Doktor A’s official art showcase kicks off in St. Columbus, Ohio on June the 7th, as you can see in the beautifully designed leaflet above. The show will act as an initial primer for the upcoming mini series “Mechtorians”, released by Doktor A in partnership with MindStyle, the previews of which were seen at New York ComicCon with a selection of rare paint masters being made available. However, for all you British fans out there, you can meet and greet the good Doktor this Saturday (May 17th) at the Richard Goodhall Gallery in Manchester from 12 till 5 PM. Signings will also be taking place at the gallery as well as a variety of customs and prints also being available from an array of artists. Yet it gets better! Although not directly a Steampunk artist, Kathie Olivas will also be in attendance, her fans including Doktor A and Doctor Steel to name a few.

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Photo (from left): Meaghan, G.D.Falksen, Evelyn, Christine. Meaghan wears a red silk shirt from Retroscope, Evelyn with a clockwork locket from black phoenix alchemy lab, and Christine wears a dress she made herself.

On May 8th,The New York Times published the first article on steampunk fashion and subculture by a major newspaper. The article has already helped introduce new people to the subject of steampunk. As the first major article on this subject it is balanced and respectful.

You can read the whole article and view its whole gallery: Here

The article covers the main points of 21st century steampunk. It includes quotations from interviews with the Steampunk Workshop’s Jake von Slatt, Abney Park’s Robert, and Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich. The article references steampunk fiction, films, and draws a connection with the “neovaudevillian” James Gang in order to make steampunk more accessible to the public. The article is accompanied by photographs from a steampunk meet up in New York City, which The Times reporter,Ruth La Ferla,attended. Among those pictured in the paper are Steampunk couture designer Sidonie of To Die for Designs.

All in all, it was a very well done piece that will likely circumvent initial hostility new subcultures often encounter when first discovered by the mainstream.

The practical and extraordinary, Jake Von Slatt of the Steampunk Workshop has just managed to escape neo-Victorian Daleks in a steambath, and more life-threateningly, has survived an interview with Bostodelphia Blog! Questioned by Messers Impaler and Cod Peace, Mr Von Slatt explains what his version of Steampunk is, why he likes building things – and why he thinks people get a little too caught up on the history instead of the dream!

“Ah, it’s a common mistake to think we care about what the past was. We’re much more interested in what it should have been and what the future can be….”

A very in depth, and interesting interview, definitely worth a read to see Mr Von Slatt’s version of Steampunk, and how it compares to your own!  Thank you both Mr Von Slatt and CP!  (Mr Von Slatt is seen above with his beautiful brass RSS morse tapper, and Steampunk guitar.)

It is my pleasure and honour to officially open the Brass Goggles and Aether Emporium Steampunk Forum to the public! Some weeks ago it became blindingly apparent that Steampunk fans are not only amazingly creative (as made obvious by the things that I have the pleasure of posting about) but also enjoy lively discussion and are remarkably open to helping each other when someone has a Steampunk question to ask.

In short – Steampunk fans are a community, and a wonderfully mature and helpful one at that.

The comments section here at Brass Goggles isn’t really suited to discussion on anything other than what one small person has decided to post about, and while the Aether Emporium is a excellent resource for links and interviews – it too lacks somewhere that a community can engage in chat from things as diverse as tea choice, to prop making resources, to Steampunk holiday destinations. That’s what this forum is for.

Please feel free to pop over, join in the discussions or start a discussion of your own – perhaps you’re having trouble with some steam power, or wondering what fabric to use on a cog-cushion, or even feel that the music discussion was too brief – do feel free to have a natter. There are other forums, and places that people have gathered in the past (the Clockworkers Guild Livejournal Community, the Steampunk2 Yahoo Group, and the Nov-Net Steampunk board, in particular) – this is just another, different one (more or less specialised/open/technical/searchable/brown etc).

