The Coffin Maker Full Movie Hd Free Download HOT!
Abdallah Porter
[Pa Sam has been making coffins for over 15 years. Beforethat he worked several years constructing boats. His workshop and showroomare on a busy road on the outskirts of Accra. He is in his early fifties,married, and has six children. Ebenezer Mensah and Pa Sam spoke in thecoffin maker's workshop.]
I am a carpenter who specializes in making coffins ofall kinds and shapes. I make coffins to suit the deceased--his class level,the work he does, or the clan that he belongs to. There are people whoare fishermen, so when they die, I make a coffin designed in the shapeof a fish, to depict the profession of the deceased. And every clan hasits totem or symbol. Some have the elephant, others have the parrot, thecrow, the cock, and so on. Depending on the clan of the deceased I designa coffin in the shape of his symbol.
As a coffin maker, I have designed a few coffins for displayat the roadside where my workshop is located. When someone dies, the familymembers come to me with the type of design they want. I tell them the chargefor the design selected and after some bargaining we settle on a sum thatis reasonable for both the family and myself.
I take some of the money and start buying the materialsneeded. Then I start working on the coffin. Depending on when the coffinis needed, I may have to work hard with my apprentices to make sure thatit is ready in time. I also make some types of furniture when someone comesto me for some design. But I make many more coffins than pieces of furniture.
There are a lot of coffin makers in this town. They domany designs and so there is competition in the coffin trade. This callsfor strategies to attract customers from within the township and from afar.Because I satisfy my customers, I get jobs and requests both from Ghanaand from France. Until quite recently I was exporting some of my coffinsto France. I had an agent who imported them for exhibitions there. Thisgave me some money to erect my showroom near the road, and a workshop underit. Before that I was working in the open air. When the sun was high atmid-day, I would get very uncomfortable. Now I can work whether it is rainingor shining, and day or night is no longer a problem to me. My workshopand the show room are near the main road so people passing in cars cansee what I have made. This brings them in whenever they need coffins tobury their dead relatives.
I use very simple tools in my coffin designs. Most ofthem are available and made here in Ghana. I do not use any machines toshape or cut anything. The work is best done when you use your hands tocut and shape the wood. As someone who has been a boat builder, I knowthat coffin making is a rather simple kind of carpentry.
I used to have a lot of boys (apprentices) who were understudyingme to acquire skill in coffin making. Many of them learn the job only halfway. If they feel they can design coffins they run away (leave) withoutimpressing me. Normally when an apprentice completes his studies, he hasto perform some rites for his graduation. This involves some payments andexpenses. Most of them run away before that time so they will escape theserites and duties. I don't pursue them, since I don't want to have a confrontationwith either the culprits or their relatives. Some master carpenters takesuch issues to court or to the chief of the town for redress, but I feelthere is no need worrying the poor boys. However, the few boys who haveremained are very helpful. They are very new and I am hoping that theywill have patience to stay longer and learn the trade very well. I encouragethem to stay on and learn the job properly.
When somebody comes in to request that a coffin be made,I take from them a bottle of schnapps (gin) for some rites. This is inaddition to the charge for the coffin. When the coffin is finished andready to be picked up, the drink is used for pouring libations before thecoffin is removed from the shop. I still don't know the meaning of thisbut it is done by most coffin makers and designers.
Those somber words from coffin maker Marcus Daly immediately give you a sense of how much the craft means to him. For Daly, crafting the final resting place for someone is a personal experience and he sees it as a doorway to something else. Daly believes the most important aspect of a coffin are the handles and the ability to carry them.
With the relatively recent innovation of metal coffins, Daly says that Americans are burying enough metal in the ground every year to rebuild the Golden Gate Bridge. His simple, handcrafted wooden coffins are friendlier to the environment.
Coffins are sometimes referred to as a casket, particularly in American English. Any box in which the dead are buried is a coffin, and while a casket was originally regarded as a box for jewelry, use of the word "casket" in this sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker's trade.[1] A distinction is commonly drawn between "coffins" and "caskets", using "coffin" to refer to a tapered hexagonal or octagonal (also considered to be anthropoidal in shape) box and "casket" to refer to a rectangular box, often with a split lid used for viewing the deceased as seen in the picture.[2] Receptacles for cremated and cremulated human ashes (sometimes called cremains)[3][4] are called urns.
