Coffins Quite An Undertaking
10-30-1995 Times Picayune

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In a city that buries its dead above ground and celebrates the
passing of noted citizens with jazz funerals, Milton Beatty
figured there might be a market for his offbeat idea: custom-
made "coffin tables."

For the uninitiated, that's a coffin-shaped piece of furniture
that sits between the couch and the TV and serves as a resting
place for the remote control, the coffee mug and the ashtray.

"Some of my friends think it's a weird thing," said Beatty, a
carpenter by trade. "But people around here seem to have a
fascination with death. There's the voodoo and all that stuff
about spirits. You don't hear about it anywhere else. At least I
haven't."

Beatty and his friend John Lawson, an artist, hatched the idea
last fall. A few months earlier, the pair had teamed up to sell
- at about $500 a pop - a half-dozen "Flintstones" tables,
wooden replicas of the thick, oversized stone furniture used by
the prehistoric cartoon characters.

Casting about for another joint project, they stumbled upon a
pile of discarded fence lumber. "It was almost Halloween
season," Beatty said, "and we had talked about doing something
else, so . . ."

So, using ragged cedar and cypress boards, the coffin table was
born. They sold 6-footers for $110. Three-foot versions - they
decided it would be bad taste to call them "baby coffins" - went
for $55.

All told, they built about 20, including variations on the
theme: a coffin-shaped medicine cabinet with stained-glass doors
and a stand-up version that serves as a communal bookcase in an
Uptown apartment house.

Beatty, 36, was born in Fremont, Mich., "where they make Gerber
baby food." He said the idea of the coffin tables may trace to
his teens, when his father and his high school shop teacher
suggested that he consider coffin-making as a career.

"They told me that during the '50s, people sometimes bought
coffins ahead of time and kept them on display," he said. "I
just thought it was morbid."

After they sold their first few creations last year, Beatty
said, Lawson devised a scheme to bring in more business: present
a coffin table to author Anne Rice, New Orleans' home-grown
doyenne of darkness.

"We thought she might order some for her annual Halloween ball,"
Beatty said. "So we just showed up at her home and snuck in with
a UPS man who was delivering boxes."

After they presented her with their handiwork, Rice smiled,
thanked them and said the table was cute, Beatty said.

"I thought it was nice because she's a famous person. I wasn't
really concerned about more business," Beatty said. "It was just
the thrill of doing it - giving her the coffin. We don't know
what she did with it, but at least we can say she has one."

Beatty's fiancee, Pamela Snyder, who doubles as business manager
and junior carpenter, said the table in her living room is a
popular conversation piece.

"I don't think it's weird," Snyder said. "It's nice to have
things that are different in your house - furniture that is
interesting in and of itself. It's definitely not Ethan Allen."

Due to a backlog of home repair jobs left over from the May
flood, Beatty said, he's had no time to build coffins this year.
But he plans to push the product again next year after he opens
a woodworking shop near his home.

Intrigued by a photo of one of the tables, a friend in Georgia
has ordered two real coffins - one for her and one for her 74-
year-old mother. "I don't know why," Beatty said. "I guess
they're planning ahead."

And Beatty said there are other possibilities: coffin-shaped
jewelry boxes and vampire kits, including hammer, wooden stake,
cross and vial of "holy water."

If things work out, he said, the coffins will be only a page in
a portfolio that also features handmade wooden Christmas toys
and other seasonal gifts.

"I work with wood to relax," he said. "I only use scraps because
I like the recycling thing and I hate to see it go to waste. Did
you know you can make a whole set of blocks out of a two-by-four
that gets put out with the trash?"