Industry Booms

(ADHDS)

Ghislain Antiques is based out of Saint-Ouen (about 100 miles southwest of Paris), but also has a shop in Stamford, CT.

Overall, they seem to specialize in big, beefy antiques, like big, soft, brown leather club chairs, or this Henry II table:

But more interesting is the majority of their finds seems to be taken from old factories and warehouses, and has an extremely industrial kind of aesthetic.  Here's a low, early-20th-Century table which would make a great coffee table:

These kinds of items have obviously proven popular, and I can see why, myself--I think that's ridiculously cool (although in my NYC apartment, I'd need something a little bit more light and airy--or at least easier to move around).

The representative at the booth was explaining to me, though, that many of the trappings of a present day home can't really be found in a century-old factory.  They'd have no reason to have bookshelves in an environment like that, he pointed out to me, motioning to this piece behind him:

So that's a new piece.  They have a whole selection of pieces in steel to fill in this gap, but still look like they once lived in an old factory building.  

Here's a new coffee table in that vein:

And here's a new dining table and chairs:

 

The table may not be for everyone, and I'd even suggest an entire room furnished this way could get a bit oppressive.  But as I've often said elsewhere, with a few light, delicate items mixed in for contrast and relief, I think this could be gorgeously dramatic, so robust, and at the same time, wonderfully unpretentious.  With a table hinting at being a factory work-surface, one wonders if dinner guests would begin to work as a well-oiled team--more efficiently passing the mashed potatoes and green beans.

 

The chairs are a bit problematic, because they're extremely heavy.  Especially if you're sitting on a rug, you're not going to be able to stand up and just bump the chair out from underneath you with your legs, in fact, it probably wouldn't even budge.  They're not going to treat an antique rug all that kindly, and they'd likely scratch the you-know-what out of a fine wood floor.  I asked the designer if he'd ever thought to use aluminum, thinking he could get essentially the same look at half the weight or so.  He said no, because it's not strong enough of a metal, but I still believe a few adjustments in the design to accommodate a lighter material would make these much more practical.  Nevertheless, the chairs are very comfortable to sit on, and I adore the look of them.

As far as the shelving goes, at first glance one might be inclined to think a collection of fine glassware or heirloom pottery would be served a great injustice arranged on here:

 

I propose exactly the opposite.  First of all, the very delicacy and detail of such a collection would be set into such sharp contrast in a piece like this that their refinement would stand out far more than on some fussy carved wooden china cabinet.  On top of that, the aesthetic of these pieces calls attention to manufacturing, which would highlight the very craft of the pieces on display--why I chose to use hand-thrown pottery as an example.  Subconsciously, the shelving would make a visitor much more aware of how the pieces on it were created.

©2008, Ryan Witte

Steampunk

I'm really extremely excited about Steampunk.  It's very Me, so I don't know why it took me so long to hear about this movement, but I've always loved Jules Verne and automata and all that stuff.

Basically it's like Cyberpunk, but from 1890: retrofuturism from the Victorian Age, as if our current technology had evolved from that period and kept its aesthetic.  It's wonderful.  There's also a branch that goes into fanciful technologies in the Old West, and actually the film Wild, Wild West--a very cool film, by the way--is extremely Steampunk.  I've recently begun watching the 1960s TV show the film was based on, and it's very cool and gadgety, as well.  It occurred to me, watching David Lynch's Dune recently, that that film would sort of fit, too, I believe, because it's futuristic technology with an almost ancient look to it.  Although that's more just exotic than it is specifically Industrial Age Earth.

It seems there's quite a few people building this insane stuff, but one of the major ones seems to be Hieronymous Isambard "Jake" von Slatt, who maintains Steampunk Workshop:

--Photo Wired magazine

He's made the most incredible modification of a desktop computer:

On his website he runs step-by-step through how he made basically every component pretty much from scratch.  At first I figured he'd gotten the keys from an old typewriter, but he even made those completely from scratch, which sort of makes sense, since old typewriters didn't have things like a "control" key.

Von Slatt is shown there with his Steampunk guitar, although I think I like this one, by J. Ritzmann of Thunder Eagle Custom Guitars a bit more:

Another guy doing some serious stuff is Datamancer, and it appears he and von Slatt are friends or at least know each other.

Datamancer has made the most incredible modification of a laptop computer:

There are a lot more images of that, including some of the steps in doing the modification, on his website.  I'd seen them before but couldn't get them to load for me this time, maybe you'll have better luck than I did.  Anyway, I think it's really extraordinarily beautiful, and so cool.  The casing I believe is from an old music box, but much of the rest of it was created from scratch as well.

This is Datamancer's "Opti-Transcripticon":

Which is actually a flatbed scanner:

One of the other things they love playing with is pleonasm, which is like ridiculously long, unnecessarily complicated names for things.  Sort of like the way Monty Burns talks--which I've always loved--for lack of a better analogy.  

So this is Datamancer's "Nagy Magical-Movable-Type Pixello-Dynamotronic Computational Engine," which he says is still being worked on:

Here's also the "Electriclerk" (creator unknown), found on etoday:

If you'd like hand-control of your new-fangled machine, a guy named Unklian has created a mouse with an "on-board furnace":

I think it's powered by some kind of crystal?

And here's one by (presumably) another guy named Jake, which is designed to control something called a "Telecalculograph":

The third guy who would seem to be a major force with this stuff has a blog on here, as well, Alex CF.  He's evidently made props for movies and stuff like that.  He made spectacles that allow you to see the undead.  While Alex's work doesn't really use much real technology, which is what I find so amazing about von Slatt and Datamancer, the really cool thing is that he creates apparatus for fictional science of his own imagining, so it's really pretty awesome.  

For instance, this is a Martian Botanical Preservation Device:

For keeping plants found on Mars alive for scientific study, no doubt.

This is a Chrono-Displacement Device:

It creates wormholes allowing its user to travel through time.

I'm not exactly sure what "The Inquisitor" does, but I'm convinced it's something very awesome:

Here's another extremely cool piece of headgear (creator unknown) found on etoday:

One of the things I definitely want to accessorize myself is one of these watches.  They're really incredible.  Rumor would have it that they're either not for sale or extremely difficult to purchase, but maybe sometime in the near future.  Here are a bunch found on Akihabara News:

And a couple found at Eager-Beavers:

Last but not least, we musn't forget the kiddies.  This is the funniest thing at Dr. A's Spookypop, a website you absolutely must visit, because their stuff is out of control.  This, though, is "Pac Gentleman" by Erick Scarecrow:

I don't think it really works, but who cares? It's evidently from the "Secret History of Video Games." Pac Gentleman wears a bowler hat and the ghosts have handlebar mustaches. Brilliant.

©2007, Ryan Witte