Tag: Mourning
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When Your Worst Fear Is Realised
Three months ago, Bryony’s life changed forever. Three months on, she reflects on the moment her world was ripped apart, how it links her to childhood fears and a new found sense of invincibility.
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Making a Mourner: The Life, Love and Grief of Courtney Lane
Hairwork Artist, Courtney Lane explains the Victorian tradition of sentimental hairwork and her lifelong fascination with it. It’s just as easy to chalk it up to a series of peculiar happenstances in her life that led her here, but neither of these explanations tells the whole story.
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Playing with death – how the ‘Goodbye-box’ helps children grieve
Rosalie Kuyvenhoven runs Rituals Today, creating meaningful and relevant ceremonies. Her blog is full of innovation and ideas, here she shares Bonnie Jansen’s DAG Box: inspired by a non-directive approach to play therapy, in which children take the lead.
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Collector, Protector & Keeper
Rebecca Reeves draws upon the Victorian era with a focus on mourning symbolism, spiritualism and superstitions. Through her “cocooning” technique, she encapsulates grief, struggle and the suffocation of loss. She shares with us some of her beautiful creations, taking us behind a veil of tears.
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The Grief Geek
Not only does Caroline Lloyd refers to Death and the Maiden as glamorous and cool (thank you Caroline!) she shares her personal and professional journey of grief. Experiences that became the motivation behind her new book: Grief Demystified. The book she wrote that she so desperately wanted when she had disenfranchised grief and had no…
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The Wise Owl: Part I
Lewis Barfoot takes us to the darkest and most desperate days of grief. Sharing with us how her recent loss has affected both her life and her song. Her music and musical practice became driftwood for her sinking sailor. The most resilient flotation device you could imagine.
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The Little Book of Burial
Krista Amira Calvo takes us on a journey across the globe with The Little Book of Burial. A playful hands on experience that sheds light on different cultures and their burial practices. Exploring the evolution of burial and some rituals that are no longer practiced but still very iconic and recognisable to us. This delightful…
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Keening & the Death Wail
S Elizabeth interviews musician Gemma Fleet of The Wharves on her project “Lost Voices” which explores vocal improvisation in folk culture. Volume 1. “Keening and the Death Wail” has roots in Fleet’s own childhood. She believes she encountered an Irish traveler funeral; an “unhindered display of grief” wherein the woman in mourning was not being hushed,…
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The Female in Mourning Jewels
Hayden Peters, founder and creative director of Art of Mourning gives us an illustrated tour of female mourning jewellery. Exploring the mourning industry of the 16th-19th centuries we learn about different trends in design and how this reflects cultural attitudes and social norms of the time. From memento mori to locks of hair and cutting diamonds…
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Widows and Virgins: The Curse of Being a Single Woman
Contrary to many death rituals I’ve read about previously, the widow bore the burden of “exaggerated observance of mourning customs” not out of respect for her deceased husband, but so that she did not become “infected” by the dead and his ghost, for it was the widow who was “especially liable to death infections.” One of these mourning customs,…
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Saying Goodbye the Alternative Way
Alternative funerals are unique to the deceased person and a tribute to the individual person rather than to a mass followed religion. Themed funerals, green and natural funerals, Gothic and Steampunk funerals, Rock ‘n’ Roll funerals, biker funerals and any other kinds of funerals which centre on the life of the person, and break with…
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Lost Souls
This week features one of Death & the Maiden’s favourite shops. Samantha Lyn owner of Funereal Ephemera collects postmortem photographs, memorial cards, funeral photographs and cemetery photographs. They’re forgotten, only to be revealed generations later, to modern eyes with a modern sense of death and mourning. A piece of history lost and found again. Samantha sees those…
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Tears Become Ideas
In some places, the ability to sing or recite ritual laments became part of a feminine portfolio of skills, along with cooking, spinning, mending and cleaning. Here, author Sarah Murray shares an adaptation from her wonderful book Making an Exit: From the Magnificent to the Macabre, How We Dignify the Dead to give us insight…
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The Rebozo: Fashion, Feminism and Death
Death & the Maiden’s own Sarah Chavez presents the rebozo. For centuries, broken-hearted mothers have wrapped their lifeless infants in them for burial and covered their faces with it to signify mourning. The use of the rebozo as a shroud was once so common in Mexico, many artisans created them solely for this purpose, whereas today,…
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