Designer Cremation Urns by Alessi: A Turning Point for High-End Memorial Design

Exploring how Alessi’s entry into cremation urn models signals a major shift in luxury memorial objects and contemporary design

Discussing death is often uncomfortable, but a movement toward death positivity is encouraging honest conversations. This has steered discourse about cremation urns into the mainstream.

In 2010, a dinner party at Alessi’s home with the Austrian design trio EOOS led to a discussion about the evolution from the pot to the urn. That frank, death-positive dialogue led to a turning point for high-end memorial design.

At Milan Design Week in 2025,  Designer Cremation Urns by Alessi debuted in “Il Tornitore Matto” with “The Last Pot” Collection, designed and curated by Studio Giulio Iacchetti.

Death Positivity

Caitlin Doughty, a mortician, writer and advocate for funeral industry reform, is often credited with spawning the death-positive movement when she started the nonprofit, The Order of the Good Death, in 2011. 

According to the Order of the Good Death, “People who are death positive believe that it is not morbid or taboo to speak openly about death. They see honest conversations about death & dying as the cornerstone of a healthy society.” A tenet the society lists on its website reads, “I believe that the culture of silence around death should be broken through discussion, gatherings, art, innovation and scholarship.”

“The Last Pot” Collection brings those ideas into the larger cultural conversation through industry, art and design.

“The Last Pot” Collection

Combining leadership in high-end design, artists and architecture, the exhibition “The Last Pot” engages with the idea of the final vessel that will carry us and, in some cases, our pets. 

“Designed as a reflective, almost weightless space by Studio Giulio Iacchetti, the exhibition invites visitors to rethink what it means to design the last container,” Hube Magazine reported. Giulio Iachetti also created an urn, titled “Teardrop,” for the exhibit. The piece, which includes a larger model intended for human ashes and a smaller one for pets’, has a small blind hole on top to hold incense, and a concave bottom to hold ashes. Iachetti states on his website, “Looking again at the urn I designed, I find references to the profile of a tear and a maternal womb: the metaphorical symbol of pain for a loss and the nest of life that finds in the same design, an unexpected formal and spiritual overlap…” ​

The 10 international designers picked for the collection are Mario Tsai, David Chipperfield, Michael Anastassiades, Michele De Lucchi, EOOS, Audrey Large, Daniel Libeskind, Giulio Iachetti and Philippe Starck.

Mario Tsai built his urn to fit in with everyday items. His aim was to make death and memory more approachable. He titled his work “Hidden in Life.” His urn is styled in the shape of a book with a circular space that needs to be rotated in order to open it. That’s where the ashes are placed. There is also a 1 cm deep space between the cover and ash compartments where keepsakes like letters and photos of the deceased can be stored.

​Audrey Large, known for her maximalist art, created “A Silver Cord.” The piece is made from pink marble and has an engravable silver cord. The urn was “created using digital modeling; its fluid, organic form evokes an embrace between body and thread, symbolizing continuity.”

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