Chris wrote to me some time ago to point out the works of Henri Van Herwegen, who goes by the name Panamarenko.  Panamarenko’s works include a great many variations on the love of flight, particularly human powered or human centred – so there are giant wing cars, bubble spaceships, a beautiful, fan-filled flying backpack (which frequently exploded in tests, thank heaven for Kevlar) and my most adored – the above Aeromodeller zeppelin, originally created in 1971 in order to fly to France, swoop down on Brigitte Bardot and rescue her from the maddening crowd.

Alas, Ms Bardot went un-rescued, and the zeppelin un-flown, partly due to a disgruntled farmer, partly due to multiple legal telegrams threatening jail time if Mr Herwegen attempted it.  Still!  It’s a beautiful creature, and one that probably would have flown – mahogany propellers powered by four flymo engines, and filled with oxygen or occasionally hydrogen(!).

The official site defies specific links, but I do like playing with the balloon on the page.  So light and floaty.  Also, what a beautiful setting the aeromodeller is situated in, in the image above!

All Aboard for Cloudland, originally uploaded by ponto.

“Susie and her little sister were a little nervous when they began their first ride on the transcontinental blimp express. Only the pilot appeared confident.”

Oh, kittens in an airship – a combination that I cannot resist. This is a photograph by Harry Whittier Frees (1879-1963, caption his) who dressed animals up in human like clothing, with props and photographed them for postcards and books. The photograph above is from the Flickr pool of Ponto, of the Animals Aloft book (UK, US) which also includes Kiddo the airship cat, posted previously.

“These unusual photographs of real kittens, puppies, and bunnies were made possible only by patient unfailing kindness on the part of the photographer at all times.”

Which is a bit of a relief – apparently he found the whole thing so stressful that he would do the photography for only three months in the year, the rest of the time spent preparing props and costumes.

Perhaps you are less fond of kittens and would prefer a bunny in an airship instead? Well, Mr Frees had you covered there also. There’s quite a lot of other Harry Whittier Frees photographs at the Calvin Pelorian Cat Project, a site that adores anthromorphising photographs, though I strongly suggest that you do not attempt anything like this yourself. Please, think of the kittens!

Mr Woodson (via the House & Garden site) writes to tell of a shop called Urban Archeology.  Now, don’t be dissapointed that it doesn’t advocate digging up your neighbours garden to find treasure, but what it does have is a perfectly wonderful collection of lights.  My personal favourite category is the Exterior Wallmount lights, because it features the ‘Harbour’ light (above right) and the ‘Marine Cover’ light (above left) – and they’re all available in four different brass finishes!  (And some other finishes, but brass is my favourite).  There’s shiny, green patina, brown patina and antique brass – and it has to be said that some of them would not look out of place on or around the Nautilus or earth drilling vessel.

They are pricey, as this does seem to be a rather high end shop (which caters to shop fitting also) but it certainly fires the imagination – I find it interesting that I am drawn to the ‘caged light’ look for my Steampunk fittings, for example, despite the fact the site is full to the gills of deco and nouveau, and quite a few eastern looking fittings also.  Thank you, Mr Woodson – what a facinating find.

nzE2WTEkHeg I was browsing Flickr today, and discovered a lovely photograph of a modern looking pedal powered airship (and it wasn’t the familiar White Dwarf Blimp that we’ve sighed over before).  A little bit of sleuthing, and the magnificience that is Zeppy the pedal-powered, golden airship, was revealed!  (Beware, the site is a little… rough around the edges.)

A French airship, they intend to cross the English Channel some time this year, perhaps June, (I could not find a firmer date, if you do please let me know) and be the first pedal powered, helium filled airship to do so.  They apparenty reach speeds exceeding 20kmph (12.5mph) and well – while that may not sound terribly fast, what I wouldn’t give to quietly pedal above the trees under a shining gold airship envelope, like a drop of liquid gold hanging impossibly in the sky.  I apologise, but personal airships are quite the Steampunk dream for me. But enough of my wistfulness!  More information and visuals – the site itself has quite a few lovely photographs, and a .wma video of delightful clarity of the airship above a glass-like water surface.  I don’t really think he’s dressed for airship travel, but I suppose the top hat would keep falling off.  sighs  Oh!  And the above video on YouTube is part 2 of 2, the previous part is here.

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Mr Angus McQuarrie (what a good name, Mr McQuarrie), writes to tell me about a new novel for the younger of heart Steampunk fans – a tale of two orphan children, worlds apart, who are caught up in a terrible series of events involving an evil that was thought vanquished so long ago. Entitled The Court of the Air (Amazon.co.uk) by Stephen Hunt, it does not hide it’s Steampunk theming but revels in it!  There are airships and poorhouses, mechanical men and merchant uncles – it sounds fantastic!  (It’s on my list of books to read, most certainly.)

