Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Steampunk Workshop

I've added a link to this site over there in my Good Links because it's a fun place to look around. I found the Steampunk Workshop about a week or so ago; just stumbled on it while surfing. It's one of those serendipitous finds. I guess it's a "modder's" kind of place... this fella Heironymous aka Jake takes modern things like computers and electric guitars and even the wonderful already Altoids tin and does some pretty magickal looking things with 'em.

As a girl growing up, I loved things like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science. Geeked right out on that stuff; to this day, I'm a tech-forward kinda gal. But at the same time, I also get off on the design aesthetics of things about as much as I get off on Fine Art. Jake over there pays marvelous homage to the machine age as he not only modified a computer keyboard and monitor, but styled them to look like things you'd have seen in your grandparent's or great-grandparents parlor somewhere between the late 1800s and the 1920s.

The beauty of his work includes his employment of techniques like galvanic engraving, and electrolytic machining of gears, pins, wheels, cogs and more onto brass sheets -- and he shows the process of it as it goes along. I'm a sucker for this kind of craftsmanship. My grandpa from Hungary was an engineer and machines provided a living for his family including my Da and being a May/December child, I still have a foot stuck in another era where these tangible things, these machines drove material, social and economic progress forward in Europe and the States at an amazing pace.

So do me a favor and go on over to The Steampunk Workshop and have a look around. Whether you're a modder, or dig design, or think Popular Science is cool, it's a dandy place to spend part of your day!

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