What casket was used for Aaliyah?

Answer 1

Aaliyah Haughton was buried in one of the last copper deposit models manufactured by the former National casket company of Boston. The type designation was # 20761, a double lid model with lavish ornamental corners, a hand tufted premium velvet interior and a silver plated exterior. Unlike standard copper caskets which are welded from 32 oz or 48 oz (ounces per square foot) sheets of wrought copper (resulting in an empty weight between 200 and 300 lbs), copper deposit casket are made in a time consuming process by which copper molecules are deposited on a casket form. The famous National copper deposit caskets had no joints or welding seams nor did the attachments of the handles penetrate the casket walls. Copper deposit caskets have unusually thick walls of 1/8" (3 mm) resulting in a weight between 600 and 800 lbs empty. The funeral pictures show that at least eight pall bearers were needed to carry Aaliyah's casket. In the 1970s, the price of copper deposit caskets, which are no longer manufactured in the US, was about 10 to 12 times that of a standard 32 oz sheet copper casket. The optional silver plating of the exterior added around 25 % to the basic price of the luxury casket. Other celebrities buried in National copper deposit caskets (of somewhat different design) were for example President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Elvis Presley and the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.