Several years ago, Burringbar artists Julie Ward and Evelyn Jones had to deal with the loss of family members and the subsequent grief.
Julie dealt with it by painting a local panorama to sit near her dad’s coffin at the funeral while Evelyn painted her mother’s casket.
‘It was really nice and brought a personal dimension to the whole grieving process and helped both of us in our healing,’ Julie said.

At the time, the pair were running an art gallery/studio in Burringbar and when the building was sold, they wanted to continue with their art work and create another business so came up with the idea of designing coffins, preferably environmentally-friendly ones.
‘It was an economic decision at first, as six years ago when mum died I went to a funeral home to choose a casket and saw the chipboard coffin which looked awful so I decided to paint it with the family crest, angels, flowers and more... I turned a really ugly coffin into something beautiful and special and relating to mum,’ Evelyn said.

‘The reaction from mum’s friends at the funeral gave me the idea later to do this because they all just loved it.’
Julie said that when her dad, a fisherman, died five years ago, she painted a large panorama of Fingal Head, a place he loved, complete with a huge eagle soaring off into the clouds which was placed on an easel behind his coffin at his funeral.
‘They were both major losses for us and we realised these paintings worked for us and our family,’ she said.
‘Participation in the whole process of death has been taken away from our society over the past 100 years, people don’t see the bodies or are not involved in the process.’

Evelyn said dealing with funeral homes made grieving for family members harder and more expensive ‘with chipboard coffins and all the extras’ so they decided to start their own funeral-wares business after undertaking a New Enterprise Incentive Scheme program.
Calling themselves The Rose and Lily Funeral Wares, the women converted a shed on their property into a factory and started designing and painting environmentally-friendly cardboard coffins from mostly recycled paper or cardboard which can be hand painted with a range of designs.

The cardboard caskets weigh about 15kg but are strong enough to hold up to 120kg.
‘The straps are hessian, the lining is cotton, they’re completely biodegradable and we use only non-toxic glues... we encourage people to decorate their own coffin or get family members to get involved,’ Evelyn said.

‘We’re trying to empower people to be pre-organised and get involved in the process from a financial and spiritual point of view because people don’t need a funeral director involved at all,’ Julie said.
The two are also involved in educating people about burials, including home burials, addressing seniors groups about what options they have for their funerals.

‘They’re quite fascinated by it, many of them do not want to burden their families with the cost of their funerals and we provide options to buy a more personalised, inexpens­ive product.’

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