An American company called Cremation Solutions is offering commemorative urns shaped like the severed heads of deceased loved ones.

The Vemont-based company, which specialises in memorial events and cremation products, has made the containers using 3D imaging techniques that combine a number of different photographs. The full-sized urn is around 28cm high, and can hold the ashes of an adult. There is also a smaller 15cm "keepsake" option that fits just a portion of the ashes.

The Vermont-based company informs customers on its website that the urn does not come with hair although it can be digitally added or wigs can be used. It writes: "Personal urns can be designed to look like anyone. We just need good pictures. We prefer one picture from the front and one from the side. Complexions can be adjusted in the final stages and customers get a chance to proof the results."


Prices range from $600 (£389) for the smaller cremation urn to $2,600 (£679) for a larger one. Bizarrely, the company illustrates the service with an urn made in the shape of President Barack Obama's head, explaining that you can also have the urn designed in the image of your hero.

Jeff Staab, owner of Cremation Solutions, who has been selling the containers for two years, told Wired.co.uk: "I came up with the idea because as a whole products and services are becoming more personalised and if you look through history, the Romans and Greeks had memorials made out of brass and they were popular for hundreds of years."

But the businessman said that the urns looked almost too real, adding: "I don't sell a lot of them, they look so real. They are also very expensive but I cannot help that, I would like to sell more."

He said that he didn't find the urns creepy but admitted that he doesn't have a loved one made as an urn, and maybe if he did and had to walk by it, he would. He described them as "really good sculptures" saying one customer -- although still alive -- was currently designing his own urn. "He wants it to be black and white and he is having glasses put on it. He also wants his hand out holding his chin like Rodin's sculpture The Thinker. This man's wife and family have had input into it and they are looking at send copies digitally for them before it is made because once it is done we cannot change it."