Lost Coffins (Coffin Factory), Belgium

Lost Coffins, also known as Coffin Factory, are a set of wicker coffins. The coffins lay in an abandoned furniture warehouse in Belgium. This site was once a storage area for a furniture importer. This company also owned the attached office space.

Along with more traditional wooden furniture they also sold these wicker coffins. It seems bizarre that a furniture shop would double-up as funerary goods. This factory certainly had both the equipment and expertise to craft these coffins. Naturally, diversification is the mother of ingenuity. The company became a furniture importer primarily, and a coffin factory secondarily.

In 2014 there was a fire in the attached office block. This fire clearly raged unchecked, and consequently spread to part of the coffin factory storage warehouse.

The expenses to repair the damage must have not been cost-effective, as the company abandoned this site and relocated their business premises elsewhere. The warehouse has laid abandoned ever since, falling into a progressively worse state of decay year by year. These Lost Coffins remain, unwanted and gather mold alongside some other furniture stock.

Inside the coffin factory

These simple wicker coffins would have offered a more ecologically friendly alternative to traditional heavy wooden coffins. The coffins have minimal decorative features. The lining is similarly unfussy in style. The caskets and lines are lined with biodegradable cotton. The coffin factory offered simple and understated casket options.

The coffins are stacked in an apparently haphazard arrangement. Photographers move them regularly, in an attempt to find the perfect composition or a new angle. They sit in several clusters in the large warehouse. The factory walls growing green mold on them as the roof deteriorates.

This is another of the classic Belgium locations, which we visited early in 2016. There once was also a baby-sized coffin, but this has apparently disappeared.