Grave Matters: Funerary Supplies in Trade Catalogs

By David Cardillo, Digital Collections and Preservation

 

As Halloween approaches, thoughts often turn to the eerie, the unusual and the history of how we honor the departed. Our Trade Catalog Collection on AM Quartex holds a surprisingly rich—and seasonally appropriate—selection of catalogs for funerary supplies, including caskets, coffin hardware, burial robes and even hearses.

Today, most of us picture a funeral home showroom lined with polished caskets and urns. But in rural, pre-industrial America, that wasn’t the case. Instead of walking through a display room, families often made deeply personal selections for their loved ones directly from catalogs.  

One example of this is the Ninth Annual Illustrated Catalogue (Cincinnati Coffin Company, 1880), which features an array of ornate coffins available for order.

 

 

These catalogs not only featured coffins and urns, but offered everything needed for a proper funeral, from a horse-drawn hearse cab to burial garments. Even coffin hardware could be customized—right down to the handles and trimmings.

 

 

Burial robes and such were also available.

 

 

 

 

Even the hardware for the coffin was highly customizable.

 

 

 

There were several companies who produced items and published catalogs for funerary items. Examples include:

• Buckstaff Company’s Original Hardwood Casket Designs (1900)
• Paxson, Comfort & Company’s Illustrated Catalogue of Undertaker’s Supplies (1881)
• C. Sidney Norris & Company’s Illustrated Catalogue of Coffin Handles and Undertakers’ Trimmings (1880)
• Hamilton, Lemmon, Arnold & Company’s Illustrated Catalogue of Coffin and Casket Trimmings (1879) 
• National Casket Company’s Catalogue C: Canopy, Couch and Wicker Caskets (1897)

 

 

The Trade Catalogs collection consists of material from Special Collections extensive collection of trade catalogs and advertising ephemera produced in the United States from the mid-18th century until the present day.  The vast number of trade catalogs currently available on AM Quartex were scanned for Interlibrary Loan, but more of this collection will be scanned as part of our ongoing effort to preserve historic documents.

So this Halloween season, if you’re in the mood for something a little macabre, take a look through our funerary trade catalogs—you may find history’s undertakers had just as much flair for the dramatic as any haunted house.