Clark McMullen of Artistic Urns shapes a piece on the lathe.
Most of the funeral products on display at the National Funeral Directors Association (NFDA) convention expo were exhibited in their finished form. Only Clark McMullen, founder and artist at Artistic Urns, brought his workshop to the showroom floor.
“We brought the process with us here to show how we create a hand-turned wooden urn,” said McMullen.
In the booth was a slice of a tree trunk, representing the timber they rescue from arborists, the “trunk chunk” from which they carve an urn, and the roughed out urn shape before it is finished. McMullen’s booth was coated with ribbons of wood shavings created as he used the lathe to sculpt a new urn, as demonstrated in this video.
The company’s tagline is As Unique As The Individual They Serve. Every urn created is unique – different in size, shape, color and character. There are no molds, no programmed cutting machines, no mass productions. Each piece is cut by hand, turned by hand and finished by hand. In fact, each urn is given its own unique serial number and signed by the artist who created it. No two are alike.
Artistic Urns sources “rescued wood” to use for their urns, which comes from downed trees. This may be due to storm damage or suburban backyard jobs done by local tree arborists. The company has saved the wood of hundreds of mature trees destined for local landfills.
The company is based in Georgia and all of their products are totally made in the U.S.A. Learn more at www.ArtisticWoodUrns.com.