Friday – Heads in a Glass Case
Sep. 17th, 2007 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreToday on my drive into work, I was thinking about the heads I saw last Monday in a glass case outside of a door marked "Restorative Arts Lab" at the mortuary collage run by the corporation I work for. There were 5 of them, male and female, representing different ages and races, lined up neatly and looking very serene. They were not real, just realistic, with life-like skin tones and rooted hair and eyebrows. I assume that "restorative arts" refers to the art of reconstructing a face damaged by violence or misfortune so that family and friends will recognize the person lying in the coffin, and can then say to each other with conviction, "They did a nice job – he looks like he's sleeping. Why, you can't even tell where she hit him with the ax!"
The head in the middle looked like a black woman of about 30 years of age. Her face was the prettiest and the most authentic looking of the group. It was also too close to the front of the case so that its chin was pressed up against glass, making the silicone flesh yielded in the way that real flesh would when pressed against a window. I found the quiet quintet creepy, but fascinating.
I was in the wrong part of the building, actually, and should not have been where I could see them. I was looking for the classroom reserved for a sales training seminar my department was conducting and I went in the wrong door, which put me in the mortuary college. Still, when you see 5 heads in a glass case it's hard not to stop and look at them. I was curious about what was inside of the lab behind the glass case, but not bold enough to push the door open and see. If anyone had been in there I could have just admitted that I was lost and looking for the part of the building where non-morticians get their training. But I was also worried I might see something that might make me queasy, and thought better of it. I had no idea whether they work on real or silicone heads behind that door, and was not eager to find out.
Finally, someone told me where to find the training room on the other end of the building, close to the Museum of Funeral History. I'd visited the museum before, when I was younger and morbidly curious, never imagining I might ever work for the company that ran it. On my breaks from the training I wandered through it again, looking to see if anything new had been added. Mostly, it was the same stuff I remember from before. There were antique hearses going back to the Victorian era, and morticians' tools and supplies going back to the American Civil War. Before the civil war, most people just got buried in a narrow box very soon after they died. During the war, a lot of men were dying so far from home and someone got the idea to preserve the bodies and ship them back to their families. Thus, the art of embalming came into its own.
The one item that every article I've read about the museum mentions is the custom made, family-sized coffin build in the 1920's. It is about as wide as a twin-sized bed, and was made to hold two adult bodies with a child nestled in between them. The parents of a dying child commissioned it to be built, as they planned to commit suicide when their offspring passed away. Looking at the coffin, one presumes that the child was very young. It has three pillows at the head, and the one in the middle is very small. The story goes that when the child at last died, the parents had a change of heart and decided to live with their grief instead of die from it. The husband lived another 20 years, and his widow requested a refund for the coffin after he passed and she again chose to live and not be buried with him (the funeral home refused to give her money back, though). I guess somewhere the three of them are all resting in peace, each in a typical coffin build for one.
This week I am back in my office, which is not near as interesting as the museum and the mortuary college attached to it. When I drive by that building in the future, I will feel like I have an edge over the general public that strolls through it every day. Like them, I have seen the quirky contents of the museum, including the caskets from Guyana shaped like a Yamaha outboard motor and a giant crab,* the sugar cookie with a portrait of comedian Rodney Dangerfield on it that was given out as a snack at his funeral, and a miniature display of the funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln. But none of them will get to see the 5 heads in the back, demonstrating the art of how those who died gruesomely can be made to look like they are only resting in peace (rather than in pieces).**
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * # * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
* they also have ones shaped like a giant chicken, a fish, a leopard and a cow.
** with apologies to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
regatomic, once you suggested the pun to me, I could not resist using it.
The head in the middle looked like a black woman of about 30 years of age. Her face was the prettiest and the most authentic looking of the group. It was also too close to the front of the case so that its chin was pressed up against glass, making the silicone flesh yielded in the way that real flesh would when pressed against a window. I found the quiet quintet creepy, but fascinating.
I was in the wrong part of the building, actually, and should not have been where I could see them. I was looking for the classroom reserved for a sales training seminar my department was conducting and I went in the wrong door, which put me in the mortuary college. Still, when you see 5 heads in a glass case it's hard not to stop and look at them. I was curious about what was inside of the lab behind the glass case, but not bold enough to push the door open and see. If anyone had been in there I could have just admitted that I was lost and looking for the part of the building where non-morticians get their training. But I was also worried I might see something that might make me queasy, and thought better of it. I had no idea whether they work on real or silicone heads behind that door, and was not eager to find out.
Finally, someone told me where to find the training room on the other end of the building, close to the Museum of Funeral History. I'd visited the museum before, when I was younger and morbidly curious, never imagining I might ever work for the company that ran it. On my breaks from the training I wandered through it again, looking to see if anything new had been added. Mostly, it was the same stuff I remember from before. There were antique hearses going back to the Victorian era, and morticians' tools and supplies going back to the American Civil War. Before the civil war, most people just got buried in a narrow box very soon after they died. During the war, a lot of men were dying so far from home and someone got the idea to preserve the bodies and ship them back to their families. Thus, the art of embalming came into its own.
The one item that every article I've read about the museum mentions is the custom made, family-sized coffin build in the 1920's. It is about as wide as a twin-sized bed, and was made to hold two adult bodies with a child nestled in between them. The parents of a dying child commissioned it to be built, as they planned to commit suicide when their offspring passed away. Looking at the coffin, one presumes that the child was very young. It has three pillows at the head, and the one in the middle is very small. The story goes that when the child at last died, the parents had a change of heart and decided to live with their grief instead of die from it. The husband lived another 20 years, and his widow requested a refund for the coffin after he passed and she again chose to live and not be buried with him (the funeral home refused to give her money back, though). I guess somewhere the three of them are all resting in peace, each in a typical coffin build for one.
This week I am back in my office, which is not near as interesting as the museum and the mortuary college attached to it. When I drive by that building in the future, I will feel like I have an edge over the general public that strolls through it every day. Like them, I have seen the quirky contents of the museum, including the caskets from Guyana shaped like a Yamaha outboard motor and a giant crab,* the sugar cookie with a portrait of comedian Rodney Dangerfield on it that was given out as a snack at his funeral, and a miniature display of the funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln. But none of them will get to see the 5 heads in the back, demonstrating the art of how those who died gruesomely can be made to look like they are only resting in peace (rather than in pieces).**
* they also have ones shaped like a giant chicken, a fish, a leopard and a cow.
** with apologies to
regatomic, once you suggested the pun to me, I could not resist using it.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
STIFF - the secret life of cadavers
Date: 2007-09-17 06:15 pm (UTC)its a really good book.
now with that song, I'm picturing a sequin-clad bimbo juggling the severed heads.
Re: STIFF - the secret life of cadavers
Date: 2007-09-17 06:33 pm (UTC)Re: STIFF - the secret life of cadavers
Date: 2007-09-17 06:40 pm (UTC)Re: STIFF - the secret life of cadavers
Date: 2007-09-17 09:20 pm (UTC)only resting in peace.
Date: 2007-09-17 06:29 pm (UTC)Re: only resting in peace.
Date: 2007-09-17 06:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 06:42 pm (UTC)There's an exhibit called "Bodies - The Exhibition" over here right now that goes on until sometime in November. If you (image) google it, you can see pictures :) I think you're like it!
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 08:38 pm (UTC)It's a real (though probably stale) cookie. I think the idea was that he was saying "Eat me!" to the mourners. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 09:11 pm (UTC)I don't know if they managed to pretty the corpse up enough to carry that off or not.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-19 10:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 01:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 09:56 pm (UTC)