New Trends in Memorials

Click here for many choices of New Memorial Trends

New Ideas Worth Exploring

There are plenty of new trends in the memorial industry today. Some of them are so intriguing that they have garnered media attention from the likes of the USA Today and even CNN. In addition, others are more subtle, requiring researchers across academia to study closely to even detect the trend. Whatever the case, these trends are definitely worth exploring.

We will start with, arguably, the most noteworthy of the recent trends: Art in Ashes - This trend is so new that less than a handful of artists worldwide are currently involved. Briefly, customers wanting to pay tribute to their beloved family member’s precious memories mail a teaspoon or so of ashes to a painter who then mixes the remains into paint and adds them to a creation. In most cases, the artist makes a collection of recently completed paintings available for the ashes to be added after a sale. However, in some cases, the artist can work directly with an artist to create a custom piece of work.

Art in Ashes is still in its infancy, having come about mostly in the spring of 2007. Several other new memorial trends have a few years under their belts and are beginning to attract attention from American media. Cremation jewelry is one of these trends. Only widely available for about 15 years, cremation jewelry pieces have openings that hold tiny bits of a person’s cremation remains. This unique trend is interesting enough to have inspired feature stories in national publications such as The USA Today, and other national news outlets have focused on the controversies surrounding it. CNN, for example, has reported on the debate in the Catholic Church over cremation jewelry. In an age when cremation itself has only relatively recently become accepted by the Church, some bishops and priests require that that ashes be kept together. That means, in some diocese, scattering of ashes -- or storing parts of them in cremation jewelry -- is outlawed. (It should be noted that this is not a universal interpretation of Catholic law, however.)

Another memorial trend that has received a great deal of attention in recent years is the many ways of personalizing cremation urns. Urns today are available in a huge variety of styles, materials, colors and themes. Probably the most intriguing of the relatively newly available urns are the motorcycle urns (these have certainly garnered the most attention). These pieces shaped like motorcycle gas tanks are popular among bikers all across the country. In many cases, bikers have already selected their special urn and have it on display near their favorite pool table long before their death. Customers commonly request that the motorcycle urns be adorned with the logos of their favorite manufacturer, but, so far, the manufacturing companies have declined to license their images for such purposes. As the popularity of these urns increases, one suspects that it is only a matter of time before all major motorcycle company emblems are available on urns. In the meantime, major league baseball and other professional sports organizations have begun experimenting with allowing team logos to be used for caskets and cremation urns.