Mermaid Furniture Rant? February 14, 2009
Posted by Azaiya in Journal.trackback
I recently took the plunge and got myself a larger piece of land on a nice, private SIM. I’ve been slowly constructing a living space for myself—you can see part of my bedroom here.
Now, I’ll admit I’m not much of a fan of the giant-seashell vein of mermaid furniture that I see decorating mer-homes across SL. I guess I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to this, but I see no logical reason why merfolk furniture would parallel human furniture in any way. Merfolk may be humanoid, but the sea is a completely different place from the air, with different materials and different physics governing the environment. I suppose I’ll investigate this as I build more, as it’s difficult for me to find furniture that suits my vision for my living space.
My interest in SL has been wavering a bit lately, but I’ve been exploring mermaiding in other avenues. If you’re curious, I’ll write more about it later.
I’m bored with normal building lately. Describe what you’re looking for and maybe I will have a go. I like a challenge!
Will do! My vision is still a bit vague, but I’ll do my best.
I’d expect mermaid furniture would all be very organic, perhaps grown? I think a lot of the design concepts we see in traditional human furniture (like legs, drawers, symmetry, basic geometry) wouldn’t be present in their creations. No parallels to anything human. They’ve never seen a human home! Since transportation of large items is difficult in the water, I would think that each mermaid home would actually have it’s own furnishings growing inside it, as a natural part of the dwelling. Perhaps even just existing vegetation or features that they’ve put to use for storage and sitting? It would be both functional and decorative.
For larger items, materials would probably be a cross between items already available in the aquatic environment and the whatever human remnants float down there, I guess. I bend towards the side of fantasy, but also fantasy grounded a bit more in reality. The ocean is not a bright and shiny place full of large shells and pearls, it is deep, dark place.