Mr. Prof designer home

Here's some heat related goodness to warm you up this winter.

Reader Joe Kesselman sent me a link to a Turkish company, Carisa, who is making hot water radiators in some very unique shapes. Unfortunately, all are chromed stainless steel and not warm steampunk metals, but they do have some clever designs.

The pipe organ style is the cleverest:
In only slightly related news, reader Paul Hulbert sent me this device from the South Western Electricity Historical Society in Bristol, UK.



My first guess was that it was a 1960s mod of a Victorian device, but it turns out I was wrong -- the extremely modern looking innards are just as Victorian as it's outtards.

This type of heater was available around the turn of the (19th!) century. This Apollo "Dowsing Sausage" Fire dates from approximately 1910. My friend and former colleague John Heath of the SWEHS explains that:

The electric filament lamp was considered inefficient because far more energy was converted into heat than produced light.

H. J. Dowsing, in 1896, designed a "heating lamp" with a frosted glass envelope. It had a 250 watt carbon filament which gave off no light except a warm red glow.

These were the first practical electric radiant heaters.

The Cannon bulb fire in 1904 had four of the "Dowsing Sausages" set against a polished reflector and controlled by brass switches.

The Apollo fire in the museum is similar.

Anyone visited the SWEHS in Bristol? It sounds like a lovely place!

Thank you Paul and Joe (and John!) for sharing these with us.

There is a growing trend of what I'd call "modern victorian" home products. One of my favorites are these tea sets by Christine Misiak. She finds old silver tea sets and refurbishes them:

With this black set, when I sourced it at a car boot sale it was in extremely bad condition. The surface finish was rusty, dirty and scratched, also the inside of the tea pot was very unappealing.
Moreover, one of the little legs on the sugar bowl had been snapped off by the prior owner, therefore it had really reached its end life.
So I cleaned the set up and applied black to it, and now the surface finish is glossy and smooth and the set can actually be used again. The imperfection with the broken sugar bowl leg is still there, but it acts as character and the set aims to celebrate the imperfections.

I think the black one is the most steampunk -- for some reason I can see Mrs. Coulter in The Golden Compass using it.

There are pictures of the entire line on Flickr -- in addition to the black one she has an orange set and 2 green sets.

If you were really ambitious, you could try doing this yourself. Old silver plate (maybe start with just a tray?) is cheap and easy to come by at thrift shops. I'm not sure what kind of paint you'd use, but if I was doing it I would start with light coats of spray paint.

Sally J, aka The Practical Archivist (an Internet acquaintance on two axis -- steampunk and family history technology!) dropped me a note to mention her recent musing on daguerreotypes (and a desire for one of the very steampunk Neverwas Haul) that led to a comment and correspondence from an real life daguerreotypist.

John Danforth loves to hand craft daguerreotypes for people based on existing photos they already have. John says high resolution color digital files work best. Many of his customers choose a favorite wedding photograph to be rendered as a beautiful keepsake.....
Why Daguerreotypes? According to John, there are two main reasons. The first is the incredible detail you get using this process. Anyone lucky enough to have seen a dag knows exactly what he's talking about. The other reason is close to [Sally's] heart: Longevity.

Wow, how cool would that be? Your wedding photo -- or family photo (Ah, the family Brumfield in all it's steampunk glory, hung over the fireplace?) turned into a daguerreotype?

The above picture is a daguerreotype from John's gallery. I love how it mixes the very 19th century Eiffel Tower with the very 21st century Google Maps on a Dell laptop.

Oh, and John is happy to teach you how to make daguerrotypes. If that's above your budget, hunt up the 2nd issue of Craft, which has an article about John's process.

Last month, the New York Times had an article titled "Victorian Baths, unrepressed" that, while totally over the top, featured some perfectly dreamy Victorian, Edwardian, Art Deco and Art Nouveau bathrooms. Make sure to peruse the slideshow.