A Time-Travelling Chemist-Druggist, or, Steampunk Quackery

Greetings, all, and Happy Haunting time of year.

As you settle in with your cup of tea, allow me to, once again, apologize profusely for the infrequency of my sessions here in my Salon.  The ever-difficult battle between making a living for myself so I can keep myself in the fashion to which I've become accustomed, organizing events for the local steampunks, and generally having my fingers in too many pies, leaves me little time for costuming and far less time to share it.

However, I am now able to update you one of my latest endeavors.  At the start of this year, I decided it would be a fun idea to create a steampunk quack doctor or chemist/druggist.  This would be a heavily prop-oriented ensemble, versus costume-oriented.  A quack remedy chemist would be all about the medicines, cures, and promotion. 

I quickly lost myself in research into quack medicines, which is a fascinating subject, and covers easily almost three full centuries.  Bizarre nostrums, paregorics and cures really peaked in the 1700's, and were still quite rampant and weird right through the Victorian era.  It wasn't until the early 1900's that controls started coming into better effect.  Caroline Rance's amazing website, The Quack Doctor was a huge inspiration, and place where I lost many, many hours of fascinated reading.  

Creating a quack persona was one thing, but to steampunk it up, I decided she should be a time-travelling chemist & druggist.  Of course, she must have a set of phenomenal credentials, so I created the credentials of PC, DC, TTE and OMG (because why not!).  In order, that becomes Pharmaceutical Chemist, Dispensing Chemist, Time Travel Expert, and OmniMateria Goods (allowing me to use, animal, mineral, vegetal, and manmade components in my medicaments). Using my own initials and the surname of a favourite SCA persona I'd created years before, voila, T.L. Swyfte, Travelling Chemist. came into being:

This is the design I created for my advertising.  This small sign ended up as a small card in my hat, the inside panel of my medicaments box, and the front page of the advertising booklet of my products, which I created.

I had a convenient medium-sized wooden box I'd picked up at a thrift store with a mind to use it for something, and voila, this became my portable product display, with the addition of a front closure, side catches and two side rings to hold the leather straps to enable to carry the box around.

The truly fun part of this persona was creating the list & descriptions of my products.  Hours and hours of research inspired me to create a selection of my own nostrums, all carrying my trademark name, Swyfte's, and several of which were almost wholly taken from actual medicines from the past.  

Once I'd come up with a list of products, I selected my favourites and wrote up an advertisement for each one, and with the assistance of the many wonderful copyright-free vintage borders and graphics you can find on http://thegraphicsfairy.com/, created the small ads for my product booklet.  I printed the booklet in black and white, with only the cover in colour, deliberately restricting myself to two colours, to keep things more Victorian in feel.  

A stack of my product booklets

My frontispiece of "company" advertising, and the advert for my Solar Re-Animating Solar Tincture, which is based on an actual quack medicine (and the advert not much different from the original - I just added vampiric conditions to zip it up.  Would have added zombification, except I was running out of room.

Of course, every quack druggist ought to have a paregoric to cure everything.  With dodgy claims of "safe" opium.  I'm quite proud of my Combobulating Serum - entirely my own concept.  Who among us doesn't have days when we wish for some serum of this ilk, to clear our befogged and discombobulated minds! 

Other chemists will produce plasters, but only Swyfte will give you Daily Reassuring Plasters, to both ease your discomfort and to soothe, reassure, and comfort.  And our Defibulating Lozenges are quite popular - reveal untruths by plying suspected fibbers with our cleverly disguised lozenges daily! 

Of course I had to include our own Coca Wine - given it was such a common product that even in the 1890's this could be purchased from your Sears Roebuck catalogue!  And what steampunk gentleman hasn't longed for impressively manly moustaches and muttonchops?  Achieve them with ease with our powerful tonic.

Ah, Time Travel's attendant unpleasant side effect for so many folks - pesky hiccoughs!  Annoying, and downright dangerous if one happens to find oneself trying to discretely hide from predatory beasts (or men) in a past or future aggressive setting.  Our lozenges will help!  And we had to have Ambition Pills (another actual "medicine" from quack history.  And the advert wording very much taken from the original.

The back cover

The next step was, of course the "products" for display.  I purchased small bottles online and whenever I saw appropriately-sized bottles. Playing about with the advertisements I'd created and more fun graphics, I created labels for a selection of my products.

Putting together products, advertising, handouts, and the box, resulted in my travelling case below, which I then carried strapped around my neck and waist.

The joy of this persona is that the clothes are far less relevant.  I took an old military hat, added a pin (Girl Genius trilobite!) and tucked in an advertising card.  The rest was just shirt, corset, long skirt.  Here is the final product of my time-traveling quack chemist, BEST SCIENTIFIC Medicaments in hand - ready to hit the hallways and hawk my wares!

And finally, before I go, I would like to once again thank my main inspiration and sourcing for this concept, Caroline Rance, creator of the fabulous website: http://thequackdoctor.com/, and author of Kill-Grief, and most recently, The Quack Doctor (available on Amazon.ca and elsewhere).

Calling Cards

Ah, the lovely calling card.  I strongly recommend that steampunks should create and carry upon their persons calling cards (also called visiting cards) and a pen. (Or have a reputable stationer create a set for you.)

Calling cards, or visiting cards, were a Victorian social requisite.  When going visiting, the Victorian lady, gentleman, or person of note or ambition) would ensure they had their card upon their person.  Cards would be left at a house (either in person or by a servant), to convey their intention to visit, or to leave a message.  Cards would be left on a silver platter or basket or similar device if the person was not at home, or was not receiving.  Calling cards could be used for introductions, to further acquaintance, or to send messages, announce one's arrival or departure from town, or to send congratulations or condolences.  The calling card was a handy little device for communication.  It could be as simple as just your name on one side.

