Style: Traditional solid wood with swing bar handles
Color: Settler's Pine
Finish: Water-based topcoat
Upholstery: Natural Unbleached Cotton Duckcloth
Interior (in): 76-1/4 x 23-3/8 x 15
Exterior (in): 81 x 28-3/4 x 23-7/8
American Adaption
Postwar America had a love affair with steel manufacturing. Refrigerators, washing machines, dining tables, chairs, desks, automobiles. War-time investment in factories, machinery, and the skilled tradesmen and women that made them work churned out steel products to a growing consumer economy like never before. Consumerism begat an appetite for all things new and shiny as if minted like coin currency.
An industry almost entirely dedicated to wood before the First World War adapted with the times. By 1970 two-thirds of all caskets in America were made from sheet steel pressed by a series of machines and welded together with the same techniques perfected to build airplanes, automobiles, and home appliances. Caskets took on a new geometric shape best suited to steel manufacturing--the curves, folds, and seems engineered for both strength and simple assembly.
The shape we expect a casket to be today, with a gently curved lid, is a result of engineering and design for steel production. Even the wood caskets that remained available in the 1980s and 1990s took on the same geometry as their steel counterparts. The wooden vintage and historic caskets that are part of our past have English and European origin. This casket is entirely an American Heritage.
