JAKE VON SLATT

Artist, machinist

By LISSA HARRIS

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For now, the burner -- a hair-dryer-shaped thing made out of pieces of an electric belt motor, an old metal bed-frame, the fuel injector from a BMW and a bunch of scavenged computer parts -- is lying in several pieces in the garage. When it's done, its creator says, it should be able to melt cast iron at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

"I think it will make spectacular flames. And the internet loves spectacular flames," he says, grinning.

In his spare time, this erstwhile suburban dad/IT guy is Hieronymous Isambard "Jake" von Slatt, founder and proprietor of the Steampunk Workshop. The name's a pseudonym, left over from his teenage Dungeons & Dragons years.

"Steampunk" is a word coined in the 1980s, an offshoot of cyberpunk sci-fi that imagined a parallel universe in which the information age occurred alongside the Industrial Revolution. Von Slatt says he plays a little fast and loose with it, but in general, it involves retrofitting high-tech gadgetry with a certain fin de siècle aesthetic. And lots of brass.

Von Slatt has long had a fondness for all things Victorian, and he's been taking things apart and putting them back together compulsively since age 8 or so. But it wasn't until last year that he started calling his garage tinkering "steampunk."

"I wanted to get something posted on BoingBoing," he confesses.

The tactic worked, with a vengeance. Pretty much anything he does these days is met with instant internet notoriety. It's not hard to see why: Compared to the grey IBM Model M keyboard it began life as, his Steampunk Keyboard -- clad in hand-machined brass and shiny black typewriter keys -- is a gleaming baroque antidote to soulless modern design.

There are always a few projects going at once in von Slatt's garage. Today, he's excited about a few dozen bean-sized neon Russian lightbulbs that recently arrived from eBay. The tiny bulbs will be the finishing touches on the Steampunk Telephone, currently a pile of stray rotary telephone parts, brass plates from a grandfather clock and a stepping relay, a piece of semi-obsolete telephone technology that resembles what an egg timer might look like if Richard Rogers built it out of scrap metal. When that's done, he's got grander ambitions.

"I want to build a steam-powered car. That will take a while," he says. "Did I mention I have a very tolerant wife?"

[steampunkworkshop.com]