Spurred by Stoaty’s post in The Weasel Times and Stoat Intelligencer I had to wonder… WHY do we not have more grace in our furniture, buildings, bridges, condoms, gummi-bears, etc.? And I don’t mean “why don’t we have boobs on our furniture?” I mean art and attention to detail and perhaps more than a little bit of love of elegant lines in hand-fashioned hardware.
Now I happen to love victorian influences in design and think SteamPunk is really cool. Some people think it is passe, but I think they’re just lacking in character. Here’s an example of what I am talking about – SteamPunk Workshop
As I posted on Stoaty’s blog, a suggestion to my project manager that it would be cool to put some victorian flair into my designs resulted in “the look”. It wasn’t a good look but neither was it the look you get from your wife or from your mother during childhood. It was the look of someone whom you have just suggested that dipping kittens in muriatic acid would be fun.
Saith the Boss: Victorian elements have no place in aerospace components
All right, already. Chill. I exaggerate a bit, but the answer was still a curt “No.”
Anyway, I was just surfing aimlessly around the ‘net, hadn’t really caught a wave. I was more of a buoy on the capricious sea of information we call the web, when I ran across SteamPunk Workshop and began to get very interested in electrochemical etching. They do brass, but I don’t want a lot of particulate byproduct or for my solution to get used up, so I settled on copper plates and copper sulfate for the etchant. I now have all the elements I need to etch designs onto copper and will give it a try tomorrow. Another inspirational place was Cedric Green’s site, Green Prints – wonderful stuff there.
Last link for today, also Victorian Monocycle Please note that this predated South Park’s episode where Mr. Garrison invents a truly invasive version of the thing. This is a replica of a 1873 design.
That’s it for today, kids.
- LK
