Cremation urns that look like the dear departed

Cremation Solutions sells "personal urns" that look like the person whose ashes they hold.

Now we can create a custom urn in the image of your loved one or favorite Celebrity.
New advances in facial reconstruction and 3D printing have made it possible to have an urn made in the image of anyone from just a photograph.
Never forget a face. Personal Urns combine art and technology to create a family heirloom that will be cherished for generations.
Available in Two Sizes
• Full sized will hold all of the ashes of any adult
• Keepsake size is about 1/4 of the full sized and will hold about 25 cubic inches

Personal urns (Via Cynical-C)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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mstoddard

Upgrade includes body
salsaman

Transfer the ashes to a safe container and use the (cleaned) head as a Jell-o serving dish for Halloween:
http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Gelatin-Mold/dp/B0009VJ2IG
Anonymous

my mother made one of these for herself back in her hippie days out of clay, pretty traumatic to see as a kid but not nearly as uncanny valley as that.
thinkoplex

Is it possible to get one shaped like the dear departed without the hideous brain surgery gash across the forehead?!
wrybread

This is perhaps the funniest thing ever posted on boingboing.
Rotwang

Can I get one that blinks?
sumi

What about a cremation snow-globe? They seem to have missed a great product in that.
RedShirt77

Is it just me or is the head in the picture not one of the extras from Half-Life? or that banana phone video or something like that?
Anonymous

The company name “Cremation Solutions” sounds like it should come in a bottle.

Marked “flammable”.
Anonymous

When did Daniel ‘Kid Poker’ Negreanu die?
Anonymous

Very Roman.

http://images.google.com/images?q=roman%20funerary%20bust
FreakCitySF

Reminds me of:

1. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, monkey brain dinner.
2. Hannibal, Hannibal Lector brain dinner
3. When the crypt goes creak,
And the tombstones quake.
Spooks come out for a swinging wake.
Happy haunts materialize,
And begin to vocalize.
Grim grinning ghosts come out to socialize
Johnny Cat

Now who’s visage would I select to hold my remains, some celebrity…oh I know, young Christopher Lloyd from Cuckoo’s Nest! That would solve the no hair policy, or maybe Wez from Road Warrior…they could do a red mohawk no problem.
Anonymous

@45 above
“It can be pretty upsetting to realize you’re forgetting someone’s face. If this helps, well, cool, I guess.”

That’s what regular photography is for….
eustace

Yes to this as a serving dish for a gelatinous dessert.
But as a mantle decoration – Aaaaaaaaaugh! Run away!
TheFirstMan

This?

http://www.kansastravel.org/davismemorial.htm
ihakes

He looks kinda surprised…
jtegnell

Looking at their website, you’d think they’ve only made one of these things so far.
Ernunnos

Best. Cookie jar. Ever.
Anonymous

my wife saw this, gasped, and made me promise i would get her ashes into a pinhead bust from hellraiser.
Anonymous

Can I have an extra-large head model of Dick Cheney to use as a catbox???

OH PLEASE!
Daemon

I want one made in the likeness of Anton Szander LaVey or maybe Aleister Crowley. Then I can fill them with gummi worms for halloween.
DMcK

Never thought the phrase “keepsake size” would give me such epic heebie-jeebies.
crabrangoon

It would be great if the head also spoke on occasion. “I am watching you from heaven!” Just in case the damage has not been fully done.
Kat

Didn’t they just steal this idea from ancient Egyptians where the pharoahs had face masks over their mummies?
Architexas

Can they make one so the likeness DOESN’T look like it just got its bum pinched, though? I wouldn’t want to spend the afterlife knowing everyone thought I’d been goosed just prior to death.
dole

I’d get one of those of myself but with a Big Green Spinning Diamond mounted on top.

@44: THIS.
Anonymous

That’s creepy. It reminds me of the Hannibal movie where he cut off the top of the guy’s head.
Stefan Jones

I’d love a ceramic belgian shepherd crock to put my belgian shepherd’s ashes in, when the time comes.
Anonymous

Can you get it on a plaque to mount on the wall?
pinehead

RealDoll body not included.
copyboy1

Do they have to be people? What about a Darth Vader head. Or maybe a unicorn.
Anonymous

“made in your likeness or your favorite celebraty” haha
Anonymous

No! No! No!
RikF

Oh, to spend eternity in Bruce Campbell’s chin…
KWillets

Antinous, you may fancy free will, but your mind is in fact my basest thoughts, transported a few hours back in time .
Anonymous

I GuarAN-Tee you that if it were Ron Jeremy, they’d use something other than the cranial vault.
Brainspore

$2600?! Heck, I could immortalize your loved one’s head for the price of a hacksaw and a pickle jar.
RedShirt77

Yeah, I checked. This guy died by being hit by a bus in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbK-9gHk_nI
Anonymous

It can be pretty upsetting to realize you’re forgetting someone’s face. If this helps, well, cool, I guess. I agree that it would be nice to see one with hair, especially for that price.

