On "The lost NY Times Steampunk Feature"

So many months ago, I was interviewed for a New York Times article on Steampunk in domestic life. After the interview, I never heard another word, and assumed the article was killed. (Crushing my "best Christmas letter update ever" dreams, oh well.)

The reporter, however, thought that the article deserved more attention, so he's put it online (and sent Boing Boing a link, if not me). Boing Boing's pull quotes on it are all about me (a bit disconcerting, since the article mentions a number of other people).

I'll let you read the entire article yourself, but here's the bit about me:

Sara Brumfield, a software designer in Austin, Tex., agrees. “The Victorian home was a haven away from all the industrial changes. So machines would be invited into your home instead of just invading your home,” she explains, before admitting, “Look, I work with software all day. So much of the technology we have is not perfect at all; it’s just good enough to work. So we should stop worshipping it.”

She keeps her home steampunk and heavy on antique styling. Her website, The Steampunk Home, recently gushed over the analog dials on Kenmore’s new PRO Series refrigerators.

Her living room features a chemical flask as a vase, a brass steamship clock (a wedding gift), a three-foot-tall 1930s-era radio she found at a garage sale, an ornate brass lamp with red glass she bought at a bazaar in Istanbul, thick red velvet curtains, dark wood flooring, a dulcimer handmade by her husband’s grandfather and distressed Victorian floorlamps with frosted bowls. For a few dollars a pound, she scrounged a salvage yard for a sack of gears that she is using to replace the knobs on her bedside tables. Her bed itself is lit with a brass swing-arm lamp she bought at a thrift store for $10. Her pride and joy is a self-made sun jar in her kitchen, a shredded $6 solar light she put in a frosted hermetic jar to use as a nightlight (it charges during the day and glows at night).

And there’s a more important reason Ms. Brumfield, 32, is a steampunk fan: her 2-year-old daughter, Josie. “I’m a geek. I’m a mechanic’s daughter,” says the mother. “But, if I want to raise a young engineer, how is she going to learn how things work if they’re all wrapped up in plastic casing?”

The article is pretty spot on, but lest you think I'm a bit too into the idea of steampunk as a subculture -- and as the regular readers of this blog know -- I'm just someone who really likes the Steampunk aesthetic and enjoys finding and sharing projects and ideas with others who do as well.

Crazy (Steampunk?) Birdhouses

Another Roger Wood favorite are these "Fowl Dwellings" by artist H. Lynn Peer:

The artist will integrate personal objects, and she will take input into "just how you want it to be." Starting around $300, I think they are a pretty great piece of art for the oft neglected steampunk backyard.

Burlapping your Flat Screen in the NYT

The New York Times has an article about steampunk today.


The best idea I saw in it was a flat screen TV with the ugly plastic hidden by burlap. Simple, elegant, a hack of the best kind. The creator, shown, is Giovanni James, a musician and magician in New York.

Photo by Robert Wright for The New York Times

Zeppelin House?

Ok, so the designers think it's more like a canoe, but Ecogeek likens it to living in a zeppelin, and I'd have to agree.



All those ribs! Curving surfaces! Not quite your everyday steampunk home, now is it? (If only it came in a darker wood....)

More on the CanuHome.

Thanks to Cristi for pointing this out to me.

Nixie Tube Clocks

West Dave is a maker of Nixie Tube Clocks. What's a Nixie Tube, you might ask?

Wikipedia, as always, gives up their secrets: Introduced by Burroughs in 1954, Nixies were used as numeric displays in early digital voltmeters, multimeters, frequency counters and many other types of technical equipment. They also appeared in costly digital time displays used in research and military establishments, and in many early electronic desktop calculators. Nixie was derived by Burroughs from "NIX I", an abbreviation of "Numeric Indicator eXperimental No. 1".



Above: LEDs indicate the hour around the perimeter of the clock, with Nixie tubes indicating the minute and second. Below: An Art Deco clock case refitted with Nixie tube numbers.



The clocks shown here are all by West Dave, but you can easily find Nixie Tube Clock kits online and on eBay to make your own.

Carriage Lantern

Art Donovan is at it again.

I get the impression Art indulges his love of steampunk after he finishes his more mainstream work he says of this one: "I did it one night last month right after the "Pod"" This one has a colonial feel to it -- I'm thinking Salem witch trials or The Legend of Sleep Hollow -- does that make it too early to be a steampunk proper piece?

Octopodes!

In my house, there has been discussion -- quickly squashed by the linguistically inclined -- as to the plural of the word octopus. Although other pluralizations are common, we think "octopodes" is a pretty great word.

stuffed octopus

How, you may ask, do octopodes related to steampunk? I can think of two steampunk references to octopodes. The first, Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the second the Air Kracken -- monsters of the sky, celebrated on March 17th. I'm sure you could come up with more, right?


Reader Caitlyn recently sent me a link to this lovely octopus lamp, and since I missed Air Kracken day a couple months back, I took that as enough excuse for this post.

Gentlemen & Octopus Pillow

Here's the trick with octopodes in the home: there's lots of them out there, but very few have that steampunk flair. You may be able to get away with some of the brighter colors in a bathroom or a kid's room, but I'm not sure I'd put a bright purple or orange octopus in my public rooms. (Unless you really, really, liked it.) Nothing too cute, and the scarier the better.

Black Octopus Pillow

Or perhaps just a foot and a half long giant squid or a 7 inch octopus?