want to deal with cremains in different ways. I’ve known some who had a very hard time letting go that would find something like this very tasteful and comforting. Certainly better than keeping Grandma in a vase in the spare room closet (literally something my MIL did). There is certainly a creep factor in keeping any form of a dead body around, wether they’re in a jar or made into pretty rocks. If I had to have someone hanging around for a while (maybe waiting to inter with a spouse), I think the rocks are nicer. 
 

$600 is less than you’d pay for a casket, so it’s pretty reasonable. It’s really gross being upsold on fancy caskets by a funeral director if arrangements weren’t made in advance. 
 

[Mark C.]

(It’s an honour, and it sucks all at once.) thats an understatement

Around here ashes into glass beads is big business.I think it way less than the $595 for dental stones.

My strangest urn story is an old friends wife wanted one larger one made ahead of time for the two of them in one pot. I gave it to them pro bono-shipped it back east on the house,

[liambesaw]

I can't get over how poorly they turn out with bubbles and such, I feel like at least for their commercial they could have shown better examples of the product.

I think what this is, is another attempt to turn 10 cents of clay into 700 dollars.  I don't like the whole idea of making everything death related very expensive, it feels exploitative. 

Like the part about turning bone ash into ceramic had never been done before?  What kind of materials scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory hasn't heard of bone china?  Come on!  

I think the idea is a great one, I just think that charging someone that kind of money, at that time in their life, is really sad.  

 

[Chilly]

Money making, poor surface finish.

I do like the idea though. 

I have two boxes of cremains in the studio, waiting for me to decide what to so with them. Perhaps I need to find a set of pebble slip-cast moulds. 

[Callie Beller Diesel]

I've never been paid for an urn, not that I ever asked to be. They were all family. 

I don't think the stones are a particularly unreasonable cost. The last time I had to price out a casket probably 13 years ago, a basic pine box was about $300. That's not the kind they recommend for being present at any sort of service: they do not look nice. It's the kind you get cremated in. The caskets that you'd get buried in, or have present at a service of any kind started at  $800-1000, and those were about as plain as you could get. Top end was $5000.  Urns from the funeral home (really ugly, basic ones) started at $300. I'm sure prices have gone up in the last decade.

The reason I know all this isn't because someone was trying to scam me. I was speaking to a funeral director at one point about offering urns for sale because I felt at that point I'd had some experience with them. He was fantastic and walked me through what the requirements might be for them, and gave me an idea of what a reasonable retail price would be for them. For the record, he said he tried to steer people away from the stupid top end stuff, but some families want a big sendoff.

[JohnnyK]

Here is a case where a friend liked my work  and asked for an urn with his Mom's ashes imbedded in the surface with a specific style of glaze. I showed him a photo of one of my bud vases and he decided that THAT was what he wanted, too, only bigger. So I made both for him and charged $120 for the pair. He was delighted. He put the picture below on his Facebook page and he told me he had gotten more than 150 positive comments...more than he has ever gotten for any of his photos...In the 3 tube vase he put Mom in one tube, Dad in another and combined in the third and combined both their ashes in the jar. He's happy, so I'm happy...

[neilestrick]

I've made a couple of jars specifically for ashes, and have sold many more lidded jars at art fairs that people intended to use for ashes. It is indeed an honor to have your work chosen. One woman bought a large $300 jar for her parents ashes, and said she would be burying the whole jar. I used to sell a lot of little jars for cat ashes, like one at every show in the summer, and I didn't make or advertise them specifically for that. They just seemed to be the right size. That market seems to have dried up in the last couple of years, though. Everyone has their own idea of what the right resting place for their loved one's remains is.

[LeeU]

My sister lived with the American Surrealist painter, Donald Nield, for many years, in NYC.  He died in '84 and she hauled his cremains around in a box for decades. Last summer she decided it was time to let go, and put most of the ashes into a ceramic jar. We buried it in the space he had reserved for himself at the Woodstock Artists Cemetery.  She kept some of the bone ash aside and made small flat ceramic pieces for people close to him. Hedgehogs! Here's mine.  Actually-Don is the one on the left and the other one is Larry, another very close friend from NY who passed during the time she was angsting over Nield's "burial" being a bit overdue.  I think the idea of having two such boxes laying around  goosed her into action.  I'm going to make myself a jar ahead of time,  and I have a spot in a cemetery in Roanoke, where the maternal side of the family is buried.  My friend will make some of my ash into  some simple ceramic object, and then bury it (when no one is looking) in the ground of the NY Public Library, near Patience and Fortitude, the lions.  Maybe I'll be a turtle.

[mnnaj]

I too have made urns for family.  All had seen the jars before they died.  I have made small urns for myself and my husband.  He wants his ashes to be in multiple places.  

The idea of "parting stones" sounds interesting.  A stone is portable, no one would look twice at someone dropping a stone at a rivers edge, an urn seems to need to be concealed or buried. 

My only regret would be that I would be unable to do it myself, because I would be gone.

Nancy

[Sorcery]

Seeing as how these are technically NON-Parting Stones....

The only thing that's left parting is suckers and their money.

I think everyone should be blessed enough to know a Potter who will create someth out of love, not money.

Good on Mark C!

I'd Rather be glaze on a jar than ash in a jar!

 

Sorce

 

 

[Mark C.]

opps thought I was editing above post