Steampunk’d.

There was some­thing really sexy about the Industrial-Victorian Era.

We’re not sure if it was the laced corsets, the can­did facial hair, or per­haps sim­ply the excite­ment of an ever-evolving world, but there was some­thing attrac­tive about this period of con­stant discovery. Turn-of-the-century science-fiction nov­el­ists cap­i­tal­ized on the rapid pace at which soci­ety was trans­form­ing and so descrip­tively gave life to visions of “the future,” we are still intrigued– 100 years later. Our gen­er­a­tion seems to have tapped into a nos­tal­gia for the futur­is­tic devices and aes­thetic of the 19th cen­tury, a nos­tal­gia that has seeped into all aspects of mod­ern design. In the spirit of H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft, the style of “steam­punk” (also referred to as the New Victorian) cel­e­brates the Victorian Era on the cusp of the Industrial Revolution. This roman­ti­ciza­tion of the era is evi­denced in rein­vented turn-of-the-century fash­ions, retro­fit elec­tron­ics, and inte­ri­ors with giz­mos and gad­gets a-plenty.

One such inte­rior is the converted-warehouse Chelsea loft of American Filmmaker, Jeremy Noritz. Inspired by his own research into the birth of pho­tog­ra­phy and avi­a­tion dur­ing a time when “strange blimps floated gen­tly through the sky against early indus­tri­al­ized land­scapes,” Noritz cre­ated a zeppelin-inspired world all his own. Described as hav­ing a Jules Verne meets Tim Burton sen­si­bil­ity, the apartment’s main fea­tures include a 32-foot long tech­ni­col­ored zep­pelin sus­pended from the ceil­ing and a green deep-sea sub­ma­rine entry door. Lining the walls are gears, giz­mos, and gad­gets, some dec­o­ra­tive and oth­ers func­tional– like the intri­cate pul­ley sys­tem that low­ers a Murphy bed from the wall.

While we admire his enthu­si­asm — and with­out ques­tion, would love to rock out in a space that cool– we also appre­ci­ate steam­punk in smaller doses. Industrial state­ment pieces can be just the thing to con­trast a clean and mod­ern look; The raw mate­ri­als and machine-forged detail­ing from eras past stand out against a pol­ished con­tem­po­rary back­drop, cast­ing them as both func­tional and sculp­tural elements. Pieces such as a Dickensian draft­ing table or cop­per wash tub could stand alone as art, their intri­cate and whim­si­cal  mech­a­nisms speak for themselves.

We adore Madame Voila’s (Katrien Van Der Schueren) “Handelier”, an avant garde chan­de­lier hand­crafted from per­fo­rated vin­tage alu­minum glove molds. With a 12″ old-school Edison bulb sus­pended inside, light sparkles through the punc­tured holes in the alu­minum and dances around the room. Completely gen­uine, there is noth­ing else like it– both because it was made from reclaimed mate­ri­als and because, well, only Madame Voila could pull it off.

Therein lies the beauty of the Industrial Age: it was an age of explo­ration, inven­tion, and exper­i­men­ta­tion that was reflected in the advances in machin­ery, mak­ing the impos­si­ble, pos­si­ble. Man had only dreamed of such crazy notions as fly­ing, or explor­ing the ocean floor, and here was a time where these dreams came true– it’s easy to see why we’re home­sick for a time where such “magic” took place.

 Sarah Pytlik. HighStreet. Cincinnati.