There is a kind of Steampunk fever spreading little by little over France.
Now and then, clockwork designs, XIXth century flavoured ads, gears can be seen on TV, posters or magazines. I was browsing recently one of my favourite literature leaflet when I fell on Sam Van Olffen’s pictures.
This artist is a young graphic sampler, as he likes to call himself, from Montpellier (South of France) who really deserves to be known among the Steampunk community. The artwork speaks for itself. He worked for the music industry, publishing houses and also did the design of an retro-future exhibition.
I personally enjoy that biomechanical Napoleon !

Mr Jesse van Dijk is a conceptual artist and illustrator from The Netherlands, whose Project Indigo may be of particular interest to the steampunk enthusiasts (though his portfolio in general is of extraordinary quality).

Project Indigo envisions a vertical seaside metropolis in a world where dry land is extremely precious. The city is constructed around a huge pillar in a cavity in the seas, in seventeenth-century European style. Because flat ground is so rare, only the wealthy can afford to live atop the pillar, where the climate is comfortable and sun-hours are plentiful. Further below dwell the poorer, their lives illuminated by artificial light from mostly oil lamps, as depicted in the painting above, which shows the city at 300 metres down.

Please visit Mr Van Dijk’s Website to explore the fascinating world of Indigo, and of course to appreciate the other paintings of this talented artist!

By golly, I love seeing steampunk in the everyday, even if it is a country that I don’t live in. This particular photograph, taken by anesterik, is taken in the Arts & Métiers metro station in Paris. The Musée des Arts + Metiers is a deliciously fun museum, full of Victorian machines, laboratories, and amazing industrial creations. (Mentioned before, here.)

What is particularly neo-Victorian, however, is the métro station leading to the museum. Redesigned relatively recently, it was made with the fullest intention to look like the interior of a Verne-esque submersible. I love that it is so evocative, with the brass walls, the portholes and the simplicity of the gears in the ceiling. If only I could walk through this station every day…

I recently spotted this truely magnificent jewelry over at gizmodo, manufactured by edm designs (her shopping page at Etsy).

Rings, neclaces and cufflinks all made from copper and brass and the like, puzzeled toghether from old clockwork and various odds and ends.

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ChannelWeb.com was named one of the “Ten Great Media Web Sites” by B2B Magazine’s Media Business In July 2007. This past week they did a very nice 24 page article on Steampunk titled “Steampunk Rising”

Datamancer, Jake Von Slatt, Doktor A, Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich  and G.D.Falksen are all there with many others.

Speaking of Datamancer, have you ever found your self drooling over his work?  Well you’re in luck he has a one of a kind up for sale here: Custom Brass and Marble 22″ Steampunk LCD by Datamancer.  If you can, go buy your self a work of art that works.

A quick reminder (as I shall be travelling and preparing soon) that today is the day (the 7th) for getting yourself down to your nearest Telectroscope end (London or New York), encountering other Steampunk fans, and waving to those across the pond! 

London: 7pm

New York: 2pm

For those in the London area, remember that White Mischief - 80 Days Around The World event is on shortly afterwards and this would be the perfect start to a wonderful evening! 

Arrive promptly on either end of the great trans-atlantic viewing tube, and the good people of the Telectroscope may well be able to get us to the front of the queue.  (And if you see either of these dubious looking ladies, do say hello.)

Dearest Bretheren and Sisteren:

Dr. Ding courteously invites you to gaze upon the many fine and mystical offerings of Madame Talbot’s Victorian Lowbrow™. It is a decidedy bizarre place, not for the feeble of constitution, containing many gruesome and spectral offerings for your consumption. No, not the tubercular kind of consumption. My but you are rather a literal creature, aren’t you? No mind, gentle reader. Read on.

Suffering from phantasms due to sudden limb loss? Madame Talbot has wrought only the finest cure known to medical science!

Perhaps you merely require a slightly macabre dental daguerrotype to display in your medical chirurgery? Look no further.

Or perchance one of your loved ones is much aggrieved with melancholy humor and is in dire need of one of Madame Talbot’s handmade Mourning Dolls? Dr. Ding finds their visages quite agreeable, in a most distinctive and singularly dreadful way.

I must confess although I have no actual need for the occult curious featured by the good Madame, I find myself inexplicably drawn to them, as if by some unseen hand. You don’t suppose this supernatural phenomenon is borne qua the mighty aetheric powers of something like this do you? I must summon my Evil Manservant Jeebes at once and have him bring me the chequebook anon. Forthwith and posthaste!

Mr Art Donovan is a most talented inventor who has been building lovely steampunk lamps for quite some time now, and clocks lately too!

This photograph depicts the crown of the “Thin White Duke,” a steampunk table lamp standing 50″ tall and measuring 21″ wide at its lampshade. It is entirely hand-made of solid mahogany, brass, bronze mesh and steel–and the bulbs operate independently by brass control sticks on the base!

Mr Donovan maintains a wonderful collection of some of his finest creations at a Website we definitely recommend you check out!

The great and random patrickwilsonmusic.com has just done us all a great favor. He took his father’s aviation goggles and has made a wonderful tutorial on how to reproduce them, including scale pattens that can be printed from the web site. Easy! & Free!

I’m sure you could have a great deal of fun making your own.

Look here for how to make your own Aviation Goggles.

Tell me what you think of this premise: An international team of astronauts lands on the Moon in the 1960’s. While exploring their landing site, they come across a dusty Union Flag and a scrip of paper claiming the moon in the name of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, in the Year of Our Lord Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Nine.

A rather stellar premise, wot? If you think this premise is as good as I did, you may be tempted to seek out the 1964 film H.G. Wells’ First Men in the Moon. A word in your ear before you do so: the movie fails to live up to its premise. Gadzooks, does it fail.

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