Smith & Mills

Smith & Mills is a TriBeCa bar & restaurant designed by John McCormick. I've never been, but it looks pretty wonderful, with blueprints on the walls and industrial pieces combined with soft banquette seating.


It's ...the sort of place where a 1920s Eastern European factory worker could blow off some steam after a hard day hammering steel.

Inside the non-marked spot, you'll find a diminutive den of working-class touches: male staffers in basic blue workman's jackets, ladies in factory dresses (so unsexy they're sexy) and shelves lined with antique dishes, cans and mason jars. Meanwhile, low-lit Edison bulbs create a moody, amber vibe you can soak up from one of the faded lime banquettes as you sip vintage cocktails (Old Fashioneds, Sazeracs, Negronis). In the bathroom—a onetime elevator shaft—you'll use a train car sink that empties manually (it'll be just like that summer you spent in Dresden). (UrbanDaddy)

serves classy cocktails of the Hoover regime to women with vintage handbags and men who’ve cultivated the facial hair of silent-movie villains. The bar itself is tiny, but so low-lit you’ll hardly notice how small it is. Shadows and 30-watt Edison bulbs are complicit in helping to create a dramatic atmosphere, though the space has plenty of narrative to begin with: Smith and Mills is in a 200-year-old building that once housed a coffee roaster, a seafarers’ inn and a horse stable. The current decor is remarkable, from the drainpipe mirrors behind the bar to the ship blueprints that adorn the walls to the bathroom, which is actually a vintage elevator. Everything seems rusty, which lends Smith and Mills a blue-collar, proletariat feel. (PaperMag)

Fun things....

Keith sent me a link to this campaign furniture champagne bucket (for chilling your champagne when you are on safari, I presume). Part of a larger set of campaign furniture at Sporting Wood.
And Steampunk Angel mentioned this log roller: transform your newspapers into firelogs through the extraneous machinations of this mechanical device.


She also pointed us to this useful Art Nouveau font for free download.

Fun things, all.

Gonzalo Álvarez -- Mueblos Raros

Gonzalo Álvarez is an artist that works in a variety of mediums, but I was taken with his clocks and furniture. (Have I mentioned my philosophy on clocks in a steampunk home? Clocks -- along with lights -- are where you should indulge in the steamiest creation you can make or find -- there are plenty of options out there, and they will make a statement.)



The interior gears are cut from wood.



Oh so airship pirate, no?


He uses this clever hinged drawer in other pieces as well.

Thanks to Juanan for pointing this out.

Dark Wood, Industrial Antiques, Science and Leather -- What more could you want?

Laurel sent me a link to this home tour at Country Living.

It's a wonderful collection of modern and new, industrial and science. Not distinctly steampunk, but with oh so many of the elements we like.


It's interesting how much grey they use through this house -- a very modern neutral, but the blue in the grey provides a lot of contrast for the yellows in the antique browns.

I love how she has succulents tucked in all over the place. (I'll get around to sharing my terrarium of succulents here soon...)

This is an old seed packet display -- but it's almost a wunderkabinet now!


The plants in the tall glass cloches add a lot of height to her table...

These are old French mail bins. (Also, I've seen a similar surveyor's lamp at Target recently...)

Industrial antique table and stool, leather chair, dark wood... sigh.

See the whole tour here. Photos by Don Freeman

Wire Cage Lights

If you've spent any time at RadioGuy's website, these will look familiar.

At $1000 and up, I suspect you could dig some out of your grandfather's shop or find them at a flea market and rewire them yourself.

From Rewire via ReModelista

"Moulin Rouge" Furniture

The furniture is by Coach House Furniture at the Harvest Moon Company.

The line includes black velvet upholstered pieces...
And a black bookcase...

via Apartment Therapy, from Tamara, whose fascinating blog Anima Tarot finds Tarot symbols in all sorts of art, architecture, and nature.

Edison Electric Light.

Robert Williams sent me a link to this sign that has been making the rounds... Roadside Blog has it in a couple of sizes to download.

I see it framed and displayed next to a push-button light switch (although a turn-key switch would be even better...)

Originally from NextNature.

Sharpie Art Library

Diana Peterfreund recently reminded me of this DIY library, created by amateur artist (lawyer by day) Charlie Kratzer with nothing more than a Sharpie Marker and a incredible amount of imagination and persistence.

Look carefully in this basement o' dreams and you'll see a drawing of the Kratzers' upstairs library — with Claude Monet, the greatest of the Impressionists, at the doorway. It's a tribute to Monet, but it's also a way of living with cultural influences: Kratzer and his wife, Deb, don't just keep them within book covers or admire them in museums. Their Picasso spends each day close to their pinball machine. Agatha Christie's shrewd little Belgian detective and his carefully pruned mustache hover over the deck door.



There are both The Walrus and the Carpenter (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There), and William Shakespeare. The Marx Brothers peer around a corner. A flip-top garbage can is transformed via marker art into Star Wars' plucky little beeper R2D2.

The article and a 360 degree panorama is at the Lexington Herald Leader.

Panoramas of The Edison

There are some wonderful (if not safe for work) panoramas of a fashion shoot at The Edison by Will Pearson. I continue to be impressed with the depth of the Edison design... there are details in these panoramas that I haven't seen before.

More of the Edison Bar
Interview with Andrew Meieran of the Edison Bar
Edison Bar Analyzed

via Coilhouse.

Puzzling Home Design

So you hire an architect to design your home. It's built, you move in. Four months later your son is having a sleepover and his friend discovers that the radiator grill has a ciphered message addressed to the son.... and the game begins.

The house -- actually a 5th Avenue apartent in New York City -- was designed by architect Eric Clough for a family of 6. After the father requested a poem he had written be hidden somewhere in the house, Clough went on a puzzle building spree intended to "spark a child's mind."


In any case, the finale involved, in part, removing decorative door knockers from two hallway panels, which fit together to make a crank, which in turn opened hidden panels in a credenza in the dining room, which displayed multiple keys and keyholes, which, when the correct ones were used, yielded drawers containing acrylic letters and a table-size cloth imprinted with the beginnings of a crossword puzzle, the answers to which led to one of the rectangular panels lining the tiny den, which concealed a chamfered magnetic cube, which could be used to open the 24 remaining panels, revealing, in large type, the poem written by Mr. Klinsky.

Read about the whole thing here, with many pictures at the New York Times.

Hat tip to Malsperanza, commenting on Holly Black's LiveJournal.