Steampunk Summer #7: Design And Modify All Things!
After you’ve learned a lot about steampunk and you look steampunk-ish, now it is time to change world around you to look more steampunk. Gadgets, knick-knacks, design in general, make your world a modern day equivalent of first industrial revolution. Arts and Crafts movement, dash of Art Noveau, a bit of goth, handful of punk and all layered in thick coat of Victorian-esque aesthetic. I apologize in advance for bunch of links, but If i put every picture that I want in this post, well, it would consist mainly of pictures.
OK, Modify… Gears? Guns? Clocks?
A lot of people when you mention modifying something to look steampunk, outside fashion domain, think of making water guns into ray guns. Polished brass, iron, wood, and leather are main materials to use. Or at least materials that look like them. But it goes beyond that. Yes, mainly things are modified because of steampunk aesthetics but that doesn’t mean that they are pure eye candy. Lines between tools and decoration are blurred.
Gears are one of the most used decorative items when modifying. I personally think that that is the reason why clocks are so often modified. Gears are included! Bad joke aside, clocks are perfect for display of steampunk decoration-yet-tool principle. They are useful because they tell us time, but they are also very decorative, either on your wrist or on your wall. Sometimes it’s easier to modify something in your house, because you will not be afraid and/or embarrased to use it in your own four walls.
Interior And The Rest Of The Design
Steampunk Home has become a defunct blog, for more over a year. Title is self describing, it shows how you can incorporate steampunk in your own home. It also shows other people’s offices, kitchen, or other steampunk designed rooms. If that is too much for you, you can start with a nook or simple object, like light fixture.
Here is an article from Decoist with several excellent steampunk designed interiors. If you’re still not ready for that leap of interior design faith, you can always go to some of few and very apart public places if you’re close enough. For example, Metal and Lace bar in Austin, Texas. I’m still searching for one in my vicinity.
But how will you get there? Perhaps on your bike or in a car? I’m sure you will play your gig there on your guitar and show off your new tattoo. After that, somebody will celebrate a birthday with a cake. Maybe somebody will take a picture of it all, with an iPhone. Or maybe you’ll go home and play with your kids in a treehouse. You’ll work on your laptop and take your documents on a USB stick. Later you will relax and try to play with your Xbox, while trying to distract your kids with old-school GameBoy. And in the morning, you’ll make a toast.
Do It Yourself
This last passage was just a cute story to showcase how diverse steampunk can be with everyday items. If you want to modify them yourself, you’ll probably need to take a few DIY courses, especially if you never used glue gun, saw, took a brush in our hands or welded anything. There will be pipes, faucet connectors, resters, copper fittings, metal sheets, wires, clamps, brass elements, thermometers, barometers, knobs, hooks, screws, plastic parts that will need spraying and a few things more. Steampunk devil is in the details.
If you need more in-details on how-to do something there are great resources online. For example, Steampunk Workshop is one of the best and popular sites with various DIY projects and more steampunk information. Less informational, but much more eye-catching is Steampunk Lab.
For those that are too clumsy or lazy, there is always a solution, usually in a way of (online) shopping. Datamancer is excellent for those who crave for computers and gadgets. If you are looking for a bit more affordable steampunk guns, The VAPTC is excellent source.
Steampunk is something that mainly lives in fiction. But, things like Wuppertal Suspension Railway in Germany (pictured above) show that it’s design was, and is, very much alive in the real world. After we’ve taught you almost everything that there is to know about steampunk, learned you how to look steampunk, now is almost time to let you out in the world. In the next, and last, installment of Steampunk Summer we’ll talk about cons, fairs and all things social media.
