Crazy Coffins

The origins of Crazy Coffins, and of its parent, Vic Fearn & Company Ltd, stretch back to Victorian times. In those days, joiners routinely made coffins, and many carried out funerals as well. For practically a century, our forbears ploughed this furrow from Nottingham’s back streets. But the extinction, in 1958, of the founding family permitted one of its employees, Victor Harry Fearn, together with a colleague, Leonard Gill, to buy the premises and the company’s goodwill.

The company’s first decorated coffin was made in 1990. It was so unusual, with its stags and swags of flowers, that The Guardian published a large photo. Such decorated coffins are now commonplace. We continue to build enough conventional coffins, from our factories in Nottingham and on the Isle of Wight, to keep three trucks daily on the road. But the Crazy Coffin market continues to develop and with it the market in decorative ashes urns: we have recently made an urn in the shape of the Starship Enterprise for a lady whose late husband was a serious Trekkie. This was picked up from our Facebook page by George Takei, the original Mr Sulu, and went global. The workshop is presently building a coffin in the shape of a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

We do not carry a range since we respond to rather than dictate our customers’ tastes: our Crazy Coffins are entirely bespoke and the only limit is your imagination.