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Apparently we’re no longer content to just have animals in our homes curled up in their dog beds or in frozen family packs of chicken thighs—taxidermy and other dark animal imagery is popping up everywhere in design and art for the home.

Artists and designers are creating decorative objects that raise questions how we relate to nature, decoration, craft, and history, often by contrasting the darkness of taxidermy with the warmth and familiarity of traditional materials and techniques.

Kitschy

Ohio designers Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis of Future Revival’s work uses modern technology and traditional techniques to explore the darkness of “taxidermy and natural order.” Their porcelain wolf lights are both cheerful yet dark, based on a kitschy antique mall wolf head find, slip cast in porcelain, and filled with a mouth full of brightly colored candelabra bulbs.

Crafty

Shauna Richardson’s “Crochetdermy” also combines dark and light elements with its use of a familiar craft in an untraditional application. Instead of taxidermy’s usual direct use of stuffed and preserved animals, Richardson’s work uses animal materials, though less directly—she crochets animals out of wool and mohair yarn. Her crocheted animals contrast the cozy familiarity of home crafts with the slightly creepy edge of taxidermy in their well-executed realism.

Traditional

Like Shauna Richardson’s Crochetdemy, Frederique Morrel’s needlework taxidermy also combines a traditionally warm, feminine craft with the darker, more masculine craft of taxidermy. Covering taxidermy molds with found vintage needlework and using real antlers, the French company makes each piece by hand, giving forgotten needlework that was once used functionally new life as decorative objects.

Creepy

The contrast of the real and surreal aspects of Kate MacDowell’s porcelain sculpture highlights the beauty, sadness, romance, and fragility of the natural world. With realistic bodies and imagined aspects in pure, fragile, white porcelain, her animals appear to be preserved in relationship to both their cultural and environmental contexts. Taking on issues of environmental threats and our relationship to our “destructive practices,” the artist creates creepy, yet meaningful sculpture.

Wallpaper’s reputation is a little questionable, given the preponderance of gaudy flower patterns and choo choo train borders available in most wallpaper books. But designers and artists have been working to create visually and functionally fascinating wallpapers that appeal to audiences well beyond the over-60 and under-six demographics.

Frames Interactive Wallpaper

Graham & Brown offers a complete line of beautiful wallpapers, many created by design superstars and gifted artists. And while most of them are pretty easy on the eyes, their Frames Wallpaper encourages you to do more than look at it. Covered in printed frames, you can make your own art inside them, tack up photos, or do whatever else you want, making it uniquely your own.

Animal Magic Wallpaper

While Paperboy Wallpaper is designed with young boys and their interests in mind, it works equally well for adults with a fun–or dark–streak. Paperboy’s Animal Magic wallpaper features black silhouettes of domestic animals with glossy black skeletons printed on top, so you get a glimpse of the macabre, the frightening, and the fascinating, along with the everyday.

MagScapes Magnetic Wallpaper

While most wallpaper is usually purely decorative, MagScapes slips a little extra function in with their papers. While you can cut and hang them just like standard papers, MagScapes are actually magnetic wallpapers available in printed and plain styles, as well as wallpaper liners. Perfect for home offices and studios, you can stop worrying about pinholes, tape, and Post-Its uglying up your walls while still actually keeping your reminders and photos handy.

Surrealien Optical Illusions Wallpaper

Custom printed for each customer on professional-grade wallpapers, Surrealien’s optical illusion papers are designed around your room’s architectural details, so the patterns appear to distort around your windows, doors, switch-plates, and other features with its “warping wallpaper technology.” You’ve got to think this paper would be great at a party, though I’m not sure I’d want to wake up near it with a hangover.