INDEX: Steam Punk Visual Merchandising

INDEX:
SteamPunk
Visual Merchandising Displays

Steam Punk Visual Merchandising

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SCROLL DOWN FOR PHOTOS AND LINKS…
…to SteamPunk Visual Merchandising Displays

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This SteamPunk Visual Merchandising Displays index page aggregates links
to all posts and photos of retail merchandising, display, and outfitting
as well as deep Background courtesy of Wikipedia.

BACKSTORY: Steampunk is a subgenre of science fiction that incorporates retrofuturistic technology and aesthetics inspired by, but not limited to, 19th-century industrial steam-powered machinery.^[1]^[2]^[3] Steampunk works are often set in an alternative history of the Victorian era or the American frontier, where steam power remains in mainstream use, or in a fantasy world that similarly employs steam power.

Steampunk features anachronistic technologies or retrofuturistic inventions as people in the 19th century might have envisioned them — distinguishing it from Neo-Victorianism^[4] — and is likewise rooted in the era’s perspective on fashion, culture, architectural style, and art.^[5] Such technologies may include fictional machines like those found in the works of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne.^[6] Other examples of steampunk contain alternative-history-style presentations of such technology as steam cannons, lighter-than-air airships, analog computers, or such digital mechanical computers as Charles Babbage‘s Analytical Engine.^[7]^[8]

Steampunk may also incorporate additional elements from the genres of fantasy, horror, historical fiction, alternate history, or other branches of speculative fiction, making it often a hybrid genre.^[9] As a form of speculative fiction, it explores alternative futures or pasts but can also address real-world social issues.^[10] The first known appearance of the term steampunk was in 1987, though it now retroactively refers to many works of fiction created as far back as the 1950s or earlier.^[11] A popular subgenre is Japanese steampunk, consisting of steampunk-themed manga and anime.^[12]

Steampunk also refers to any of the artistic styles, clothing fashions, or subcultures that have developed from the aesthetics of steampunk fiction, Victorian-era fiction, art nouveau design, and films from the mid-20th century.^[13] Various modern utilitarian objects have been modded by individual artisans into a pseudo-Victorian mechanical “steampunk” style, and a number of visual and musical artists have been described as steampunk.^[14]

Steampunk is influenced by and often adopts the style of the 19th-century scientific romances of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley, and Edward S. Ellis‘s The Steam Man of the Prairies.^[15] Several more modern works of art and fiction significant to the development of the genre were produced before the genre had a name. Titus Alone(1959), by Mervyn Peake, is widely regarded by scholars as the first novel in the genre proper,^[16]^[17]^[18] while others point to Michael Moorcock‘s 1971 novel The Warlord of the Air,^[19]^[20]^[21] which was heavily influenced by Peake’s work. The film Brazil (1985) was an early cinematic influence, although it can also be considered a precursor to the steampunk offshoot dieselpunk.^[22] The Adventures of Luther Arkwright was an early (1970s) comic version of the Moorcock-style mover between timestreams.^[23]^[24]

In fine art, Remedios Varo‘s paintings combine elements of Victorian dress, fantasy, and technofantasyimagery.^[25]^{[page needed]} In television, one of the earliest manifestations of the steampunk ethos in the mainstream media was the CBS television series The Wild Wild West (1965–69), which inspired the later film.^[15]^[8]

While Jeter’s Morlock Night and Infernal Devices, Powers’ The Anubis Gates, and Blaylock’s Lord Kelvin’s Machine were the first novels to which Jeter’s neologism would be applied, the three authors gave the term little thought at the time.^[7]^: 48 They were far from the first modern science fiction writers to speculate on the development of steam-based technology or alternative histories. Keith Laumer‘s Worlds of the Imperium(1962) and Ronald W. Clark‘s Queen Victoria’s Bomb (1967) apply modern speculation to past-age technology and society.^[30]^{[page needed]} Michael Moorcock‘s Warlord of the Air (1971)^[21] is another early example. Harry Harrison‘s novel A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah! (1973) portrays Britain in an alternative 1973, full of atomic locomotives, coal-powered flying boats, ornate submarines, and Victorian dialogue. The Adventures of Luther Arkwright (mid-1970s) was one of the first steampunk comics.^[31] In February 1980, Richard A. Lupoff and Steve Stiles published the first “chapter” of their 10-part comic strip The Adventures of Professor Thintwhistle and His Incredible Aether Flyer.^[32] In 2004, one anonymous author described steampunk as “Colonizing the Past so we can dream the future.”^[33]

The first use of the word “steampunk” in a title was in Paul Di Filippo‘s 1995 Steampunk Trilogy,^[21]consisting of three short novels: “Victoria”, “Hottentots”, and “Walt and Emily”, which, respectively, imagine the replacement of Queen Victoria by a human/newt clone; an invasion of Massachusetts by Lovecraftianmonsters, drawing its title from the historic racial taxonomy “hottentot”; and a love affair between Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

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