My city has a store with furniture like that. Also, lots of figurines of all sizes depicting totally nude mermaids, elves, whatever. #justeuropethings
They procure it mainly from thirld-world countries, though, and it seems to be made exclusively of bronze, cast iron, ebony, and cadmium.

A sturdy collar, too. I know the story of a guy who bled to death in mere minutes after taking a single piece of shrapnel to the neck.

Butterface mermaid

SpongeBomb SpallatePants

Pasolini wrote a famous essay in 1975, “The Disappearance of the Fireflies,” which, at that time, was already starting to become very noticeable. Of course, the essay was really about capitalism.
Personally, outside my childhood in the countryside, I noticed fireflies in the outskirts of a largish city some 20 years ago, then nothing for a very long time, and then I saw a few when I lived for a brief period of time in a really remote place, like an hour from the nearest highway. No trains anywhere near, too.

Off-topic, but if you don’t know Pasolini, I urge you to read his last interview which seems particularly gloomy as it appears to foreshadow his own death just a few hours after.
One memorable quote:

I listen to the politicians – all the politicians – with all their little presumptions and I turn into a mad man as they prove they do not know which country they are talking about, they are as far away as the moon. And together with them there are the men of letters, the sociologists and the experts in any kind of field.