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.

Results of...The Challenge

The moment you've all been waiting for: what results would a designer not familar with steampunk come up with when given the mission of redecorating a bedroom in a steampunk syle? (This blog is almost as good as reality TV, isn't it? OK, perhaps not.)

If you'll remember, a couple weeks back I posted about a company, Design By Photo, that I was engaging to propose a steampunk design for my bedroom. The results are above.

Here's what Lynn Cimino, the designer of of Design by Photo has to say about it:

Please find your room makeover attached. I want to thank you for introducing me to steampunk, I love it! That's not to say I think I have the style absolutely defined here but...

Looking at the steampunk thing from a designers angle it makes a lot of sense. A basic design theory is called opposition, where elements of the room work together due to their differences rather than their sameness. I think that is the appeal of steampunk. The strong contrast between Victorian refinement and industrial grit, old technology vs new etc. makes it very interesting. It's also a green concept as we need to stop buying so much new and find ways to salvage and reuse.

The challenge of this design style is not to make it look like a theme restaurant. For this reason, and because its a bedroom, I kept the "staging" to a minimal and I brought the cold industrial elements on the walls to contrast the simple but elegant, linen bedding. I've wrapped the main wall in a custom, sepia toned mural (actually free, well almost free at :http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/howto-free-and-huge-custom-poster-for-your-wall/ ) and used copper ceiling tiles on the two walls which share the closet and bath. The challenge will be finding the right image. The wall opposite the bed should be more quiet, perhaps a warm metallic paint from Ralph Lauren. Rich, heavier fabric could be used on the window wall in the window treatments. I thought your existing dressers, tables played into the style fine. I've added some copper pipe pulls to the dressers. Two pharmacy lamps in a nickel finish would be nicer to read by and seem to pop out from the wreckage of the mural. I've given a second life to half of an old suitcase as a tray table. A fitted, tufted cushion could also make this a useful prop for reading or for a laptop. An old belt brings in some of the old west and dresser up a throw pillow.


To be fair to Lynn, I also want to include my "before" photo -- in all it's cluttered glory, so you can see what she had to work around and why some parts of the "after" look the way it does.


One of the things that pleased me is that she used a lot of elements I have been thinking about for this room. The pharmacy lamp sconces. The tin ceiling tiles (I was thinking for the ceiling though -- using them on a wall is an interesting idea!). The metallic paint. The heavy curtains (I'm thinking velvet or damask). Part of what I needed from a design was validation of some of my ideas, and I did get that. I also like how she reused much of the existing furniture -- the bed was a requirement, but I didn't realize that dresser would work so well, and I'm thrilled that she kept my round mirrors over the dressers.

The brillant idea here, though, is the mural. I would never have thought of that. I'm not quite sure I'm brave enough to implement it, but I really like the idea. If you could find a nice closeup of some steam engine parts... cog wheels... pipes... wouldn't that work well? I'd perhaps go for a more brass toned mural than the sepia, but it's definitely a way to bring "steampunk" into the room. Gentle readers, do you have any ideas for pictures I could use to do this?

Overall, the metallic shades she used were a bit more copper based (perhaps because of my recent posts on using copper pipe) than brass based, and we all know what the steampunk preference is. So I'm thinking brass more than copper for the ceiling tiles and drawer pulls.

What you don't see in this view (and Lynn only does 1 view per project) is my windows and the opposite side of the room. I think I'd go with a deep red velvet/damask valance over my very long window with my chaise lounge uphostered in the same fabric. I like the the idea of simple bedcoverings for summer -- I have a white cotton duvet cover I could use -- but prefer something in a heavier fabric (the same deep red?) for winter.

update 6/28/2007: I'm collecting potential pictures for the mural on this kaboodle list. If you know of any other good ones, send me a link!

New Feature: Shopping List

Would you scroll down to the bottom of this page? Please? Go ahead, I'll wait for you.

.
.
.
.
.
.

Did you notice my new feature? It's a Kaboodle shopping list. Actually, it's the most recent 6 things off of my 168 item and still going strong steampunk home shopping list. I've been putting things there for a while, as I trawl the web looking for things that have a steampunk appeal. It's not very edited -- some things may not actually be steampunk, or may just be sort-of steampunk, or may be more cyberpunk. I may delete things off of it. I may reorganize it at will -- I'm trying to have categories and to put things into the appropriate categories, but I don't always get around to it. Some things I may decide warrant an entire blog post. But I wanted to share the list with you, so the next time you find yourself staring at the ceiling wondering where you are going to get a hanging globe or an antique tractor seat you know where to start.

Oh, what's that? You'd like to see the whole thing? Sure. Just click on over to the list in Kaboodle. Or, if you have the patience, you can watch the whole thing here, in a slide show.

steampunk home by saracarl