I’m going to blame Nate Berkus. Do I know it’s his fault? No. Do I know if he ever made these weird wall barnacles? Nope. But I’m gonna blame him anyway. (Editors Note: I googled this guy and, sure enough, I found this picture.)
Somewhere around 2012, these things started popping up in Targets and HomeGoods. I think someone thought they were vaguely mid-century, but these things are completely devoid of context. One day, they just kind of happened. I can’t figure out why, so let’s talk about this trend.
These things are spiky and made of cheap pot metal from China. They always seem to carry a gold hue. They look like you have tribbles coming out of your wall. Someone, somewhere, was sitting in a design studio and thought “You know what would be cool? Spiky wall barnacles!”
Like what are these things supposed to be? Are they trying to channel the starbursts of the 1950’s? I can’t figure out how they’re supposed to be used. If you have too few of them, they look ridiculous. If you have too many of them, and it looks like you have an infection.
The weird thing is – these things have been on sale for like a decade. So people are buying them. The thing with interior decor is, it doesn’t always have to make sense. If you like ducks, you can put ducks everywhere. Big fan of dogs? Dog up your house, dog! However, I can’t imagine there’s a large enough sea urchin fan club to necessitate a distribution company pushing these things into every home decor store across the country, and yet – here we are.
I like to look at pictures of these things to try and get an idea of what rooms they’re supposed to go in, and I can’t figure it out. In Photoshop, the stupidest thing you can use is the Lens Flare. It was on every picture in the late ’90s and early 2000s. People added it to photos that shouldn’t have one because it made their pictures “dramatic”. These things are lens flares for your walls. Stupid, unnecessary, unnatural and pointless. But maybe that’s why these things sold and continue to sell. Like the lens flare, these don’t belong anywhere, so people put them everywhere.
In the future, I will explore more weird interior design trends that are so very stupid. If you have these, can you please email me and tell me why? I’m genuinely curious.