I don’t really understand why everyone’s so horrified. It’s not that different from commissioning a portrait of the deceased. This one is just 3D.
Anonymous

Someone build a replica of one of those life-support containers in Futurama around the head and we’re in business.
cszostek

This ranks up on something I would love to have done to me, but would not want a loved one in an urn that looked like their head.
Fee

As it happens, I am staying at my mother’s house at present. This is a place where I may stumble over the ashes of her dead dog (next to the fireplace in the living room), the ashes of my dead grandparents (on a shelf in her bedroom) and the whole house is covered in little parian ware statues of angels and cherubs and candles in the nature of a slightly run down Victorian mausoleum.

The house is old and rambling, and was known by my friends as a teenager as Mildew Mansions.

But even my mother, even *my* mother, would baulk at this.

I stumbled over a web page with the most unusual gravestones and memorials, and some of those were quite touching and nice… etched full size pictures of the deceased, models of their motorbikes etc. Somehow the uncanny head is just creepy and inappropriate.

My mother would probably go for it if they did dogs, however….
JIMWICh

This is a bit reminiscent of a microfiction story I wrote back in 1997, “Grandma’s Place.”

Http://www.well.com/user/jleft/wordz/grandma.html

In this story, however, the ashes were combined with cement and molded into a scaled-down 3D scanned replica of the deceased, and dressed in a smaller version of their real clothes. And this became the centerpiece for a multimedia memorial shrine.
dhalgren

Seriously though this is a bit creepy. Imagine having your mom and dad’s ashes in two head urns on the mantle, watching you, day after day. Soon enough you’ll imagine their eyes watching you, giving you looks of disapproval. Soon you’ll find yourself stopping and saying to the heads, “What? What did I do?” In the middle of the night you start to hear whispered conversations from downstairs in familiar voices. Imagine bringing home a date and introducing your date to your mom and dad’s ash heads?

“Mom, Dad, I’d like you to meet…”
General Specific

There really are no limits to bad taste. Just awful.
Anonymous

Can it be wired for a lamp? Can I then get a pair for both ends of the mantel? Any discount for two?
boingboy

WTF indeed! But I’ve seen all this before at ThatsMyFace. They’ve got scary lifelike face masks too and almost normal-looking custom action figures.
Vidalia

Fuck this. Things like this are why I want to be a damned skeleton.
Marcel

I’d like a nice chianti to go with that.
GIMMEADOLLAR

*CRINGE*
grimc

That’s not at all creepy.
GeekMan

Wouldn’t you love to have that on your mantle?
Antinous / Moderator

Does it have to be the head? Is there a Jeff Stryker model?
The Lizardman

I kind of want to get a few (myself and some friends) just to decorate the shelves with familar heads
sammich

surely cheaper, in these straitened times, to use the ~actual~ head…
Anonymous

It looks just like the products available at http://www.thatsmyface.com
Takuan

aye, t’is. bit smelly summat though.
Anonymous

@#27 by [i]ihakes[/i]
[i]He looks kinda surprised…[/i]

You would too in fairness
sammich

if you love somebody,
if you really love somebody,
you’ll let them reek…
Anonymous

I think this is great! I love my Mother and wish I could see her smile. Well this is one way that I could always see her.
denkbert

They should attach a handle to those things and sell them as cups. I bet there’d be quite some people that would like to drink out of the one or the other celebrity ^_^
Bender

I’m sure this will look even better when the urn looks like 89 year old Aunt Edna.
dwdyer

“or favorite Celebrity”

Until they’re sued by celebrities for unauthorized use of their likeness.

It’d be kind of cool to put in my will that I want my ashes contained in the head of some B-level celebrity, though.
Anonymous

Well, that’s setting new standards in ‘tasteless’ – a copy of your loved one’s disembodied head to put above the fireplace like a trophy…
arkizzle / Moderator

oh no.
Takuan

any photo eh? let’s see them make a “Toby” mug out of this then

http://www.cgnews.com/images/autodesk_pirates_article.jpg
apoxia

$2,600! Wow. And they don’t have an example of a person who isn’t bald. I suspect they look substantially stupider. Or maybe they stick a wig on it…
krakenskulls

This makes me wish there was a link next to “Favorite This” called “WTF?!?1!”.