Steampunk Supernova
NOVEMBER 8, 2009
My sister’s boyfriend, Dan, makes sculptures out of mechanical detritus, transforming old lamps, rusty farm equipment, turn-of-the-century drills, bicycle bits, and whatever else he can get his hands on, into all kinds of fantastical, pseudo-functional retro-futuristic art. Today, he and my sister, Laura, were in town from Pennsylvania, trying to sell some of it at a Manhattan flea market.
“The best stuff is at home,” Dan said when Deborah and I arrived at their booth. He explained that he left his best show pieces in Pennsylvania to save them for a Steampunk exhibit he’d been invited to participate in at the Pier next weekend.
Dan admitted he was a little afraid of getting pigeonholeed into the whole Steampunk scene. “It’s kind of loopy,” he said. “They have these festivals and stuff where people get dressed up like characters from a Jules Verne novel or something. It gets dangerously close to Renaissance Fair territory. On the other hand, I’m psyched to be showing my stuff, so…”
Whether they were his best pieces or not, the things he had on display drew a lot of interest, and our conversation kept getting interrupted by curious customers asking about one thing or another.
In the center of Dan’s booth, under a spotlight, was a vintage wind-up walking doll. Its head, arms, and legs were ceramic while its body consisted of a wire armature with innards like a Victorian robot. I asked Dan about it. “I bought it from another vendor earlier that morning,” he said. “Eighty bucks.” He went on to describe how he planned to transform it into a fully functional wind-up space robot and feature it at the Steampunk show.
But the doll didn’t need the touch of his vision to grab attention. As we stood there chatting, a few people stopped to check it out. One woman in particular, wearing a brown corduroy jacket with a heavyweight canvas bag over her shoulder, holding a couple of vintage frames under her arm, was especially keen. “How much for the doll?” she asked.
Dan had already spent most of the day planning the robot’s transformation and didn’t want to sell it, so he pulled a number out of his ass, hoping to sour her enthusiasm. “Two-fifty,” he said.
The woman hemmed and hawed, talking it over with her boyfriend, or husband, or whoever the spiffy gent was in the wool herringbone sport coat and slightly cocked porkpie hat, before finally shaking her head and sulking away in defeat.
“Whew,” he said, “that was close.”
Deborah was in the market for a winter coat, and so we decided to poke around and see what the other vendors were selling. “We’ll be back,” I said.
When we returned to Dan’s booth, my sister asked if we had found anything good.
“I saw a few nice vintage coats,” said Deborah, “but the prices were absurd.”
“Oh I know,” said Laura. “I was looking at a dress earlier, and the woman selling it asked if I was a collector. ‘It’s a wonderful piece,’ she said. A wonderful piece. I knew right then not to bother looking at the price. I mean, look at me,” she said, pulling at her dirty sweatshirt. “Do I look like a collector? The only thing I’m collecting is dog hairs and lint.”
As we laughed at that, the Steampunk aficionado in the corduroy coat came walking towards Dan’s booth.
“I know that look,” said Deborah. “It’s that, ‘I’m gonna get it. I’m just gonna get it’ look of determination.”
Sure enough, the woman stopped in front of the robot doll and said to Dan, “Okay, let’s do it. Let’s just do it.”
Dan groaned, turned slightly red, and cocked an uncomfortable smile.
“What’s wrong?” the woman asked.
“Nothing,” he said, “Sorry, nothing.”
He couldn’t exactly complain about tripling his investment in just a couple of hours, but I couldn’t blame him for being a little disappointed. I was, too.
