Kevin Green, Cremation Urn Designer and Craftsman
Cremation urn designer and craftsman, Kevin Green spoke with the editor of Ferrycounty.com from his home in Republic, Washington. Born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota Green moved to Republic, Washington in 1973. He designs and builds handcrafted, solid hardwood cremation urns and caskets. The urns are available online at KettleRiverUrns.com and from his shop in Republic, Washington.
It's a late-September day and Kevin Green and I are sitting on the front porch of his small, charming 1950's cottage located in Republic, Washington. Framed in the eaves above us is a lovely piece of commissioned stained-glass art that shines in the afternoon sunlight. Behind us, two bird feeders are playing host to hungry sparrows, and a rambunctious chipmunk is busily exploring a healthy-looking garden.
Stretching to the north of where we sit is Republic’s historic Clark Avenue. An eighth of a mile to the south of us, Highway 20 and 21 intersect and carry travelers off towards Curlew Lake or distant Keller. We occasionally pause in our conversation as a logging truck rumbles past, but otherwise the small town serves as a peaceful backdrop for our question and answer session.
Green is a graphic artist and wood craftsman whose varied career has included firefighter, logger, mill worker, carpenter, graphic illustrator, and printer. Like many craftsmen, he delights in creating and selling cleverly designed keepsake and jewelry boxes. Unlike most craftsmen, he also builds handcrafted, hardwood caskets and urns.
"When I started designing my first urn I was looking for something different…a fresh visual quality.”
He describes the design style of his cremation urns as “American Arts and Crafts with a strong Japanese art influence.”
From age’s three to eleven, Green lived in a comfortable Craftsman bungalow in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He “...can still visualize all the built-ins and oak hardwoods” of his childhood home. As an art student enrolled in the Spokane Falls Graphic Design Program, Green was particularly drawn to Japanese Art and Architecture; the simple lines of Mission-style furniture; the designs of Stickley, and the architecture of Greene and Greene. “To me,” Green states, “the Greene and Greene movement was very Asian.”
Though the natural, unpainted woods and simple and elegant lines of Green’s cremation and burial urns reflect these early artistic influences, he stresses that his designs are not imitative, but uniquely his own. When I ask him what comes first, his designs or his choice of woods, he responds "I don’t think I have an answer for that. I don’t have a method to what I do. I approach each of my urns differently. Sometimes I pull out drawings, sometimes I build from memory, and sometimes I just let it develop.” He pauses, and then adds, “It’s become more of a feeling. A lot of it happens as it happens.”
“At the heart of my urns there’s just a box. When I started designing my first urn I was looking for something different…a fresh visual quality.” He pauses, then adds, “I just sat down and drew sweeping lines of legs.”
Green’s cremation urn and casket designs stress his love of natural hardwoods. He uses a chisel to hand carve the specialty and exotic hardwood handles and accents on his urns. Though he most often uses ebony for his accent pieces, he's begun using other woods such as lilac, which he describes as "hard as a rock and beautiful." He’s most recently fallen in love with Peruvian Walnut and speaks of it glowingly. "It’s like a fine chocolate color that goes all the way through the wood."
"When I build an urn, I can use such incredible woods.”
When I ask whether he prefers building caskets to urns, he pauses to find the right words. "I have a small shop where I build my caskets and urns, and though I love the caskets, the smaller size of the urns allows me more flexibility in my designs and choice of materials. When I build an urn, I can use such incredible woods."
His voice grows more animated as he talks about his love of fine hardwoods. "My father was a tree trimmer for the City of Minneapolis and he brought home limbs of trees from work that he worked with in his basement wood shop. So, I've always been around wood or had a wood shop of some kind...even as a kid in school. Even now, when I cut into a piece of walnut, I still flash back to my junior high wood shop.”
Green has also worked many years as a carpenter and though he likes the woodworking aspects of the job, he has always been "...disturbed that wood is so often ignored in construction, except in high-end construction. After I finished the art program in Spokane, I noticed how my art training was influencing my approach to carpentry. More design was creeping into my work."
Green doesn't hype his style of woodworking. He describes himself as a "traditional woodworker" and says he relies on basic carving tools and techniques to build his urns. Most of his hand tools were made in the early 1900’s: Stanley planes and a collection of fine chisels. He typically doesn't use power tools when he sands the surface of his urns. "I prefer hand planes to power sanders. I find using them easier on my body and mind."
Green was born in 1952 and raised in Minneapolis. In 1973, at the age of nineteen, Green moved to Curlew, Washington. “I caught a freight train from Minneapolis as far as Spokane then hitch hiked the rest of the way. Once I was here, it was so beautiful l realized I'd probably spend the rest of my life here." That same year, he was hired by the Washington State Forestry Service to fight fires.
As a young man in Minneapolis, Green worked in several printing shops, where he so enjoyed working with artists and graphic designers that 20 years later, he enrolled in the Graphic Design Program at Spokane Falls. After graduating, he opened a printing shop in Republic. "Echo Bay [Mining] and Republic were booming and I thought a print shop would pay the bills and allow me to also work as a graphic designer." He adds, laughing: "For the next three years, I didn’t turn the presses off."
In 1998, Green married Cynthia Bonneau, a fiber artist and jewelry designer. Shortly after their marriage, Green's mother-in-law was diagnosed with cancer and moved into Green and Bonneau’s home where they could care for her. When Green's mother-in-law died one year later, Green put his carpentry and design skills to work building her a traditional pine casket. It was his way of paying his respects to a woman who was very special to him. Green and his wife felt the simple, homey pine casket added a more personal dimension to Bonneau’s mother's funeral, that wouldn't have been possible with a more elaborately decorated casket.
Realizing that other families might also prefer to give their loved ones a traditional funeral, Green opened the Kettle River Casket Company, and began selling handcrafted pine and oak caskets locally. Shortly thereafter, he branched out into cremation urn design and began selling solid hardwood cremation urns to a wider, online audience. His first online sale of a cremation urn was to a woman in Chicago, who told him she’d seen nothing like his urns on the Web.
Green tells me, “A woman recently drove up from Spokane to visit my shop. We talked about her husband, who had died the week before. We all cried.” He pauses, then adds reflectively, “There’s something about this business that isn’t about wood.”
Kevin Green's unique cremation urns are available online at KettleRiverUrns.com. Both his cremation urns and caskets are for sale locally at his shop in Republic, Washington.
Contact Information
Kevin Green
Kettle River Urns
1003 South Clark Avenue
Republic, WA 99166t
509-775-0441
E-mail: kettleriverurns @ yahoo.com
kettleriverurns.com
Acknowledgements
Ferrycounty.com wishes to thank Kevin Green for allowing us to include photographs taken from his Web site. Article by Sarah Lawrence, published on October 31, 2005.
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