En L'An 2000: Underwater Croquet Party, French Futurist Postcard c.1900
Undersea habitation and diving suit technology enable leisure recreation beneath the ocean in this whimsical futurist vision. Four figures clad in brass diving helmets and period Victorian dress play croquet on the sandy ocean floor, mallets swinging amid wickets while fish drift lazily overhead through green-tinted water. The contrast of utterly mundane bourgeois recreation transplanted to an exotic submarine environment captures the era's optimistic belief that future technology would simply extend Edwardian social pleasures into impossible new frontiers.
It's jolly clever seeing ladies in fancy dresses playing croquet under the sea with fish swimming round their heads, but honestly I wish there were sea monsters or a submarine battle instead of just a garden party with helmets on. Still, Mum would never believe people might actually do this someday!
“EN L'AN 2000 A Croquet Party”