Ms Lev recently visited The Edison club that we posted about recently, and put her review of the venue in the comments – however I’m so glad she took the time to write, I’m going to put it in a post of its own. Her opinions are of course, her own – particularly with respect to concerns about future clientele. smiles

“After reading about The Edison here on Brass Goggles, I decided that it would be a good place to go on a Valentine’s day dinner with my boyfriend, Kit (who you guys might know as artist/designer Anachronaut, mentioned on this blog a couple of posts back).

The journey to The Edison was surreal in its juxtaposition of rich and poor… (more…)

Mr Hildebrandt has taken the plunge and created a site for all of his contraptions and creations – an excellent way to keep all of his work together in one place. He’s called it Jake of All Trades, and his most recent addition to it, is an 19th Century style patent document mockup, complete with Victorian looking illustration! It’s a very nice piece of ‘forgery’ or mashup, and I’m sure it would seem not in the slightest bit out of place when sat next to some of the more ambitious patent documents that were actually submitted.

So, Jake of All Trades for the Telecalculograph, cog belt buckle, Victorionixie Tube, clocks and other interesting creations. I’m very pleased to add that to my sidebar links!

Mr Svensson dropped me a line to remind me that I hadn’t yet posted about the wealth of informative links to be found over at Phil Masters’ Steampunk Links page. Predating Brass Goggles by a very significant amount, Mr Masters page is a treasure trove of links concerning 19th Century costume, technology and Castle Falkenstein specific information. In other words, there’s a good chance that the sheer quality of Mr Masters page, and the length of time it has been around, is probably responsible for their being a Brass Goggles at all! It seems that the page hasn’t been updated in some time, however, I cannot tell exactly how long, but the search engine page seems to talk of things being recent which occured in 2001, so that’s my best guess. A few of the links are dead, but most of them are still great and lively.

Mr Svensson also speaks very highly of the Castle Falkenstein game – a “Victorian Fantasy” roleplaying game that used playing cards instead of dice (dice not being a game for gentlepeople, after all). No doubt there’s a wealth of information on such a well thought of game to fuel dozens of posts in the future!

When Mr Hildebrandt created his Telecalculograph Steampunk PC mod, he discovered that the usual sounds that come from your average OS, just didn’t really fit with the now stove-pipe and furnace sprouting machine that he now had. So, having requested and been given permission by the lovely people responsible for the UT conversion, Damnation: Hell Breaks Loose, he created a collection of far more Steampunk sounds! While I generally run silent, I do very much like the sounds for Start Windows and End Windows – clunky, hissing wonderful sounds! Download the SteamSounds.Zip here, or should you prefer alternative location for your downloads, you may also find them here. They’re all .wavs, and there’s a readme in there too. Thank you, Mr Hildebrandt – now your PC must sound as good as it looks!

This just jumped out at me, from when I was reading Neatorama today – the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project page! They’ve got over five and a half thousand old cylinder recordings available to listen to online, educational titles, dancehall music, classical, comedy (from various countries) and a plethora of other categories. There’s the history of cylinder recordings to read about too – from the first tin foil ones in 1877 to the very last of their kind commercially produced in 1929 – not a bad run! I’m looking forward to listening to some of these – it somehow makes the Victorian/Steampunk era a lot closer to hear it.

From the video of Svo’s engine, I noticed the music – very orchestral and in no uncertain terms, give a musical painting of the foundry that it’s named after. From the 1920’s, the soviet composer Alexander Mosolov became internationally famous for his relatively short work in the ballet Steel.

While I found the piece of music he is most famous for – Zavod (or, the Iron Foundry, or Symphony of Machines) to be interesting and very much the mechanical orchestral piece you’d imagine it to be – I can’t say that it’ll be easy listening at the top of my playlist. It’s a powerful piece, but I do like the clunkyness of it. Possibly, it’s even Steampunk. Have a listen to it here, it’s not the best quality, but that’s probably due to copywrite concerns.