Patent Application
20050155196
This invention relates generally to the death care industry, and more particularly to personalization of casket caps or lids for memorializing a deceased.
Upon the death of a family member the surviving loved one of the deceased must make a number of decisions, including what type of funeral or other memorial service to hold, preparation of the body, selection of a suitable casket or cremation urn, etc. In the death care industry it is conventional for those decisions to be made in a so-called “arrangement conference.” In an arrangement conference, the funeral director meets with the surviving loved one of the deceased, typically in the funeral home of the funeral director, and describes to and discusses with the surviving loved one the various funeral products and services which are available. The funeral director may use visual aids such as a product catalog, product display board (such as that disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,787,626 titled Funeral Product Display Case hereby incorporated by reference herein) and a casket selection room (such as that disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,405,017 titled Modular Casket Display System and in the assignee's pending application Ser. No. 09/638,576 titled Display For A Casket Selection and/or Viewing Room both hereby incorporated by reference herein) to illustrate the products available to the customer.
There is a trend in the death care industry to make efforts towards “personalizing” the funeral products and the funeral or other memorial service purchased for the deceased to provide a more meaningful memorial experience for the family and friends of the deceased. One of the earlier attempts at providing a means of personalizing or customizing a casket to the deceased may be seen with reference to the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 4,457,054 titled Casket Shelf, hereby incorporated by reference herein. That patent discloses a casket shelf which is mounted to the dish assembly of the head end cap when the head end cap is in the open position. The shelf provides a surface for supporting and displaying articles of religious or personal significance to the deceased.
Many casket manufacturers and funeral directors now manufacture and offer many “custom modular” variations of caskets, rather than selling mere “cookie cutter” or “one size fits all” caskets, thereby allowing the loved one to in essence design a specific casket especially suited or tailored to the deceased. For example, customers can select from a number of casket materials, casket finishes, casket corner adornments and casket interiors. Advances made in the area of “quick change” and “tool less” fastening mechanisms have greatly facilitated the rapid removal of one accessory from the casket and the rapid installation of another more desirable accessory to the casket. In addition to promoting personalization of the casket to the deceased, such interchangeability greatly reduces the amount of inventory the funeral director must keep on hand. An example may be seen in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 6,591,466 titled Quick Change Casket Corner Attachment Mechanism and hereby incorporated by reference herein, commercially available as the LifeSymbols® line of interchangeable corner adornments available from Batesville®.
The “custom” casket interiors available to the funeral customer today include not only the internal lining material of the casket (which itself may also be of the quick-change type, see the Assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,784,768 titled Casket Having Quickly Interchangeable And Adjustable Interior and hereby incorporated by reference herein) but also the decorative cap panels that fit within the underneath of the casket cap which serve to present a visually aesthetically pleasing appearance to the underside of the cap when in the open position. The cap panel can be embroidered with a favorite saying of the deceased, a scene depicting the deceased's hobby, etc. Special cap panels have even been designed which, in addition to performing a memorial function while installed in the casket, are adapted to be presented to the loved one surviving the deceased to be displayed by the loved one in his or her home as a keepsake. See application U.S. Pat. No. 6,237,202 titled Dish Assembly For A Casket Cap assigned to the assignee of the present invention and hereby incorporated by reference herein, the subject of which is commercially available as the MemoryFrame™ line of cap panels available from Batesville®. The casket can also include a memorabilia drawer in which keepsakes of the deceased can be stored and displayed, as disclosed in the assignee's U.S. Pat. No. 5,611,124 titled Casket Having Memorabilia Compartment and hereby incorporated by reference herein, commercially available as the MemorySafe® line of caskets including memorabilia drawers available from Batesville®.
Advances have therefore been made in the area of “personalization” of funeral products as demonstrated with the novel products discussed above. However, there continues to be room for improvement in the area of personalization in the death care industry.
The present invention is a cap insert for a casket of the type which allows it to be personalized to the deceased. The casket comprises a shell, a cap, or lid, closable upon the shell and a cap insert removably secured in an upper side of the cap, the cap insert including themed designs that are personalized to the deceased.
The casket cap generally includes a head end cap and a foot end cap. The head end cap is usually in an opened position for viewing of the deceased during the funeral ceremony, and the foot end cap is usually in a closed position and traditionally acts as a place holder for floral arrangements and the like. In the present invention, the cap insert is removably secured onto the upper side of the closed foot end cap and is personalized to the deceased to provide a more meaningful funeral service. The cap insert may comprise a rectangular panel having a pair of opposed shorter sides and a pair of opposed longer sides and may generally be conformed to the shape of the casket cap.
The casket of this invention may further comprise an embossed, or recessed, area within the casket cap to receive the personalized cap insert. The cap insert is positioned into the embossed area and secured to the casket by a frictional fit between the edges of the cap insert and the edges of the embossed area. Alternatively, a mounting adaptor may be secured to the embossed area and a generally planar cap panel secured to the adaptor.
The cap insert may be made of metal, leather, marble or other suitable materials capable of being engraved or having various designs formed therein. The cap insert may be engraved with various sayings or have embossed designs formed in the cap insert having a particular theme with a personalized meaning to the deceased.
Methods are also provided for constructing the above casket.
These and other features and advantages of the present invention will become more readily apparent during the following detailed description taken in conjunction with the drawings herein, in which:
With reference to
Referring now to
The foot end cap 16 may include an embossed, or recessed, area 28 adapted to removably receive cap insert 18. If casket 10 is fabricated of sheet metal, recessed area 28 could be formed by stamping. If casket 10 is fabricated of wood, recessed area 28 could be formed by routing. If casket 10 is a cremation casket or so-called “alternative container” fabricated of combustible material such as card board, fiber board or oriented strand board, embossed area 28 could be formed by these or other methods known to those skilled in the art of fabrication with such materials. The embossed area 28 generally conforms to the shape of the cap insert 18. Thus, as shown in
Referring now to
Cap inserts according to the present invention may be formed from a wide range of materials, such as metal, leather, marble, acrylic or other suitable materials known in the art capable of being engraved (
Those skilled in the art will readily recognize numerous adaptations and modifications which can be made to the present invention which will result in an improved casket, yet all of which will fall within the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined in the following claims. Accordingly, the invention is to be limited only by the scope of the following claims and their equivalents.
