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Steampunk Time Pieces
Steampunk Time Pieces
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Early in my college career, I discovered the genre called Steampunk, and was immediately taken. Here, suddenly, was a categorization for the style and aesthetic that I already loved, and I felt like I had finally been "diagnosed" with something I had struggled to describe for years. The Steampunk genre is fairly well distilled in a single question: what would modern technology and objects look and act like if they had been developed during the Victorian Industrial Revolution? Steampunk artists stride to re-imaging common, every day items in this aesthetic, which usually involves the use of copper, brass, and clever mechanisms.
My work within the genre began with wrist watches, an item I felt was practical to use daily, and could really be explored. I drew inspiration from the work of others, and my understanding of various mechanical operations. This culminated in the creation of two wrist watches.
The first watch uses a hinged arm, kept in check by a sheathed spring, to either reveal or hide the watch face, which is built into a copper cup. A flick of the wrist snaps the arm over the pivot, and displays the watch face. Another flick causes it to pivot back, where the watch face lands against a leather lined brass pad. A black suede belt wraps around the base, and holds it securely to the wrist. I also built in a tube to house a flash drive (8 gigabytes, which was huge capacity then in 2008) that I made a custom brass casing for.
Early in my college career, I discovered the genre called Steampunk, and was immediately taken. Here, suddenly, was a categorization for the style and aesthetic that I already loved, and I felt like I had finally been "diagnosed" with something I had struggled to describe for years. The Steampunk genre is fairly well distilled in a single question: what would modern technology and objects look and act like if they had been developed during the Victorian Industrial Revolution? Steampunk artists stride to re-imaging common, every day items in this aesthetic, which usually involves the use of copper, brass, and clever mechanisms.
My work within the genre began with wrist watches, an item I felt was practical to use daily, and could really be explored. I drew inspiration from the work of others, and my understanding of various mechanical operations. This culminated in the creation of two wrist watches.
The first watch uses a hinged arm, kept in check by a sheathed spring, to either reveal or hide the watch face, which is built into a copper cup. A flick of the wrist snaps the arm over the pivot, and displays the watch face. Another flick causes it to pivot back, where the watch face lands against a leather lined brass pad. A black suede belt wraps around the base, and holds it securely to the wrist. I also built in a tube to house a flash drive (8 gigabytes, which was huge capacity then in 2008) that I made a custom brass casing for.
Click picture for more detail
Click picture for more detail
Spurred on by my success with the first watch, I set about building a second. I imagined a sort of "blooming" mechanism, in which the watch face sat on a slide, and was covered by two half circle leaves. When actuated, the mechanism would propel the watch face forward toward the hand, and the leaves would slide away from the watch face to the left and right.
This watch was much more finicky to align and actuate, but came together after a lot of patient work. The mechanism is set in motion by a button with a catch; depressing the button activates the sliding and "blooming" mechanism, and the extended watch face is then pushed back manually to close it, shutting the leaves and re-engaging with the button catch.
The pictures of the watches are from an old blogger account I made to display my Steampunk work, under the moniker "Victor Ian". I did not document the creation of these.
Spurred on by my success with the first watch, I set about building a second. I imagined a sort of "blooming" mechanism, in which the watch face sat on a slide, and was covered by two half circle leaves. When actuated, the mechanism would propel the watch face forward toward the hand, and the leaves would slide away from the watch face to the left and right.
This watch was much more finicky to align and actuate, but came together after a lot of patient work. The mechanism is set in motion by a button with a catch; depressing the button activates the sliding and "blooming" mechanism, and the extended watch face is then pushed back manually to close it, shutting the leaves and re-engaging with the button catch.
The pictures of the watches are from an old blogger account I made to display my Steampunk work, under the moniker "Victor Ian". I did not document the creation of these.