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Anurn is avase, often with a cover, with a typically narrowed neck above a rounded body and a footedpedestal. Describing a vessel as an "urn", as opposed to a vase or other terms, generally reflects its use rather than any particular shape or origin. The term is especially often used forfunerary urns, vessels used in burials, either to hold the cremated ashes or asgrave goods, but is used in many other contexts.
Large sculpted vases are often called urns, whether placed outdoors, in gardens or as architectural ornaments on buildings, or kept inside. In catering, large vessels for serving tea or coffee are often called "tea-urns", even when they are metal cylinders of purely functional design.
Urns are also acommon reference in thought experiments inprobability wherein marbles or balls of different colors are used to represent different results and the urn represents the "container" of the whole set of possible states.
Funerary urns (also calledcinerary urns andburial urns) have been used by many civilizations. After death, corpses arecremated, and the ashes are collected and put in an urn. Pottery urns, dating from about 7000 BC, have been found in an earlyJiahu site in China, where a total of 32 burial urns are found,[1] and other early finds are in Laoguantai,Shaanxi.[2] There are about 700 burial urns unearthed over theYangshao (5000–3000 BC) areas consisting of more than 50 varieties of form and shape. The burial urns were used mainly for children, but also sporadically for adults.[3]
TheUrnfield culture (c. 1300 BC – 750 BC), a lateBronze Age culture of centralEurope, takes its name from its large cemeteries of urn burials. The discovery of aBronze Age urn burial inNorfolk, England, prompted SirThomas Browne to describe the antiquities found. He expanded his study to survey burial and funerary customs, ancient and current, and published it asHydriotaphia or Urn Burial (1658).
In ancient Greece, cremation was usual, and the ashes were typically placed in a paintedGreek vase. In particular, thelekythos, theshape of vase, was used for holding oil in funerary rituals.Romans placed the urns in a niche in a collectivetomb called acolumbarium (literally,dovecote). The interior of a dovecote usually has niches to housedoves. Cremation urns were also commonly used in earlyAnglo SaxonEngland,[4] and in manyPre-Columbian cultures.
In some later European traditions, a king's heart, and sometimes other organs, could be placed in one or more urns upon his death, as happened with KingOtto of Bavaria in 1916, and buried in a different place from the body, to symbolize a particular affection for the place by the departed.
In the modernfuneral industry, cremation urns of varying quality, elaborateness, and cost are offered, and urns are another source of potential profit for an industry concerned that a trend toward cremation might threaten profits from traditional burial ceremonies.[5][6]Biodegradable urns are sometimes used for both human and animal burial. They are made fromeco-friendly materials such as recycled or handmade paper, salt, cellulose or other natural products that are capable ofdecomposing back into natural elements, and sometimes include a seed intended to grow into a tree at the site of the burial.[7][8][9]
Besides the traditional funeral or cremation ashes urns, it may also be possible to keep a part of the ashes of the loved one or beloved pet in keepsake urns or ash jewellery, although this might be banned in some localities as the law of certain countries may prohibit keeping any human remains in a private residence. It is even, in some places, possible to place the ashes of two people in so-called companion urns. Cremation or funeral urns are made from a variety[10][11] of materials such as wood, nature stone, ceramic, glass, or steel.
Afigural urn is a style of vase or larger container where the basic urn shape, of either a classicamphora or acrucible style, is ornamented with figures. These may be attached to the main body, forming handles or simply extraneous decorations, or may be shown in relief on the body itself.
The Ashes, the prize in the biennialTest cricket competition betweenEngland andAustralia, are contained in aminiature urn.
Urns are a common form ofarchitectural detail andgarden ornament. Well-known ornamental urns include theWaterloo Vase.
A tea urn is a heated metal container traditionally used to brewtea or boil water in large quantities in factories, canteens or churches. They are not usually found in domestic use. Like asamovar it has a small tap near the base for extracting either tea or hot water. Unlike anelectric water boiler, tea may be brewed in the vessel itself, although they are equally likely to be used to fill a largeteapot.
InNeoclassical furniture, an urn was a large wooden vase-like container which was usually set on a pedestal on either side of a side table. This was the characteristic ofAdam designs and also ofHepplewhite's work. Sometimes they were "knife urns", where the top lifted off, and cutlery was stored inside. Urns were also used as decorative turnings at the cross points of stretchers in 16th and 17th century furniture designs. The urn and the vase were often set on the central pedestal in a "broken" or "swan's" neck pediment.[12] "Knife urns" placed on pedestals flanking a dining-roomsideboard were an English innovation for high-styledining rooms of the late 1760s. They went out of fashion in the following decade, in favour of knife boxes that were placed on the sideboard.
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