Ancient Urns: the Edward H. Merrin Gallery
Ancient urns have their own charm, not least for the fact that they can be quite old. If human beings were regarded with this kind of respect based on age, the world would probably be a better place. Urns, when they are old, are treated with respect even if they are nondescript or mass-produced. This is not to say that there are not beautiful, ornate urns of historical importance bumping about the art world these days. The Edward H. Merrin Gallery in Manhattan once had a show entitled “The Eternal Urn.” Although it was a small show, with some 18 urn containers, it gathered widespread recognition.
The age of one of the urns exhibited at the Edward H. Merrin Gallery, an Egyptian pre-dynastic vase, was over 5,000 years old. Composed of granite, the ovoid urn was reportedly extremely smooth, a testament to the original quality of the granite used in its creation. Explained Edward Merrin in Rita Reif's New York Times article on the show, “The people who worked in marble [during the Egyptian pre-dynastic era] had to be the king's finest artisans. I am sure these vessels would have been destroyed if they were not beautiful.” Edward Merrin went on to say that the vase probably took months to sand and form due to the extremely hard nature of the high-quality marble.
The Egyptian vase is defined as an urn by Edward Merrin as a method of conveying a sense of poetry to it, and also to lend to a certain sense of gravitas to the vessel. Reif's New York Times article doesn't mention whether this vase was used to house ashes, but Merrin seems to imply that the vase would be of funerary importance of some kind.
Edward Merrin's urn show included four Olmec vessels made of alabaster that piqued my interest for one reason: they are poisonous. The Edward H. Merrin Gallery's “The Eternal Urn” featured four “potentially lethal” jars coated with mercury-based cinnabar. The quartet of cosmetic jars had to be shown with a plastic cover and were handled carefully by show directors. Although these urns were not used to house ashes either, one assumes that, if they fell into unprotected hands, death and subsequent ashes might not be too far away.
The most interesting factoid I gleaned from Reif's review of the Edward H. Merrin Gallery's “The Eternal Urn” was the inclusion of so-called “mass-produced” urns. Personally, when I think of the ancient world, I think of painstakingly crafted singular items evincing a timeless artistry. Apparently, however, there were Wal-Marts of the Egyptian age as well! Assembly-line style production of certain urns led to a stylized decorative style which Edward Merrin says lost its “spontaneity” as a result of the high-volume production rate.
To me, this is interesting and a bit disheartening. The artistry of urns, and the symbolism of the fact that they will be used to house the bodily remains of a person who lived, who had a spirit, and who breathed, sends me the message that the urn should be unique. This is even truer in the case of ancient urns, which I feel should be unique simply by nature of the fact that, according to my modern assumptions devoid of any real factual knowledge, ancient artisans had fewer distractions. What were these pre-dynastic Egyptians doing with their time that they had to rapidly mass-produce urns? These are people who (again, little to no research on this subject currently being viewed through the perspective of a fourth grade social studies class) devoted themselves entirely to one project. An urn-maker would make urns. A mask-maker would make masks. Why mass-produce? It's not like they were all busy playing Halo.