A coffin (also known as a casket in North American English) is a funerary box used in the display and containment of deceased remains – either for burial or cremation. Any box used to bury the dead in is a coffin. Use of the word "casket" in this sense began as a euphemism introduced by the undertaker's trade in North America; a "casket" was originally a box for jewelry. Some Americans draw a distinction between "coffins" and "caskets"; for these people, a coffin is a tapered hexagonal or octagonal (also considered to be anthropodial in shape) box used for a burial. A rectangular burial box with a split lid used for viewing the deceased is called a "casket" as seen in the picture above. Receptacles for cremated human ashes (sometimes called cremains) are called urns. A coffin may be buried in the ground directly, placed in a burial vault or cremated. The above ground burial is in a mausoleum. Often it is a large cement building at a cemetery, housing hundreds of bodies, or a small personal crypt. Some countries practice one form almost exclusively;[citation needed] in others, it depends on the individual cemetery. The handles and other ornaments (such as doves, stipple crosses, crucifix, masonic symbols etc.) that go on the outside of a coffin are called fittings (sometimes called 'coffin furniture', not to be confused with furniture that is coffin shaped) while organising the inside of the coffin with drapery of some kind is known as "trimming the coffin". Cultures that practice burial have widely different styles of coffin. In some varieties of orthodox Judaism[specify], the coffin must be plain, made of wood, and contain no metal parts nor adornments. These coffins use wooden pegs instead of nails. In China and Japan, coffins made from the scented, decay-resistant wood of cypress, sugi, thuja and incense-cedar are in high demand.[citation needed] In Africa, elaborate coffins are built in the shapes of various mundane objects, like automobiles or aeroplanes.[citation needed] Sometimes coffins are constructed to display the dead body, as in the case of the glass-covered coffin of Haraldskær Woman on display in the Church of Saint Nicolai in Vejle, Denmark or the glass-coffin of Vladimir Lenin which is in the Red Square in Moscow.. When a coffin or casket is used to transport a deceased person, it can also be called a pall, a term that also refers to the cloth used to cover the coffin.

All of these images are by Duvy.