Steampunk making from the State Library’s collection: Cameron Morley
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This presentation was part of the Makers, Craftivists and Public Libraries seminar held at the State Library of NSW, 6 May 2015.
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Steampunk making from the State Library’s collection: Cameron Morley
- 1. Steampunk making from the State Library’s collection
- 2. 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)
- 3. 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
- 4. How to make and do things …
- 5. The Stacks
- 6. The real SRL Card catalogue
- 7. Steam Engines 1700s to 1900s
- 8. Making – Metalwork, blacksmithing (1906)
- 9. Making – Dried Fruit (1944)
- 10. Making – Barber techniques (1851)
- 11. Making – Coach (1902) Popular Australian vehicles
- 12. Making – Measurement (1881 / 1879)
- 13. Making –Wooden Boats (1944)
- 14. Making .. Anything? Perfume, charcoal, stained glass ..
- 15. Making - 1884 Beer
- 16. … more Cards
- 18. Research Cards
- 19. eclectic
- 20. eclectic 2
- 21. eclectic 3
- 23. Trade Catalogues
- 24. Trade Catalogues – playground equipment (1938)
- 25. Trade Catalogues – Tractors.. Safes
- 26. Trade Catalogues – period features
- 27. Trade Catalogues– period features
- 28. Original Materials – #1880Sydney
- 29. 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….
- 30. Lunch
Editor's Notes
- My presentation will highlight many weird and wonderful things from our collection here at the State Library – the knowledge of which will help you help your customers. But first, the term steampunk? Have you noticed that moustaches are popular, both on men’s faces and in design? A certain style of moustache..
- Wrapping paper, post it notes – kids are using them in craft. This is a manifestation of the steampunk aesthetic – defined here. Neil Stephenson’s Diamond Age, depicts a future society rich in technology, with a subculture of people who choose to live as the Victorians did. One review of ATD wrote that the decade either side of 1900 was characterised by enormous technological leaps fired by a mixed up combination of abstract mathematical speculation, global power struggles and sheer mysticism. Time travel and splitting the atom appeared equally plausible or implausible. Louis Menand. So far we know only one is possible… Observation – as technology progresses apace, there is still a need for authentic and tangible connections to the past. It is a counter-culture in some ways.
- Our Bookends Scenarios project from 2009 which looked at alternative futures to 2030 for the public library network in NSW identified a possible scenario where people will want to connect locally with communal market gardens, craft guilds and men’s sheds, while at the same time embracing the cyber world. Something is happening - apart from my 10 year daughter appreciating elaborate moustaches. It’s representative of an emerging dichotomy in our society – two parallel streams coexisting. You see the hipster with his vinyl records and craft beer, but he is also an app producer by day. He is a consumer of online media, but takes pleasure in owning an authentic 1890s moustache comb, and wants to make wax for it. Otherwise normal working modern women, are creative anachronists on weekends, spending time making medieval costumes and armour, using methods as close to the original as possible. As our society bounds ahead with mass production, convenient products and ICT, we also yearn for the one-off, hand-made or bespoke product. Which leads me to this presentation – how can libraries tap into this yearning & help our community in these pursuits?
- The State Library, and by extension public libraries, are extremely well placed to help. Our collection here, especially that in the State Reference Library, is a staggeringly good resource for makers, restorers and anyone who is just interested in old stuff, how it looked, how it worked and how it was made. This lovely poster shows that the State Library really promoted its technical collection – how to make and do stuff – advertisements from 1919. Happily we still have this collection…
- Before I became a bureaucrat, I was a keen reference librarian here at the Library. I was often assigned reference requests to help library clients who wanted to make or repair old stuff. In those days, everything that the library had acquired prior to 1980 (more than 1 million items) was only available via the card catalogue, so people (particularly offsite clients) relied on us to find stuff for them.
- I’ll draw on some of the obscure and interesting requests that I worked on, and the books and resources that were made available. Happily today, due to our e-records project of the past few years, these items are accessible via our online catalogue, and yes, many are available free to NSW public libraries on ILL. Note – Have you checked our computer catalogue?
- Starting with steam – we have many many items – one example was a client restoring a steam engine.
- How to make and operate a forge – the Blacksmith from Timbertown in Wauchope told me he used our collection when setting up the forge there.
- How can I dry my own fruit? – two examples here from 1944 – timber frame wire and glass using the sun. The other using combo of sun and stove.
- Barber techniques – mnoustache wax, Brilliantine, Pomades, lotion recipes from a 19c Paris barber
- Plan for a horse drawn buggy – the Squatter’s Express
- Buggy’s need suspension – here is the diameter of metal required per pound of buggy. Or the specific gravities of certain oceans and other liquids.
- Useful in boat building – we have many plans for wooden boats and canoes
- All of those items are from the printed book catalogue. However it pays to dig deeper into other arcane indexes… and finding aids, compiled by librarians of the past. These drawers have our Plays index and Motor car index
- Occasionally doing a catalogue search for an arcane topic will pull up a record that says “Research Cards” or “Trade Catalogues”. These are little known collections – but a great resource. Pre-automation (by that I mean online catalogue), we had a research team here at the SL, who compiled a card index to books, chapters, articles etc on diverse topics, in response to information requests from the public. I used the cards for some quite quirky requests, including:
- Dome roofs, antennae, amplifiers
- Trade Catalogues of boring machines held at the State Library of NSW. Box title boring machines Notes: Boring machinery -- catalogs Of course this is a box of drilling machinery catalogues and specifications, and the trade catalogues collection is far from boring.
- The Trade Catalogues include brochures, instruction manuals and catalogues of goods – eg washing machines, tractors, venetian blinds..
- So far I have only touched on our printed collections and a range of catalogues and indexes. Of course there is a whole other series of collections of original or unpublished materials here at the Library. Pictures, manuscripts, maps and realia.
- Lunch – CWA Cookery Book and Household Hints - 1936