There could be an elaborate design around the name:

They could include your photo:

or be exceptionally frilly or whimsical:

 

They could also be a cunning way to let a lady (or, in today's world, a man) know of your interest (and some are definitely less high-brow than others):

 

For a wide variety of actual Victorian styles, this website has a lot of images:  http://www.daysofelegance.com/callingcards.html

I think the calling card is perfect for the steampunk world.  You can put your name and address (and / or email address) on them, and keep a pen handy to add a personal message, a phone number, your Facebook name, or some such.  You can give one to whomever you wish.  They can be simple or elaborate, and as classy or as playful as you like.

I decided to create my own calling card, so I have a handy way to give my information to people, no matter where I am.  I have some printed with just my name, and the city I live in, and I have another set which also has my email address, where a street address would have been on a Victorian card.  

I used one of the fonts I found online.  The background is a very washed-out version of an image I found online of a set of patina-ed brass gears sold by Objects and Elements.  The card back is plain, to allow me to leave a message, write my cell number, etcetera.  

Of course, I needed a case to carry my cards in:

And a silver plate to receive them (not that I have a doorman (human or automaton) to receive them for me ... yet).

I just wanted to bring calling cards to your attention, if you weren't familiar with them, and perhaps plant a seed to create a calling card of your own, to suit your personality, or your persona.

Ephemera Fun

Greetings, good folks.  I thought I'd chat today a bit about ephemera, and the place it can have in steampunk.

Ephemera is the transient paper detritus with which we have surrounded ourselves for generations, and which were never meant to be kept beyond their short time of use ... tickets (train, omnibus, airship, fair, exhibit), receipts, postcards, pamphlets, notices, posters, etc.  I have taken this also to include, for my steampunk purposes, other paper items (not necessarily included in the dictionary definition) which have a temporary lifespan (passports and other travel documents, and letters) or which don't tend to endure, such as paper money.

Ephemera can be an excellent enhancement to a costume or persona, if you really want to get into a character's world.  What would your character have upon his or her person, in addition to clothes, shoes, hat, gloves, parasol, goggles, pocketwatch, and other obvious decorative accoutrements?

Below are a few cool vintage images of Victorian ephemara I've found while prowling online (yay image Google!)

Visitor Pass to Photographic Society meeting

Football match ticket c. 1880

Assorted railway tickets and passes (specimens)

Chicago-Northwest Railway Ticket c. 1880

Steamboat and ferry tickets - early 1900s

Telegraph form

Undoubtedly your steampunk persona would have money, paper and or coin, tucked in a purse or wallet, or in a document case or pocket.  She also may have a ticket, if she is traveling, for the conveyance she took or will be taking (train, airship, omnibus, ship).  If traveling in a different country, she may well be carrying a passport.  Passports have been in existence in for centuries - for a brief timeline of United Kingdom passport history, look here:  http://www.ips.gov.uk/cps/rde/xchg/ips_live/hs.xsl/1080.htm).  She may be carrying tickets for a show, exhibit, or fair which they have seen or plan to see.  Maybe her purse is crammed with receipts (just as it is nowadays!) or she has a hotel bill tucked in his wallet.  Perhaps she has a postcard from a friend or loved one tucked in their valise.

I have decided to try to create some of my own ephemera.  My first experiment was in November.  Since I was going to Steamcon II in Seattle, I decided to create airship tickets to get there and to leave, and decided to play up where I was coming from and where I would return to.  Some browsing online found me passenger Lady Drummond Hay's 1928 airship ticket for the Graf Zeppelin's first trans-Atlantic flight. 

I used this as my template, downloaded some cool Victorian/Edwardian style fonts, played with wording, and came up with an airship line for the Girl Genius world, Luftshiff Wulfenbach Transkontinental.

I left some fields blank to be completed by hand, and the cabin details in the top right will be manually completed as well, with circles around the selected options (as per the original.  I also filled in some fields with a mock typewriter font, to simulate the form being partially completed by typewriter.

Apologies for the weird large spacing of these - conversion from pdf to jpg resulted in large borders.

My next, more recent project, in the past month, was to create a passport for my character.  Attached below is the only United Kingdom passport I could find from the era when I did an  image Google.  

I also found this United States passport from 1916 (with extension stamps dated for 1917 and 1918).  

I elected to combine the two, with my preferred elements of each, to create my own.  At the top is the UK coat of arms as of Victoria's reign.  I removed the  excess verbiage in the body, and modified it slightly, using some elements from the American passport.  I also decided to include a descriptive section, as in the American example, and I will be attaching a photo on the upper left, as in the American, since photos existed then, and it seems a good step.

I decided to have the lower coat of arms be the City of London arms, since the Foreign Office was based there, and it was the main place to have passports issued.  Alternately, one could decide on other cities allowed to distribute passports, and modify accordingly.

Below is the final product.  The first one is blank, which I will complete manually, once I've mastered a decent Victorian hand, and the other is an example of it completed, using another computer font to fill out the details.

 

I also hope to add some stamps and images showing the passport has been "viséd" by various country consuls, as shown on the reverse side of the period passport above:

My future plans include creating ticket stubs, pamphlets, and flyers, and likely more.  

I want some period reproduction paper money for my character.  I looked into producing my own, but realized I wasn't interested enough to go to the work of making it and then making it look worn like real money ... so I went the easy route, and purchased some from Professor Otto.   http://professorotto.livejournal.com/   I am eagerly awaiting its arrival by post!