Steampunk-style home heating
Apr. 12th, 2011 10:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petermorwoodWhile Sharper Image existed, I used to spend too much quite a lot of time with my nose in their catalogues. I can't recall ever buying anything, mind you, and often wondered why anyone would actually want some of the nonsense on offer. A bit like Skymall catalogues, in a way.
The various websites for Manufactum are a bit that way too, although with a lower "who'd want that?" response and a much higher rate of "I'd love that but ouch!", though NB the UK and International ones are very watered-down, a bit like US site ThinkGeek versus UK site I Want One of Those used to be. They've grown more similar, but there's still a caffeine-in-everything section in one and a bar-and-beer section in the other. Guess which? (The B&B features a Thing I have lusted after ever seeing one in the possession of Constable Haddock of the Ankh-Morpork Watch at last Discworld con: a sensibly-sized hip flask.. Tee hee.)
Lots of the stuff Manufactum sells is equally practical and handsomely designed, just very expensive. Anybody want to buy a Morgan 4/4 1600 sports car from an on-line catalogue store? Manufactum can accommodate you. (I thought it was a model at first, but the tag of €43,850.00 corrected this misapprehension.)
That's where I saw this amazing piece of stuff, which looks more like a movie prop than anything real. It could be at the back of a Titanic-era boiler-room set and not look out of place.
There are other variants, one where the burner is built into a cooktop, another which exchanges the upper oven for a stone-filled storage heater. An additional photo for that one shows it built into a wall-unit, but those who delight in rivets would just leave the works on display for all to admire.
I'd say it was cool, except that's hardly the right word for a heater. Don't park the Zeppelin too close...
The various websites for Manufactum are a bit that way too, although with a lower "who'd want that?" response and a much higher rate of "I'd love that but ouch!", though NB the UK and International ones are very watered-down, a bit like US site ThinkGeek versus UK site I Want One of Those used to be. They've grown more similar, but there's still a caffeine-in-everything section in one and a bar-and-beer section in the other. Guess which? (The B&B features a Thing I have lusted after ever seeing one in the possession of Constable Haddock of the Ankh-Morpork Watch at last Discworld con: a sensibly-sized hip flask.. Tee hee.)
Lots of the stuff Manufactum sells is equally practical and handsomely designed, just very expensive. Anybody want to buy a Morgan 4/4 1600 sports car from an on-line catalogue store? Manufactum can accommodate you. (I thought it was a model at first, but the tag of €43,850.00 corrected this misapprehension.)
That's where I saw this amazing piece of stuff, which looks more like a movie prop than anything real. It could be at the back of a Titanic-era boiler-room set and not look out of place.
There are other variants, one where the burner is built into a cooktop, another which exchanges the upper oven for a stone-filled storage heater. An additional photo for that one shows it built into a wall-unit, but those who delight in rivets would just leave the works on display for all to admire.
I'd say it was cool, except that's hardly the right word for a heater. Don't park the Zeppelin too close...
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Date: 2011-04-13 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-13 05:25 pm (UTC)And it was Yummy.
Digression... Long ago, I got seriously into photography, courtesy of the school Camera Club and a gross of time-expired Ilford FP4 monochrome film.
At that time we still lived in The Old House, which had a real attic, a real cellar - and four floors between them, all connected by carpeted stairs I had to vacuum every Saturday with the Big Nilfisk, supposedly made of aluminium but really made of lead, most noticeably by the top of the eighth flight of stairs.
Anyway, I set about fitting up the cellar as a darkroom, and that's when I found a half-dozen bottles of Granny's home-made elderberry wine, which had been quietly maturing there for twenty years.
Rather than getting disgustingly sloshed in the usual underage drinker way (I was about 14 at the time) it lasted me almost 6 months; partly because with Granny being long dead I knew I wouldn't get any more like it (aww, sweet), and partly because I also knew that if I did anything silly it would be confiscated and the cellar would become the Forbidden Zone (heh, crafty). None of that happened.
And on the palate of memory, it too was Yummy. :-)