Best Bizarro Stylishly Kinky Furniture

DarkMoon Armory. The name conjures up images of crumbling stone ruins eclipsed by vines, the weeping walls adorned with ancient blades long unsharpened, as bitten and crooked as a set of bad teeth … but actually, it’s nothing like that.

Across from American River College, Chance and Chris Wheeler run DarkMoon Armory from inside the bottom floor of their townhouse. Rounds of bailing wire lean against work benches built along the walls.

The Web site is designed from a computer surrounded by books on ancient chain-mail design. Various power tools and boxes of leather share the bottom floor of the townhouse with a playpen where the newest Wheeler naps. In the backyard, two pieces of wood are bound together in an “X” as tall as a man. Shackles hang from various places. Called a St. Andrew’s Cross, it’s a good example of DarkMoon’s “kinky furniture.”

Chance is Sacramento’s own chain-mail, leather, and kinky furniture specialist. He custom designs fetish wear, armor and toys for the goths, the exotic dancers, the pornographers’ models, the live action game players and the fashionable clubbers who love Chance’s chain-mail fashions.

“People are becoming more interested in showing off,” says Chance, who’s popularizing chain-mail bikinis, chain-mail tank tops in intricate Japanese floral patterns, and leather collars and bracers. The bracers buckle or lace up the forearm, resembling an archer’s gear from the Middle Ages.

For the kinkier crowd, Chance makes multi-colored floggers with braided handles. Stocks and other “furniture” have been updated for the crowd that finds the Middle Ages sexy in their barbarity. “There are restraints for the ankles, the head and the wrist,” he says, pointing to a stockade pictured on his Web site, www.chainmaile.com. “The restraints are lined in sheep skin,” he says.

Other options include wooden spanking benches with vinyl-covered pads. “What I noticed was that everything out there was painted black,” says Chance, who incorporates various colors of vinyl and leather and designs his furniture to be folded up and stashed away from prying eyes.

Chris, while she does some of the braiding, is the family’s primary costumer. She designed and created wedding gear for herself, her husband and her oldest daughter, a 3-year-old who wants to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. “If I leave a piece of chain mail on the floor,” says Chance, “she’ll start trying to work on it.”

DarkMoon Armory, www.chainmaile.com, (916) 483-9799.