Weird trail of remains-can't find the end

[marypryde]

This email just in.  From the President and CEO of the current business, no less!  It doesn't seem there would be much point in trying to track down any living Ettl's. 

Dear Mary,
I am afraid that the Ettl's and the studio have all long since passed.  My mentor Alex Ettl a son of the founder died many years ago.  In the 54 years that I worked with he never mentioned anything about ashes ever.  Maybe his father John Ettl had dealings of some sort for an urn of some type of cast or carved head stone possibly?  This is the only thing I can come up with. Unfortunately there are no records from that time frame anywhere I can think of even from the studio.
Sorry I could not have been of more help, I wish you all the best.

[Gen List Lass]

Mary

You asked for "any wild ideas"... I wonder whether you have considered that the ashes were used as an additive to a ceramic medium, to make a further memorial or sculpture?

I trained as a ceramicist many years ago and we used to add "grog", a coarse, ground, fired clay to fine ceramic clay to add texture.

I have tried to put this as delicately as possible but to a non-ceramicist it will seem a bit bizarre or ghoulish. It is not however without precedent, I have read that ashes were sometimes mixed with paint to make a portrait of the deceased.

Have you investigated what this particular "sculpting studio" actually made? Did they make sculptures carved from stone or built from clay? This might give a clue as to the ashes purpose.

Added: Ettl Studio do seem to have been a studio specialising in work made from clay (http://www.sculpturehouse.com/t-about.aspx)

Gen in NBL England

[marypryde]

Thank you, Gen.  I did ask for wild ideas and I like this one as well as any other.  Since Sculpture House appears to have no records from that time (see previous response from their CEO), we'll probably never know.  However, I can poll the second cousins again for any type of ceramic do-dad attributed to our great-grandmother's time.  Now you have me wondering if it is possible to DNA test a ceramic bird or vase.  (I'm fast becoming the "weird cousin.")
                                                                     Mary

[Gen List Lass]

Mary - After a bit more lateral thinking, I wonder whether it's worth looking at newspapers of the time, local and trade papers/magazines.

An advert by the Ettl studio might give a clue to their services?

Also I found it odd that a lady from a religious family wasn't buried alongside her husband or even buried at all, but cremated. What was going on at that time in NY as regards burials, were they getting short of space, was it cheaper to cremate? Was she estranged from her children, was the nursing home inclined to cremate rather than bury?

It all sounds a bit odd.

Gen in NBL England

[marypryde]

I appreciate your thoughts.  Yes, it certainly is an odd situation.  I will follow your suggestion to check out practices of the time regarding cremation. 

As far as I know or can tell, she was well-loved by her children and had 5 living in 1941.  As the Great Depression was just ending, they may have been strained financially but were not poverty-stricken.  If my "theory" that her son intended to bury her ashes in India has merit, then WWII would certainly have complicated that effort.  And following the war came the partitioning of India.

It is possible that her ashes were buried with her husband in the New Jersey cemetery plot after all, but there was no follow-thru on the stone.  The cemetery records were lost in a fire in the mid-1940s.  (Events seem to conspire to keep me from the answer.)