Steampunk making from the State Library’s collection

Moustaches?

• Steampunk is an inspired movement of creativity and

imagination. With a backdrop of either Victorian England

or America’s Wild West at hand, modern technologies

are re-imagined and realized as elaborate works of art,

fashion, and mechanics. If Jules Verne or H.G. Wells

were writing their science fiction today, it would be

considered “steampunk.” www.ministryofpeculiaroccurrences.com

• Neil Stephenson’s The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's

Illustrated Primer (1995)

• Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day (2006)

Something is happening here …

• Bookends Scenarios 2009:

– Local, organic, hand-made PLUS connected, tech-savvy,

Global

• Post-modern society – past, present, future all at once

– Hipster Aesthetic, Creative Anachronists, “Artisans”

• The Library as source, inspiration and enabler

How to make and do things …

The Stacks

The real SRL Card catalogue

Steam Engines 1700s to 1900s

Making – Metalwork, blacksmithing (1906)

Making – Dried Fruit (1944)

Making – Barber techniques (1851)

Making – Coach (1902)Popular Australian vehicles

Making – Measurement (1881 / 1879)

Making –Wooden Boats (1944)

Making .. Anything? Perfume, charcoal, stained glass ..

Making - 1884 Beer

… more Cards

Vintage and hotrods

Research Cards

eclectic

eclectic 2

eclectic 3

Boring Machines ?

Trade Catalogues

Trade Catalogues – playground equipment (1938)

Trade Catalogues – Tractors.. Safes

Trade Catalogues – period features

Trade Catalogues– period features

Original Materials – #1880Sydney

Audience

• Makers

• Restorers

• Tinkers, hoarders, collectors …

• Handypeople

• Guilds

• Men’s Sheds

• Creative Anachronists, rockabilly, hot rod enthusiasts, hipsters…

• Historians, Antique enthusiasts, cosplayers, LARPs

• Designers, craftspeople, manufacturers….

Lunch