Coffin Incense Burner (Best Choices)

Coffins have a rich and intriguing history, from their ancient origins to their use in funerary rituals and the arts. If you’re seeking a unique way to burn incense, then a coffin-shaped incense burner may be the perfect choice for you.

Incense coffin box burners are a popular choice among incense enthusiasts due to their distinctive design.

They are commonly used to burn joss sticks or incense sticks, but can also accommodate cone incense. The holders are typically ample enough to hold a sufficient amount of incense.

Best Coffin Incense Holders

Coffin incense burners are typically made from wood, but you can also find them in ceramic or even soapstone.

Quick Picks:

In the list below are some of the best coffin incense burners made from wood, ceramic, and soapstone:

Wooden Coffin Incense Burner

Sheesham is a type of wood from trees in Northern India, similar to teak. It is sometimes known as Indian Rosewood and is often used for furniture and hand-carved objects.

Wooden Burner for Incense Sticks and Cones

Best Overall:

This wooden burner has a ridged lid, and is in the coffin shape. It is completely perforated with star-shaped holes in a classic net design.

It is made from a natural, unpolished Sheesham wood.

It has a convenient storage space to store spare incense sticks, and inside the box there are two small brass cups to hold incense cones.

Govinda Coffin Incense Burner

Most-Reviewed Product:

Hand-crafted in a light colored Sheesham wood, this incense coffin box is inlaid with a vine and leaf pattern in brass, along each side.

A small concealed panel on one end slides open to reveal a storage area. The coffin-type lid opens to show small brass cone holders inside, as well as holes to hold incense sticks.

Wooden Coffin Holder with Storage Compartment

Most Elegant:

This coffin incense burner is hand made from polished Sheesham, or Rosewood. It has a brass inlay of three small elephant figures on each side and has a small brass cup inside to hold incense cones.

It also has a hidden storage compartment, a regular feature of this style of box burner.

The feature that I like best about these boxes is that, being individually hand-carved, each one is a unique piece. Like in nature, no two are exactly alike.

Video: Wooden Incense Holder

These boxes are made in Rajasthan, the world renowned Indian home of wooden handicrafts.

Cotton Craft – 2 Pack – Temple Style Incense Burners

Best for Continuous Use:

These two burners, often called trough burners because of their shape, come in a set of two, an identical pair, and have brass hinges on the lids.

In natural dark unstained Sheesham wood, they are inlaid with small brass motifs depicting the moon and stars, and are perforated with star-shaped holes to release the smoke.

Video: Sheesham Wood Incense Stick Box

They have a hidden compartment for storage, and are a good size, at about 12 inches in length and two inches wide.

Soapstone Coffin Incense Burner

Soapstone, technically called Steatite, is made up of the mineral talc and also silica. It is a soft rock, easily carved, and can have a feel a little like soap, hence the name.

Soapstone Incense Burner Box

This small brown soapstone coffin burner is a very plain and simple design, just a rectangular box about 10 inches long and just over one inch wide. It is really only suitable for storing and burning incense sticks, there are no perforations in the lid and it has no ornamental design, purely a functional item.

It can be used to store up to 20 incense sticks, and has two holes in the lid to hold sticks while they are burning.

Black Soapstone Coffin Stick & Cone Incense Burner

The lid of this black soapstone coffin box incense burner is engraved with an abstract floral pattern in white. It is quite a substantial piece, at 11 inches long and just over 2 inches wide.

It has holes cut into the lid so incense can be burned inside, and can hold cones as well as sticks.

It has a solid feel, and the incense ash stays in the box for easy cleaning.

India Overseas Trading Corporation Soapstone Incense Burner

This is another simple, plain coffin burner box, completely undecorated but it is in a striated, dark brown, mottled natural soapstone which I think has an antique look, like a recently discovered relic from the past.

With no smoke holes in the lid, it is just used for incense stick storage, and has a small hole at either end to act as a stick holder. The lid has a rectangular depression to catch the falling ash.

Ceramic Coffin Incense Burner

VOSAREA Coffin Style Hollow Incense Holder

Most Minimal & Elegant:

Elegant in its simplicity, with clean lines, this ceramic coffin box incense burner has a refined geometric design cut into the lid.

Designed only for incense sticks, the interior features a flame-proof cotton fabric on the base, which holds the burning incense stick, with the smoke coming through the pattern cut into the lid.

Made with a dark matte glaze, this ceramic coffin box burner is quite shallow, and only 1.4 inches tall, which makes it only suitable for an incense stick.

Nose Desserts Stack of Human Skulls Coffin Box

The Most Interesting:

This is a very unusual and dramatic item. Made in a ceramic-look resin, it is covered with carved skulls on each side, and the lid features a tower of piratical skull and cross-bone carvings.

It has a holder inside the box for the incense sticks while burning, and holes punched in the lid so that the smoke rises through the skull carvings.

This would be a fantastic gift at a Halloween party, or just as a uniquely different object in the home, guaranteed as a conversation starter.

How to Use

Incense Coffin: Coffin Style Incense Burner

Coffin shaped incense burners are generally just over the length of an incense stick, so these can be stored and burned inside. Many of these box burners also have a concealed storage compartment in the base.

Often they have a hole cut into one end of the box inside, which holds the incense stick off the bottom of the box. As the stick burns, the ash falls onto the base of the box, and can be cleaned out later when the stick is burned out.

This method applies to coffin box incense burners that have perforated lids. Those that don’t have perforations to allow the smoke to rise, such as some solid soapstone coffin burners, usually have small holes on top of the lid to hold the incense stick at an angle over the lid, and usually there is a depression carved into the lid to catch the falling ash.

Video: How to burn Incense Sticks (Coffin Incense Burner)

A third method which suits the design of some coffin box incense burners is for the box to be stood upright, on one end. The incense stick can be inside, either with the smoke coming through perforations or with the lid open, or the stick can be outside, pointing upwards in the hole in the lid.

The possible downside of the upright method is that the ash from the burning incense stick will not be captured by the lid or the inside of the box, instead it will fall onto the surface that the box is standing on. Care therefore has to be taken to make sure the ash does not fall onto any flammable material.

Coffin Incense Burner (Best Choices)