Creating a cross vessel for a beloved son’s ashes

Designer: Mark Malvin, Beverly’s Jewelers

The Irish have many customs surrounding the death of loved ones. Poems are read, stories are told, and fond memories are mined so that the person gone is never really forgotten. But for Mark Malvin’s client Karen, there was a desire to keep her recently deceased son, Brendan, palpably closer to her heart than any memory could. She wanted to create a special vessel for his cremains, one that she could wear as a pendant.

Brendan’s death had occurred when he was just 24, from injuries sustained in a car accident. When Karen visited Malvin at his store—Beverly’s Jewelers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida—she was still mourning his passing. A regular customer at the store, Karen said she trusted Beverly’s to craft what she needed at this sensitive time.

In a letter of thanks she wrote to Malvin afterwards regarding her unusual request, she said: “You sat with me and listened to my story of loss with compassion and patience. You took the time to listen and guide me as we worked together to design a family heirloom. It was your knowledge and skill and perhaps your own understanding as a parent that made the final product so beautiful.”

From Malvin’s perspective, the interview was laden with emotion. Not only does he have a teenage son, he also serves as an auxiliary sergeant for the Florida Highway Patrol, and he sometimes witnesses the aftermath of accidents (and has the job of notifying parents, as well). “It was painful to talk with Karen initially, and painful when I delivered the finished piece,” he says simply.

Karen’s initial idea was for the jeweler to make a locket for her son’s cremains that could be soldered closed. She also wanted him to attach a yellow gold Celtic cross that Brendan had brought her from Ireland when he was 12. Instead of a locket, however, Malvin suggested that he create a hollow whitegold vessel in the same shape as the Celtic one, and then fuse them together. The Celtic cross was a fitting container for Brendan’s cremains because the distinctive symbol has been used as a cemetery marker in Ireland since early Christian times.

Malvin also proposed a two-way bail for the cross, so it would be reversible, and adding two recessed shamrocks, the letter B, and Brendan’s birthstone (a ruby) on the outer-facing white-gold side—to further personalize it as the young man’s final resting place. Karen liked these ideas. There were times, she knew, when she would feel comfortable talking about her talisman, in which case she’d wear it with the white-gold side out and the B visible. But on other occasions, she might prefer to keep the cross’s purpose to herself, in which case she’d wear the yellow-gold side facing out.

Malvin added one more feature, to the side of the white-gold vessel that would be attached to the original cross: He created four slight, triangular recesses that aligned with the four cutout areas in the Celtic cross. He planned to add a bead-blasted finish to those areas, so they would highlight the openings. He also would beadblast the recessed areas of the shamrocks and the B on the outer wall of the vessel.

With the design approved, Malvin began his CAD work. First, he scanned Karen’s original 1 inch high cross. Though the cross wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, Malvin wanted the white gold vessel to be, so he brought the cross into his Matrix design program. There, he traced half the cross and mirrored the tracing over so it would be perfectly symmetrical. Malvin also made the new cross slightly smaller than the Celtic original, so the difference in symmetry wouldn’t be obvious.

After he had his shape, Malvin extruded it so he could build up the side walls of the hollow vessel to the desired height (3.8 mm) and thickness (0.65 mm). For the slightly recessed areas, Malvin increased the surrounding wall thickness to ensure a proper fill during casting. Because it was a hollow vessel, the designer also added an extra hole at the bottom, to allow air to escape and the investment to completely fill the cavity before casting. “It was a very simple CAD design—even a beginning CAD user could do it,” he says.

To make the wax model, Malvin chose the T76+ 3-D printer made by Solidscape, which he felt would achieve his design best. The jeweler is an admitted fan of the additive manufacturing technology and owns two Solidscape machines, the new T76+ that’s self-calibrating and an upgraded version of the older T66—both used for volume manufacturing. “The process allows you to build a hollow piece like the cross in one piece,” he explains. “If I were to mill it [using subtractive manufacturing], I would need to join the wax pieces together before casting, or solder them after casting.”

He exported the design as an STL file into the printer’s software and put the T76+ to work. The model built up, layer by layer—148 of them in total, since Malvin had chosen a 0.0254 mm thickness for each one. (The system allows the layers to range in size from 0.0127 to 0.0762 mm.) Once the model was built, Malvin took the “build plate” on which the model rested and put it on a hot plate; this would melt the bottom layer of support wax enough so that he could slide a business card under the model to release it. “The model is fragile, so you have to be careful not to flex it or drop it,” he says.

From there, he put the model in BioAct VSO, an industrial solvent-based cleaner sold by Solidscape, which was heated to between 55°C and 60°C and gently stirred. This facilitates the removal of the support wax, which the machine adds to ensure the model’s shape remains intact. After the bath, only the final model remained, ready for casting.

After he cast his newly made cross, Malvin soldered the cleaned and polished original cross to it. He then added the bead-blasted finish to the recessed areas of the white-gold vessel.

Now it was time to add Brendan’s cremains. Malvin documented the process with photos that he could share with Karen, showing how he used a simple funnel to pour them inside the cross vessel. Once the process was complete, Malvin put a cap on the vessel and laser-welded the openings closed, which waterproofed the cross. From there, he added the bail to finish the job.

Karen was moved by her new heirloom. “I know that my son touched the lives of all who knew him while he lived,” she wrote in that letter of thanks to Malvin. “I believe that he also touched yours and that of your staff as you worked to create this beautiful heirloom for me. Please know that I am grateful for all you did to make my idea a reality. It is a work of art that means the world to me.”