Spike Your Afterlife with These Spirited Urns

Let these pre-Hispanic ceramic urns commemorate pointed lives.

March 7, 2016, 8:50pm

Images courtesy MT Objects

The wildly colorful spiked urns known as MT Objects make honoring life after death the ultimate art object. With pastel color combinations and organic shapes taken from nature, Mexico City-based designers Tony Moxham and Maurcio Paniagua of DFC are creating a designer movement to venerate death with coveted ceramic ornaments.

Moxham and Paniagua established the line of ceramic vessels with two objectives: that every design be functional, and that every vessel be inspired by pre-Hispanic designs and techniques. Moxham tells The Creators Project, “The funeral urn was as common a vessel for pre-Hispanic culture. Burial is becoming less popular and at the same time less ecologically justifiable, so from a morbidly objective viewpoint the funeral urn is functional design, decorative design, and a product for which demand is increasing.”

The ceramic vessels measure about two feet and can hold the ashes of two people. They come in “soft clash” combinations of pastel hues with earthen tones, giving the objects what Moxham calls a “90s take on science fiction.”

The spiked urns are inspired by the Mayan belief that the Ceiba tree is a connection between spiritual levels. They often referenced the spikes of the tree as design motifs. The ball-covered urns are informed by the ceramic techniques employed by the Aztecs, who used hollow geometric forms to build more complex vessels. Moxham and Paniagua spend a lot of time wandering around the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City to gain inspiration for their contemporary home designs.

Moxham says, “The resemblance of these pre-Hispanic styles to modern design—especially Memphis style—was what appealed to us. Despite somewhat fancier materials and finishes, our construction methods vary little from how pre-Hispanic pieces would have been created.”

The duo see themselves as conceptual artists who work with a local ceramics collective to build out their designs. The high concept urns contemporize traditional Mexican motifs with streamlined elegance. MT Objects are available at design stores and museum shops in Mexico and in the United States at the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

“What differentiates our work as designers is that our focus is rarely on actual problem-solving,” says Moxham. “More commonly we focus on intangible issues when designing objects—from sexuality, to history, to magic, to ritual, to decoration.”