SPLAT

"Might as well turn 'em into handbags now," I thought when I read that there were only six white rhinos left. "Some spokesperson could rabbit on about freezing the poor beasts' DNA against a utopian time when science will resurrect all the beasts mankind has made extinct – thereby justifying the slaughter and be a lot cheaper than keeping them in a game park." Cynical? Dead right, if you'll pardon the pun.

The news set me thinking of friends of mine, with their liking of "hair-on-hide" mid-century chairs, and, by extension, of the history of animal parts in decoration – and there is a long history of this usage. Our Brno dining chairs are upholstered in a leather so fine it could be pleather but, besides shoes and belts, there are no other bits of dead animals lying around the place. Not for us that by-product of the industrialized source of steak, the cow-hide rug, or even hipster Mongolian lambskin pillows, and certainly no taxidermy (however beautiful the butterfly wings and beetle carapaces might be) or, for that matter, horn-legged furniture. I don't even like antelope- or leopard-patterned carpet – there's something faintly ridiculous about reproducing a natural pattern in such a way it resembles nothing more than a cosmic skid mark of roadkill on the floor.

Then, on another blog, I read that some purveyor of zebra skin rugs and pillows had "reached out" to the blog author about their wares and, my distaste at that awful piece of cant used instead of "contacted me" or "wrote to me" apart, I realized how unremarkable it is to see zebra skins on floors and furniture, and there I was, in my innocence, thinking zebras might be a protected species. I suppose they are farmed and funneled to a processing plant and emerge ready for the sofa and the floor. Zebra, undoubtedly, is the upper-class version of the cow-hide rug available to everyone at Ikea for $199.

My problem with it all is this: in my early student days I was allowed into a slaughter house to photograph the proceedings and I have never forgotten the cries of those cows and pigs when they were lined up to be killed. I have never forgotten how pigs scream like human beings. I have never forgotten the the sound of abject sorrow a cow makes when she knows she is going to die. It is those cries, as inarticulate as any I might make in extremis, that I remember each time I see a hide-on chair, a cow-hide or a zebra-hide rug and I wish I didn't.

On the other hand, advice for cows or zebras learning to fly and wishing to avoid the SPLAT of a none-too-soft landing, from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “The Guide says there is an art to flying", said Ford, "or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.”


I chose two beautiful rooms to illustrate this essay about a purely personal reaction which in no way reflects on the designer's choices or anyone else's for that matter. The bedroom is by McMillen Inc, and the blue room is by Todd Romano. I found the photographs and the photographers unattributed on other blogs via Pinterest. The third room, found on tumblr, has it all!