Inspiration: Ralph Lauren Home

It shouldn't surprise me (since I own a very steampunk miltary jacket by the same company), but it did. The Ralph Lauren Company, which has been doing "vintage Americana" styles for almost as long as I have been alive, is a treasure trove of decorating ideas that fit the steampunk aesthetic. I am most impressed by the styling of their photo shoots -- 80% of the items in the pictures are not for sale, but simply to create ambience. (They have plenty of products, too, but they tend to be pricey. I've seen occasional pieces on deep discount at stores like Marshall's, and discount linens at Ross.)



The above bookshelf, for instance, could be improvised readily with steel pipe, painted a glossy black, topped with furniture grade shelving. (From the New Bohemian Collection, which is the most steampunk of the collections.)


The camp chair, above, appears in many of the collections. I think there are plenty of wooden folding chairs out there that could be made steampunk with a brocade or leather, perhaps some brass accents.


This photo frame seems like a simple fabrication with some stripped brass canisters.

In the Hilter Hills Collection you find a maritime influenced collection with interesting 'workroom' style furniture.

The La Boheme collection has elements of Gothic Steampunk -- lots of blacks and reds.

And, to a lesser extent, The Sheltering Sky Collection, The Secretariat Collection (it's very horsey), and The Desert Hills Collection for some Western Steampunk.

Conant Custom Brass

Conant Custom Brass is a custom brass fabricator in Vermont. Their online shop is chock full of steampunk styled items -- you just have to poke around a bit to find them. There are lovely clocks and rain gauges -- like the float and level rain gauge (of their own design) shown above. They have brass table fans and an adjustable brass draftsman table lamp.

They even have things I've never heard of before -- brass "dust corners" -- triangles that can be installed in stair corners to simplify sweeping:


They do a lot of historical commisions and custom work.

If any of you steampunk engineers need some inspiration, I suggest reverse engineering their illuminated signs: When an image is etched into the smooth surface of plate glass that's illuminated from the side, it glows magically. Letters and graphics give the impression they're generating their own light


And, just in case you were doubting their steampunk cred, they even make rayguns.

Tip of the Hat to Apartment Therapy

Carbon Arc Lights

Carbon Arc Light Originally uploaded by Curious Expeditions

Carbon Arc Lamp Cools Down
Originally uploaded by Curious Expeditions

To continue our recent fascination with light bulbs, Michelle, over at Curious Expeditions, found these carbon arc lights at the Electrotechnical Museum in Budapest. She says "They give off an eerie, shifting, pearlescent glow."

Aren't they lovely?

She has a full set of pictures from the museum on Flickr.

If you'd like to read more about antique bulbs, see Kilokat's Antique Light Bulb Site.

The Smell of Steampunk

I have been meaning for a while to write about Douglas Little, a "modern alchemist" and indeed, I will write at more depth at a later time on his exquisite dark taste that overlaps steampunk. (Among other notable things, he introduced Andy Paiko to the "general public" -- assuming you consider shoppers at Barney's the "general public.")

For today, however, I wanted to introduce you to his Modern Alchemy Candles. I don't normally include candles in my home decorating, but Mr Little's were too hard to pass up -- I'm afraid I just ordered his Tincture of Winchester. I couldn't resist infusing my house with the scent of "wood, 19th century lacquer, and smoky gunpowder."

If, perhaps, you are more of a pacifist steampunk you may prefer some of his other scents:

opium den: collapse in a languid, hazy cloud of resin, opiates and tobacco fumes

ex libris: antiquated leather-bound volumes of handmade papers and parchment permeate and seduce the senses

coney island: briny ocean scents with popcorn and machinery

speak easy: gin, pipe tobacco, and discretion

Simple Edison Bulb creates an easy steampunk lighting fixture

Wandering around the aethernet today, I stumbled across this interesting observation:
...the late Victorians had a different attitude towards light bulbs than we do today. To them an exposed light bulb looked stylish and modern, to us it's a symbol of decrepitude and poorness. We hide light bulbs behind shades and diffusers. The Victorians liked to show them off.

The blogger, Deadprogrammer, goes on to point out the Edison bulb (pictured to the right) and a simple unadorned fixture, both from Rejuvenation, that would be appropriate for showing it off. (I can personally vouch for Rejuvenation -- I have ordered lighting fixtures from them and been extremely pleased with both the quality and stylishness of their products.)

One of Rejuvenation's creative customers put a series of these together in a way that combines the modern and the traditional -- a tension that is at the heart of steampunk.

A Steampunk Kitchen

A steampunk kitchen is a challenge. Victorian kitchens were dark, hidden spaces not the center of a home kitchens are today. I recently ran across this kitchen in an early 90s design book --
Mary Gilliatt's Shortcuts to Great Decorating (the kitchen itself was designed by Pedro Guedes)and immediately thought it would appeal to steampunk aficionados.

What makes this kitchen steampunk, to me, is the wonderful woodworking and the cluttered "laboratory" feel of it.

The cabinets, I'm afraid, are custom work, and would require finding a local woodworker to manufacture for you (unless you happened to be particularly talented yourself in that way). The closest I could find online were craftsman style cabinets at kitchen design stores like Mosaik Design in Portland, Oregon.

I did find a pair of concertina arm brass lamps, like the ones pictured, at an online antiques site for -- gulp -- £358 pair.

The white marble counter top? Again, pricey, but available at most kitchen design places or even your big box home improvement stores. Apartment Therapy had a good article on white marble counter tops a while back.

Gooseneck faucets are easy to find. Here's one at online retailer Plumbing World.

What about the clutter? Do you really need my suggestions on that? I'd get a test tube spice rack. Store your pastas and beans in plain sight or in glass doored cabinets in old fashioned looking glass jars. Fill in with neat containers found in thrift stores or antique shops.

Spending this kind of money on a kitchen doesn't quite strike me as a steampunk approach to things -- where's the reuse? Where's the do it yourself? If you like the look, I'd suggest a lot of patience and looking at unfinished furniture stores, Ebay and architectural salvage yards. I think you could create something with a similar feel -- perhaps with a commission to build a spice rack like the one towards the left in the picture -- with quite a bit of ingenuity.

A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement

If you are interested in what decorative brasswork looked like shortly after the Victorian era (the appropriately named "Gilded Age"), and you live in New York, you should check out this exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center: A Brass Menagerie: Metalwork of the Aesthetic Movement

An article in Antiques and Arts Online says: " While the Aesthetic movement evolved in reaction to industrialization, it was also a result of it. The new and fanciful embellishments of art brass and bronze would not have been possible without the expansion of technology. American art brass began as an aesthetic counterpoint to the dark and heavy rooms of the Victorian era. As a bright spot, it caught on quickly, relieving the ponderousness of period furnishings." As such, it's not very steampunk, but it is of interest to those of us who like brass.

For those of us who don't live in New York, there's an exhibit catalog.