Welcome to the Steampunk Guide
Imagine if you will: You’re sitting at your computer, listening to the crank of gears turning, watching steam spit brushes of mist and clanking on till-like keys. You look down at your brass timepiece and see the bronze hour hand chime 7:00 o’clock. You don on your Victorian top cap and tricked out goggles with your inflated trousers, button up your frilly shirt and best military button-down. With gun in tote, you hit the street to meet friends at the local steam-run theater, showing the best black and white take of Jules Verne’s’ 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea.
 If we lived in a steampunk world, this scene would be daily fact and not dreamed fantasy. Steampunk uses the conception that electricity never became part of our modern lives; that steam or springs runs everything mechanical; that Victorian attire never went sour; that laser guns and other futuristic weapons are mainstream; and, that the modern world relies more on human power rather than computer potency.
In reality, however, steampunk is a genre—once subculture, almost occult, now growing mainstream—of people (sometimes artist) who create a culture intact to the Victorian ideals and ways of life. In one way or another, these individuals recreate a fantasy world of steam-run computers, watches, guitars, cameras, goggles, vehicles and anything else tech related. Taken to the next level, these “steampunkies” combine current trends with yesterday’s fashion. The technology and vogue style creates a philosophy and mind set performed in real life. The ways these steampunks create such gadgetry and garments is all very unique and resourceful, indeed.
On the one hand, steampunk maestros create nifty gadgets with some true artistic designs. While on the other hand, the devices are intended for utilization and not mere attention or amusement. One of the most impressive steampunk devices takes computers and redesigns them as steam-puttering gizmos. They are full of gears and equipage for normal function but have the look of blowing itself apart. Steampunk’s imperfect machines cause the user glitches, especially in times of need. However, with a quick fix from a space-age tool, all systems return to normal.
Additional gadgets may include watches designed to show the odds and ends on the exterior, giving a look of space age gadgetry with the feel of twisting and protruding metal and copper tubes. The watch or timepiece, however, may very well keep atomic time, but the deviser incorporates the tenets of steampunk culture. In steampunk design, moreover, guitars are turned into steam powered, rusty knobbed and copper-ized musical instruments; eyeglasses, too, become thicker and framed. Whatever the gadget, as long as it (seemingly) uses steam power or a spring loaded design found during the industrial revolution, it can be classified as steampunk.
Steampunk includes more than contrivances, nonetheless. One of the many facets of the steampunk culture permeates into fashion and clothing. With a finger reaching back to the early 1900s, steampunk fashion centers on the use of top hats, goggles, vests, ties or bow ties, military type jackets and leather boots and shoes with many other bygone trends to create a costume or suit considered du jour and trend setting today. Steampunk helps us to remember the industrial age and how things came to be. Steampunk, additionally, is an art that includes many variants and helps others fabricate their own styles for life and living.
This site was created to be a guide to buying Steampunk gear and helping you learn a thing or two that you might not already know about it. Even some of more popular video games today have elements of steampunk with some of their weapons so it's a culture that your exposed to at all turns.
We've created this site as a resource for you to find steampunks goggles, steampunk clothing, steampunk jewelry, steampunk books, steampunk watches and of course steampunk props. |
