Materials

• Caskets are usually made of wood, such as pine, cedar or oak, and metal. Caskets typically include a cushioned interior made of silk or satin. The goal of a casket maker is to produce coffins that honor the deceased and look presentable at a funeral. Many modern casket manufacturers will include features in their caskets designed to preserve the body for additional time, such as sealed gaskets to make the casket airtight after it is finally closed. Unfortunately, these caskets will often speed up the decomposition of the body. Caskets made of a porous material, such as wood, will allow for cleaner skeletonization and less bacterial odor if the body is exhumed.
  More exotic caskets can be made of other materials, such as steel, bamboo or fiberglass. Some families choose materials that are more environmentally friendly, regardless of the preservation potential of the casket.
  
  

Manufacturing

• Modern caskets are rarely made by hand. Most caskets are mass-produced in factories and sold to funeral homes. It is rare for the family of the deceased to purchase a casket directly. Often, caskets will be personalized by families in order to represent the life of the deceased. Other families will choose to build a casket by hand and this process is only limited by the woodworking skills of the casket makers. Any box used to bury the dead can be defined as a casket or coffin.
  Cultures have different burial methods, and subsequently, different styles of caskets are used. African coffins are typically built in the shape of recognizable objects. In orthodox Judaism, plain caskets made of wood are used, without ornamentation or metal parts. In Japan and China, coffins are typically made of scented wood such as thuja, cypress or sugi. Taiwanese coffins made in the 1700s and 1800s consisted of crushed oyster shells packed together.
  Caskets are typically covered with cloth during a closed-casket funeral, or during transportation. This cloth is referred to as a pall, the derivative of the term pallbearer.