At the official site, www.TheCourtOfTheAir.com, there’s two chapters free to download, and a flash version of the ‘trailer’ (can you have a trailer for a book?) also.  The flash version is of course much sharper than the compressed YouTube version above.  Nice little hook though – I mean, mechanical men and airships!  I’m not sure it can get much better than that.

These are simply perfect – seen on BoingBoing today (what a find, Mr Doctorow!) they’re by the Deviantart user Y4G3R (who I believe also goes by Mr M. Edward Yager, but I could be wrong).  They are real, brass goggles, also including bronze, copper, stainless steel, springs, plastic lenses and more.  So delightfully Steampunk that it makes my heart ache – you should see them folded! The rest of Mr Y4G3R’s gallery has some other fine examples – there’s a monocle, freely pivotable manual transition spectacles (think gyroscopes) and ‘Esti-Vision’ Specs – for those who find X-Ray vision so last century.  Much to my purses terror, it seems that Mr Yager also has an Etsy shop, and takes commisions ($60 or so for manual transmission style sunglasses, and $105 for sterling silver Esti-Visions or thereabouts).  Oh my.  Ah wait – no, it seems they only ship to the US.  Perhaps I will eat this month after all.  Thanks to a mysterious gentleman from New Zealand, to Mr Hill, Mr(?) Worthstream and Mr Beaty.

Mr AndyW wrote to point out the works of musical circuitsmith, Tim Kaiser of AtomicSonic.  While the majority of the works are themed too late for Steampunk, there are a few (such as the ones above) that I wouldn’t mind having sat in a bakelite enabled (1908-ish) electrically focused laboratory!

The items above are ‘FX Boxes’, and there are a few styled for wooden cases, as you’ve seen above.  Others fit inside retrofuturistic geiger counters, or have big warning lights on them, and brushed steel rollcages – so for the most part, the ‘atomic’ part of the name is very well earned indeed!  Still, lots of fun and you can hear samples of some of these custom items – quite peculiar.  Do take a look at such treasures as the Solar Theramin (also wooden encased) and the Monterery Fun FX Box!  Many thanks, Mr W!

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Forgive me for location dropping, but I was at Chasewater Railway steam day recently, and in the shop I bought a Victorian Household memorabelia pack filled with replical printed sundries from the era. Made by the Memorabilia Pack Company, it’s just one of several historically themed replica packs. This one, I was delighted to find, contained a copy of the first Exchange and Mart (where you can find people willing to trade songs for sewing machines), a tax return form for declaring your carriages and male servants, a brochure on blankets, a colour advert for globe gas lamps and best of all – a folded A5 pamplet (above) for the amazing, astounding Carbolic Smoke Ball! Cure all your ailments, or £100s is yours! (Except, it wasn’t – and it went down in legal history because of it.) Perfectly lovely and with so much over the top Victorian marketing, it reminds me just how close to the bone Steampunk faux-adverts can be (as seen in the cover pages of “Larklight” for example).

You may remember the good Professor Fzz’s previous copper tubing lamp – well he has created another, inspired by the look of a steam engine water level tube (much like the one on the back of a fire engine).  Not only are there beautiful photographs of the finished article (and surrounded by so much brass!) but there is yet another amazingly detailed page on the construction of the lamp as well.  Professor Fzz really does have a way with Steampunk themed light sources, it must be said, and an ingenius use of all those shiny connectors and pipe bits that I so frequently see in my local DIY warehouse, but cannot think of an excuse to let me buy.

I also like to point out that the good Professor now has a site where he has collected his various lamps and indeed some wonderfully steam themed photographs both modern and antique – Steam, Brass and Fzz.  Lovely!

This is a review from the ever interesting Madam Grand Duchess from the forums, of the Japanese Gakken science kit Hooke Microscope.  She has recently recieved the kit through the post and wrote a perfectly wonderful review from the a Steampunk enthusiast’s view:

“The box containing the parts for the microscope had a magazine attached to it and the entire thing was in Japanese.  Yet even without looking at the extensive illustrated instructions, I was able to put the two part set-up together in approximately 10 minutes (probably a bit less than that.

Steampunkishness: 9 out of 10. Even though Robert Hooke invented his microscope in 1665, the same type of apparatus is still, with only slight modifications, used today.  The gold stick-on foil makes the microscope look truly nice, and if one wanted to paint the plastic and make it look like metal, one could easily do that.  The whole thing looks like a cute version of something Victor von Frankenstein would have had in his laboratory, and the setup will look quite spiffy on a bookshelf, especially if it is sitting next to test tubes and other items.  Besides, Robert Hooke was so protosteampunk it’s not even funny.“

Thank you so much, Madam Duchess – it’s wonderful to read a review from the Steampunk point of view before purchase!