From ashes to art

The pieces of work that you are looking at here are very dear to my heart.  The first is dedicated to my Grandparents, who sadly passed away a number of years apart.  The second is dedicated to my Olde Englishe Bulldogge, Winston, who was sadly lost at a young age.   

My Grandfather died in 2008 and my Grandmother in 2019.  Their ashes had been kept in a wooden box at my Mother’s and she wanted to put them together in some kind of keepsake, so she asked me if I could do something with them.  After a lot of thought, I came up with the idea of mixing a small amount of my Grandparents’ ashes into the resin of a large-lidded box.  As my Grandparents grew up in London, we chose London Plane Burl Wood, and as my Grandmother was a redhead (like me) we went for orange for the epoxy resin colour. 

Not wanting to stop there, I decided that I wanted to do something similar with my dog’s, Winston’s, ashes and this is the second piece you can see here.  The wood in this piece is also London Plane Burl, which has been gilded with metal leaf and in addition to some of Winston’s ashes, a part of his collar has also been added.   

My Mother and my partner are very pleased with these pieces, and I have had enquiries about producing similar items for others.  Therefore, this is a service that I would now like to offer.  If you choose to have a memorial piece made by myself, please rest assured that everything will be treated with the upmost respect and care.  The piece can be made to various shapes, sizes, colours, with various species of wood, and in addition to your loved ones’ ashes can have other items cast in it if requested.  Once this has all been decided upon, the process from start to finish is estimated to take about four weeks. 

The process for making any memorial piece starts with me stabilising the wood by putting the wood in a vacuum chamber filled with resin, whereby the vacuum sucks the resin into the wood, which is then cured in an oven.  This makes the wood go very hard and leaves it with a shiny, glossy finish.  (Although it is not necessary to stabilise the wood if this is what is preferred, I would recommend it because it will make the memorial piece easier to clean, less likely to scratch, less likely to be affected by moisture and easier to maintain).  For the resin part of the memorial piece, I mix a two-part liquid resin mixture, which is split into lots of different pots with different colours added to each pot.  The wood and different pots of resin are then added in a unique way to a standard mould, which goes into a pressure pot for a few days to remove bubbles from the resin and to make the resin harden.  Once the mould is hard, the memorial piece is turned on a wood lathe to create the final unique piece. 

If you have any questions and/or my memorial piece service is something you are interested, please do not hesitate to ask.  Thank you for reading. If you would like to contact me about this Service please email on this address jasonlock1984@Yahoo.co.uk