Vintage Coffins Information About Bud Davis

I'm Roy "Bud" Davis. I've been making custom wooden coffins since 1993. During that time, I've learned a lot about making coffins and crematory urns, and I've met many interesting and wonderful people. My coffins and urns have been shipped to points all over the United States from coast to coast and border to border.

In these shots, I am cutting deep kerfs (slots) across a coffin's side board, carefully bending the side board to attach to the bottom board, and inserting the head board. The method of bending the one-piece side board sets me apart from other coffin makers found on the internet. It makes a very graceful but strong finished coffin. I have been interested in making art since childhood and studied art as an adult. I am a graduate of the School of the Dayton Art Institute and the University of Dayton, Ohio. My masters degree is from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. For nearly a half-century, I have taught art and humanities, served as an art museum administrator, and worked with two state arts agencies while continuing to create and exhibit my work at every opportunity.

In 1992, my older sister died unexpectedly at the age of 56. I began thinking of the many family stories passed along by my parents. Stories about the murder of my father's father and the suicide of his mother. On my mother's side their was the untimely childhood death of her sister, the Christmas Eve funeral of her father, and the sniper-shooting of her favorite nephew in World War II. They are really stories about the effects of unresolved transgenerational grief. It became apparent to me that all these people who had died long before I was born had had a tremendous impact on my life and personality. In an effort to commemorate them and lay the legacy of grief to rest, I made sculptures in the form of half-sized coffins containing memorabilia that tell their stories. While working on the commemorative coffins, I thought it would be interesting to build my own full-sized coffin as a work of art to exhibit with the smaller ones and then eventually be used for my burial. That led to the realization that everybody deserves a distinctive, personalized coffin that is a truly a piece of original art. You've probably guessed it -- I've never built my coffin. In fact, I now plan to be cremated and will make my own very special urn -- someday.