First attested in English in 1380,[citation needed] the word coffin derives from the Old French cofin, from Latin cophinus, which means basket,[5] which is the latinisation of the Greek κόφινος (kophinos), basket.[6] The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek ko-pi-na, written in Linear B syllabic script.[7]
A coffin may be buried in the ground directly, placed in a burial vault or cremated. Alternatively it may be entombed above ground in a mausoleum, a chapel, a church, or in a loculus within catacombs. Some countries practice one form almost exclusively, whereas in others it may depend on the individual cemetery.
In part of Sumatra, Indonesia, ancestors are revered and bodies were often kept in coffins kept alongside the longhouses until a ritual burial could be performed. The dead are also disinterred for rituals. Mass burials are also practiced. In northern Sulawesi, some dead were kept in above ground sarcophagi called waruga until the practice was banned by the Dutch in the 19th century.
Cultures that practice burial have widely different styles of coffins. In Judaism, the coffin must be plain, made of wood and contain no metal parts or adornments. These coffins use wooden pegs instead of nails. All Jews are buried in the same plain cloth shroud from shoulder to knees, regardless of status in life, gender or age. In China, coffins made from the scented, decay-resistant wood of cypress, sugi, thuja and incense-cedar are in high demand. Certain Aboriginal Australian groups use intricately decorated tree-bark cylinders sewn with fibre and sealed with adhesive as coffins. The cylinder is packed with dried grasses.[14]
Sometimes coffins are constructed to permanently display the corpse, as in the case of the glass-covered coffin of the Haraldskær Woman on display in the Church of Saint Nicolai in Vejle, Denmark or the glass-coffin of Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong, which are in Red Square, Moscow and Tiananmen Square, Beijing, respectively.
Coffins are traditionally made with six sides plus the top (lid) and bottom, tapered around the shoulders, or rectangular with four sides.[15] Another form of four-sided coffin is trapezoidal (also known as the "wedge" form) and is considered a variant of the six-sided hexagonal kind of coffin.[16] Continental Europe at one time favoured the rectangular coffin or casket, although variations exist in size and shape. The rectangular form, and also the trapezoidal form, is still regularly used in Germany, Austria, Hungary and other parts of Eastern and Central Europe, with the lid sometimes made to slope gently from the head down towards the foot. Coffins in the UK are mainly similar to the hexagonal design, but with one-piece sides, curved at the shoulder instead of having a join. In Medieval Japan, round coffins were used, which resembled barrels in shape and were usually made by coopers. In the case of a death at sea, there have been instances where trunks have been pressed into use as coffins. Coffins usually have handles on the side so they will be easier to carry.
They may incorporate features that claim to protect the body or for public health reasons. For example, some may offer a protective casket that uses a gasket to seal the casket shut after it is closed for the final time. In England, it has long been law[17] that a coffin for interment above ground should be sealed; this was traditionally implemented as a wooden outer coffin around a lead lining, around a third inner shell. After some decades have passed, the lead may ripple and tear. In the United States, numerous cemeteries require a vault of some kind in order to bury the deceased. A burial vault serves as an outer enclosure for buried remains and the coffin serves as an inner enclosure. The primary purpose of the vault is to prevent collapse of the coffin due to the weight of the soil above.
Some manufacturers offer a warranty on the structural integrity of the coffin. However, no coffin, regardless of its construction material (e.g., metal rather than wood), whether or not it is sealed, and whether or not the deceased was embalmed beforehand, will perfectly preserve the body. In some cases, a sealed coffin may actually speed up rather than slow down the process of decomposition. An airtight coffin, for example, fosters decomposition by anaerobic bacteria, which results in a putrefied liquefaction of the body, and all putrefied tissue remains inside the container, only to be exposed in the event of an exhumation. A container that allows air to pass in and out, such as a simple wooden box, allows for clean skeletonization. However the situation will vary according to soil or air conditions, and climate.
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