Posted by
jiaqiqi26 on Tuesday, December 08, 2009 12:26:59 AM
The final resting container for the likes of Michael Jackson and
James Brown, the custom-made casket is crafted from 48-ounce polished
bronze and hand-polished to a pearl jewelry
mirrored sheen for 100 hours, according to Paul Holzman, director of
product management at Batesville. It sports a “continuously welded
bottom,” meaning the base has no seams, as well as 14-karat gold-plated
handles. The lush velvet interior comes in four colors: dark green,
Shasta lily, blue flame and spitfire red. The mattress is adjustable.
The Promethean Bronze casket retails for $25,000.
“It has always been the landmark casket in this industry for when
only the best will do,” Holzman says. Batesville declines to divulge
the wholesale price of the Promethean Bronze. It retails for biwa pearl
about $25,000 at funeral homes. (Prometheus, incidentally, was the
Greek deity best-known for stealing fire from Zeus and giving it to
humans. Zeus punished him by bounding him to a rock, where an eagle ate
his liver, which regenerated itself every night so the eagle could eat
it again the next day — not exactly resting in peace.)
For those who would rather go the luxury-cremation route, there’s
LifeGem, an Elk Grove Village, Ill., company that creates diamonds from
carbon extracted from a lock of hair or from cremated remains. The
company is crafting a diamond from some of Michael Jackson’s hair,
salvaged on the day the akoya pearl late pop star’s head caught fire while shooting a commercial for Pepsi(PEP Quote) in 1984.