If, as Foscolo said, death equalized all herbs, in Caravaggio, a municipality of 16 thousand souls in the province of Bergamo, gives the opportunity to stand out. Whether it’s a hood, a cinerary urn or a multipurpose treasure chest, here the last business card is something that must leave its mark. Indelible, distinguishable and representative, the coffin is the fingerprint to be delivered to eternity, a tailor -made dress to be packaged when you are still alive. For themselves, for the deceased and also for animals. In Michelangelo Merisi’s Natìa land, there is an excellence of Made in Italy in a sector that you do not expect, the only one who does not know the end. Just as Caravaggio worked on canvas, here the workers, between embanists and carpenters, have been working on the wood for over twenty years. From the assembly of the bodies to the correspondence, from sanding to polishing: everything is strictly done by hand. From pictorial realism to artisanal realism that looks at death in the face so well that she is not afraid of approaching her concepts such as beauty and design.
Silvio Berlusconi, Ennio Doris, Giorgio Squinzi, Leonardo Del Vecchio: in Italy illustrious characters have finished their existence inside one of the coffins produced by the 50 -year -old entrepreneur Paolo Imeri, owner of the homonymous company that has now filed over 20 patents and which produces a few thousand creations per year of funeral art. Not for nothing, one of Maurizio Cattelan’s provocations, John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s corpse-manichino exhibited among others at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, rests in a coffin from his company.
“In America, the coffins are metal and do not represent the person. We give the customer an emotion, a piece of art, which has timeless elegance, are furniture designed by the best designer in the world that is Tino Resmini, a brand that we have recorded, as well as the one who made the coffin of the Cardinal Martini and Tettamanzi, of Ayrton Senna, of the Count Augusta, of Mino. Reitano and other famous people “, the entrepreneur tells us while we take off in the warehouse in which over 400 types of wood of all kinds and color are crammed. “I am the only one in Italy to have Bubba, a gabòn purple wood, unique in its kind for heaviness”.
Those who come here to choose the funeral hood (they call it that because the rounded form seems to recall the hood of a car) seeks the care of the detail and the representation of one’s own self, does not fear death and indeed has a biting and serene approach. From the austere person to the eccentric one who wants pieces of pearl of horn of built ox or interior in alcantara or white leather, the request naturally changes.
And sometimes it borders on the end. “A customer asked that the coffin was made with pieces of meteorite, another that was covered with diamonds, another of gold leaves.” When the technology is involved, then the streets of the Lord become infinite.
“An American client and one of Moscow were afraid of apparent death so we exploited a body monitoring system linked to the electrical exchange of the heart with the brain that in the event of awakening he called to call predefined numbers and to intervene in the event of rescue”. For those who want to participate in the funeral at all costs, there is a hood with a webcam incorporated so that they can remotely follow the journey of the leaflet from the church to the cemetery or the crematory temple. Since some coffins also reach high prices, justified by the use of unique materials, the Bergamo entrepreneur has also patented an incorporated anti -theft that thanks to different GPS type systems in the event of a breakage launches the alarm and warns the family of the dear extinct.
I imitate the first cash descended as if it were yesterday. She presented it in Modena and was called Michelangelo, in honor of her native country, and she was all in feather of walnut and mother of pearl. “The feather, that area of the trunk from which the branches begin starting, is the most difficult part to work because it has a figuration of the marble and nervous wood that tends to have a shelter memory,” he explains in technical jargon. Yes, because art is above all the attention to detail, even in the vines deliberately in titanium or ergal (an aluminum and zinc alloy). “I remained the only one to make such a refined product – I imper pride proudly, recently awarded the quality and design Tanexpo 2024 prize, the main international fair in the sector, while it invites us to observe the practice of the umbrening in which the small wooden silhouettes are delicately and quickly immersed in the hot sand -” the plant before being worked is moistened, put on a hot pressing at 90 degrees for a day, then Ebanists cut it – with laser or hand -handed tunnel – and as if it were a tailoring they make an inlay “.
It all started with the trade fairs, then for a few years a strategic participation in those of luxury. “It was the only tool that allowed me to show my product to the end customer and to explain how much space of choice was there, from the type of material to the characteristics of the interiors, it is a question of general culture, the more you have the tools of knowledge the more you are able to distinguish the quality and to be able to select it”, recalls Imeri. Since then, over twenty have passed since twenty, and the funeral agencies that choose his works of art have become over three hundred all over the world.
“Those who turn to us are a person who loves beauty, want to stand out and do not seek an import product (Romania, China, Poland) who is the one that goes most and pays less attention to quality and design”. In short, in a society in which the funeral outlet is the master and where the taboo of the departure is still alive and imbued with ignorance, cleared only by some rare cases of marketing, there is a niche of skill that is asserted all over the world. “I also have many requests for cinerary urns for animals, from dogs to cats, but not only. An Arabic customer asked me for a treasure chest for his horse with two lateral compartments in which to put the cigars to smoke in the company of the ashes of the late quadruped. For a Japanese instead I made one for his two pilgrims.” Everything is customizable and every desire is a duty. With one exception, to which, however, it is impossible to escape. “Even if we have dedicated two lines of different colors derived from the book of the Little Prince, a sort of passepartout that binds all generations, that for children is certainly the hood that I would never want to produce”.
But one who is used to talking about death every day for work, who knows if he has ever thought about his. “My coffin I draw it, even if I change my mind every year. I would certainly like it comfortable.” But for sure, you know, there is only death.