Abstract Death is one of the most profound of human experiences. Yet in contemporary Western cultures, little attention is given to its onset, occurrence, or aftereffects. For such a significant event, death remains underexplored in the domain of design. Historically, material culture and ritual traditions facilitated direct engagement with the processes of dying and mourning. These were carefully crafted to ease the passage from life to death—they were, in a very real sense, designed. Over the past century, many such customs have lost currency. The medical system has industrialised and sanitised the end of life, removing families from direct involvement. Burial and remembrance, once unfolding within domestic spaces and overseen by loved ones, are now managed by strangers in impersonal funeral facilities. The socially atomizing effects of Modernism have played their part too. Finally, the economic rationalist drive of market economies means that death, the least productive of activities, is poorly valued. This article turns to the Victorian Era to examine three expressions of its rich material culture of mourning: gravestones, hairwork, and mourning dress. It explores how these artefacts provided embodied, aesthetic frameworks for processing grief, arguing that revisiting such approaches may support a more integrated experience of loss today.
Aaron Seymour (Tue,) studied this question.