A story behind decoration #1: Monzcaro Murcatto

A story behind decoration

by Monzcarro Murcatto

"I did a huge house decoration together with my dear friend Tarmon Gai Don some years ago that I still feel is one of the best ones I've done because it incorporated both his real life and Tibian personalities. He was very active in the development and had very clear wishes, and he was also extremely critical and questioned everything I did, which was both frustrating and very good because it forced me to really think about decoration as a conveyor of meaning. Tarmon helped a lot, and he even made titles for the various rooms. I continued making titles in my later works and I find it helps me make choices more easily when I know what the themes of the rooms are.

That specific decoration was a Druid's Retreat in Marble Lane 1 on Peloria. Tarmon wanted a house that showed the various aspects of what it means to be a druid. He had a vision of a house that combined wild nature with civilization, which I found very inspiring. At the time beds weren't movable so we had to work with the fixed layout of the house. Store carpets was a fairly new and exciting thing, and Tarmon had bought a few of the emerald green ones wanting to use them as grass. We also had his druid tree from The Cults of Tibia quest and plenty of large flower pots from Eleonore's mansion. That was the starting point for the decoration.

The first floor showed his connection to nature. In the room titled "Jungle's Serene Edge" I made a jungle wilderness with a river and then a bridge over the river that took him to a peaceful meadow where we placed his working desk. We worked a lot on the topography of that room to get a feeling of untamed nature, building a mountain out of Yasir's furniture and covering it with greenery and more druid trees. The blue tapestry was supposed to illude a waterfall and then the river meandered through a meadow with wild flowers and mushrooms and ended in a little pond next to a platform where his bed stood.

The next room was called "Nature's Embrace" and contained a huge dining table with a tree in the middle for Tarmon to surround himself with friends and colleagues and still be in contact with nature, in this case represented by the druid tree he had earned himself.

Upstairs I made a path that took him from the wilderness and nature downstairs into civilization and science. I was inspired by late 19th century landscape paintings and the industrial revolution, and Tarmon named this room "The Path of the 19th century".

The last room was the druid's laboratory where he would combine his knowledge of nature with chemistry and alchemy and create higher magic. I made this room to mirror the layout of the path room (as far as the placement of the beds would allow me), which inspired the title "Mirrorworld of Mana". I wanted the room to look dreamy and unreal in contrast to the raw nature downstairs, like a place that exists in another dimension. (I sometimes get asked what inspires my decoration, and in this case it was the very old PC game King's Quest 2, in which King Graham must enter the magical kingdom of Kolyma. As a kid this magical world fascinated me, because the shapes there were familiar but the colours all wrong and I think this is a very simple and clever way to depict another dimension, especially when the graphic tools at your disposal are limited.)"

Monzi's "Jungle's Serene Edge" and namely, her water with the bridge decoration style has become one of the most popular trends in house decoration on Instagram. Are you a fan of it, too? Let us know in the comment section below!