CLK Says: We’re takin’ it back!
Product Description
Part 1
The evolution of death customs and burial practices throughout history is so much fun. It’s interesting to see how our modern formalities came from yesteryear. A large portion of them stem from Victorian and Edwardian times.
CLK believes the late 1800s and early 1900s were peak funeral performance. Sadly, we kept the boring parts and ditched the epic ones. This needs reversed.
In an effort to reestablish what we once had, CLK is offering the Preserved Leech Memorial Package. A great gift for friends, family, or anyone you wish to distance yourself from, it’s perfect for that person who has everything.
Is Uncle Ned hard to shop for? Get him a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Does Mom prefer homemaker gifts? Get her a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Does Mom prefer non-homemaker gifts? Get her a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Is your best friend getting married or making early parole? Get him/her a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Will your bosses tend to promote you if you bribe them? Get them each a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Is grandma feeling lonely? Get her a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Are you stumped on what to give the mailman for Groundhog Day? Get him a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Is your second cousin becoming a nun? Get her a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
Are you in the middle of court proceedings with your ex? Get them a Preserved Leech Memorial Package if there’s no restraining order involved.
Do you need a Preserved Leech Memorial Package? Get yourself a Preserved Leech Memorial Package.
As you can plainly see, there’s no wrong recipient or occasion for this product. It's an ironclad proven fact. Debating it would be futile.
Part 2
Each of these mourning kits contain one of CLK’s professionally-preserved dearly departed friends. They have a name, backstory, and sometimes even physical characteristics that coincide with the manner of death.
The setting is designed to be a realistic habitat, unlike a typical preserved specimen: there is tint (leeches don’t like clean water) and maybe a piece or two of moss or other litter to make it feel at home. It’s floating in toned mailable liquid (please don’t consume it) atop bedding made of pea gravel and perhaps some tumbled glass or gemstones (don’t consume any of this either...in fact, please only consume food). But wait—there’s more!
The Preserved Leech Memorial Package includes a contemporary take on some lost classics, simulating their style, flaws, and outrageousness (by today’s standards). Read on to find out what you’ll receive and the lengthy history behind it, as this ad wasn’t long enough already.
What You Get
Leech
Sealed 50ml vial approximately 4.5” tall and 1” wide
Preserved ethically-sourced leech friend hand-selected for you by CLK
Substrate mix
Tattered, aged black ribbon with Sad Hour charm
Paper Information
Patina clipping of news article/obituary haphazardly cut
5” x 7” cardstock personalized leech memorial cabinet card with random leech prayer
Cardboard cabinet card display folder
Maybe a surprise or something
(Staging products in photos not included. Please note that settling will occur during shipping. Really gently, treat your vial like a snow globe to position the leech where you want it.)
History Tidbits
Memorial Cabinet Card
In Victorian and Edwardian times, cabinet cards were all the rage. Varying in size, photos were imposed on assorted thick papers, often presented in a cardboard-esque folder to emphasize importance. Usually these were staged portraits, but could also include post-mortem photography, tribute pictures, and more. Since mourning was trendy, memorial cards eventually joined this category.
For about five decades, these became one of the leading memento mori fads. Roughly 5" x 7"ish, they contained information about the deceased, a prayer, were black or white, and displayed grey, gold, silver, black, or white lettering. Typos, wrong dates, incorrect information, smears, fuzziness, and smudges were all commonplace. This didn’t matter though since the card was fashionable.
Memorial cabinet cards were a big business. At least one company paid women to scour newspaper obituaries nationwide and send mourning families a card, an envelope, and an order form: the family could either return the cards on the honor system, send money for the card, or buy additional cards. Order forms were complex, bursting at the seams with card designs, options, upgrades, prayer verses, and language options. This strategy proved to be profitable for years. But all good things must come to an end.
As time went on, society showed interest in compact cards to keep in portable albums and scrapbooks. Plus, the Great Depression hit and average people weren’t spending money where it wasn’t needed. By 1930, the craze had just about entirely fallen by the wayside.
The Sad Hour
Another mourning trend was the Sad Hour clock. Though not as common or long-lasting as the Memorial Cabinet Card, it definitely has its place in history.
Sad Hour clocks were metal plaques used as decorative badges on caskets or coffins. The hands depicted the exact time the deceased passed away. This practice complemented another tradition of the period, which was stopping all clocks in the home when an inhabitant died.
News Articles/Obituaries
Today, obituaries are usually filled with loving words about the deceased. Back during Victorian and Edwardian times, this was anything but the case. There was no mincing words when it came to someone’s death.
Obituaries did exist and nice words were shared, but it was nothing like current practices. Write-ups could be extremely lengthy and filled with great detail about illness or injury. It wasn’t uncommon for terms like “rendered useless for a month due to a fallen tree”, “hopelessly inept in bed for two years prior”, “an invalid for the last six months,” or “suffering torture from delirium and infection for weeks before mercifully succumbing” to be used.
Many obituaries were also done in a different format compared to modern times. Especially in smaller towns, they would often be replaced with newspaper articles describing the situation. After all, many areas were tight-knit, and someone dying was definitely newsworthy.
Articles ranged from simple two-sentence blurbs to front page headlines complete with artist renderings of tragedies. Some would announce the ships mourning family members would be arriving on from overseas, and others mentioned how four of the deceased’s adult children became successful, but one ended up in state prison for armed robbery.
And every so often, a news story refused to wait till someone died. It would be printed when someone was “mere hours from death”, didn’t “have long for this world”, was “not expected to survive the week”, and the family was “already making funeral arrangements during these final days”.
