How Do Ghana's Fabulous 'Fantasy' Coffins Work?

In Ghana, there's a big tradition behind big coffins carved and painted into shapes from chili peppers to taxi cabs to Nike sneakers, just about any object imaginable to suit the deceased's personality. Each one is a vibrant work of art, requiring skillful carpentry. In the Ga language, the funerary boxes are called proverb coffins. In English, we often call them fantasy coffins, but the practice of building these fantasy coffins has never gained traction outside of Ghana and neighboring Togo

before the article. This episode is based on how stuffworks spoke with Genevieve Keeney Vesquez, a licensed in balmer who serves as the President and Chief Operating officer of the National Museum of Funeral History in Houston, Texas. She explained that she's never come across any parallels to fantasy coffins from other parts of the globe. She said, I get made aware of quite a lot of interesting rituals and customs and have yet to hear of anything close. Her

museum houses the largest collection of fantasy coffins outside of Ghana. Altogether, it has a dozen on permanent display. There are shapes ranging from a Mercedes Benz to a red legged crab. Fantasy coffins have been showcased at art museums as well, from the Brooklyn Museum to the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France. These ornate coffins reflect the area's blend of beliefs about ancestry and death. Modern fantasy coffins were devised by the Ga people, who are part of

the region's Ga Adongwei ethnic group. Cultural and religious traditions described dying as a period of transition from one life to the next, and funerary rites as a celebration, and there's also a concept that the deceased still have influence over the circumstances of their living relatives. Keep your loved ones happy post mortem and they might grant you some blessings down the road. So making a good impression on newly dead family members and sending them offen style is

considered hugely important. That's where fantasy coffins come in. Traditionally, it was common practice to bury a body with some personalized trinket, like a miniature canoe, that represented the individual's former career or aspirations or social standing. Back in the mid nineteen hundreds, before Ghana achieved independence from the British Empire, and a craw area carpenter by the name of Seth kenny Quay did something similar, but on a much larger scale.

Kenny Quay was born in nineteen twenty two, and by all accounts, he had an entrepreneurial spirit. When he was a young man, kenny Quay created a coco pot shaped palanquin for a local chief to ride in during an upcoming festival. When the chief died unexpectedly before the festival, kenny Quay persuaded the family to bury him in it instead. Shortly after that, the artist's grandmother passed. Remembering the mourner's enthusiasm for the chief's coffin, he crafted an elaborate one

for her in the shape of an airplane. She had lived in a suburb near Across Airport and had loved watching the planes go by, but had never taken a flight herself, so Kenny Quay gave her a way to fly into the afterlife. Kenny Quay was approached by mourning clients requesting personalized coffins whose designs would tell the stories of their occupants, like a boat for a fisherman or an onion for a farmer, and the rest was history.

Kenny Quay wasn't the sole inventor of fantasy coffins as we now know them, but he did popularize the concept. Artistic coffins became the specialty at his workshop, where he passed on his skills to his sons and grandson, who still manages the shop to this day, as some of his other apprentices, like the now renowned artists Pa Joe, would go on to found their own businesses in a crap and supply coffins as art on the international scene.

Joe told the BBC back in twenty sixteen that when he goes he's considering a coffin in the shape of a hammer. Given their elaborate shapes and details, it's easy to forget that in first and foremost. Most fantasy caskets are purchased for their original intention and must be functional for burial in the ground. Building materials vary. A funeral ready coffins will consist of less expensive, lightweight woods and

go for a couple thousand dollars. Others are tailor made display pieces built to wow the patrons of art galleries and museums. The latter tend to be made of hard woods like African mahogany. A coffin of the sort can easily sell for more than ten grand. Regardless of where the coffins are headed, they all need to be carved, painted and sanded before the client hauls them off. They can take a couple of weeks to build, as for

the shapes, and that's up to the buyers. Artists have built human sized wooden cameras, eagles, hair dryers, pineapples, and beer bottles for their customers. In Ghana. Bodies can spend months or even years inside refrigerated storage units, while the family of the deceased organizes the funeral. After the day and time are set and the coffin is paid for, the event can proceed. Gone in Funerals are lengthy and expensive affairs that might last for three full days at

a time with the community and extended family. The dozens to hundreds of guests are attended to by musicians, DJs, photographers, caterers, bartenders, and morticians. Visitors might help the inner family recoup some of the costs by raising funds on site while also dancing the night away. Today's episode is based on the article Gana's Fantasy Coffins Are to Die for on HowStuffWorks

dot com, written by Mark Vancini. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with how stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.