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Crafters, curiosities converge for 3rd annual Steampunk Festival | September 24, 2017 By KELSEY CHRISTENSEN kchristensen@eagletimes.com FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share Jason “Smithie” Ritchie demonstrates blacksmithing at the Steampunk Festival in Springfield on Saturday. — KELSEY CHRISTENSEN SPRINGFIELD, Vt. — Steampunk, defined as a genre of science fiction that supplants steam-powered machinery in favor of advanced technology into a historic backdrop, finds a worthy home in Springfield. The history of the precision tool industry, which once made Springfield a mecca for gears and machine parts, seems to blend seamlessly with an aesthetic style that favors placing brass hardware components in the forefront, while the Hartness House, an authentic Victorian inn and tavern, forms the perfect venue for this particular gathering. It’s no wonder, then, that the Steampunk Festival is going strong in its third year in Springfield. The Steampunk Festival brings lectures on topics like fashion in the steam age and the cultural form of the side-car show, as well as tarot readings and alternative cello music courtesy of Rasputina to the ballrooms and stages of the historic Springfield inn, but it’s perhaps the vendors at the Steampunk Festival, which dotted the Hartness lawn over the weekend, that transport visitors to the half-historical, half-imagined vision of Steampunk. Springfield’s Steampunk Festival draws vendors from throughout the region peddling sundries like steampunk-themed spectacles, to absinthe ware, to jewelry fit for a Victorian woman. One such vendor is Artistic Anachronism, from New Hampshire. Alison Sheehan-Dion oversaw the tent at the festival along with her husband, where they sold Victorian gloves, glasses, herbal syrups, tableware for absynthe rituals, and other handmade items. “The tagline on our website is ‘Reimagined from a history that never was but should have been,’” said Sheehan-Dion, a software engineer when she’s not posting up at festivals. Her own home is filled with Victorian antiques and art. “If you saw our house you’d be like ‘uh-huh, they have a little problem with time.’” What Sheehan-Dion doesn’t make by hand, she sources from the internet. It’s Artistic Anachronism’s third year at the festival, and their crafts fit organically with the Steampunk theme without much adaptation, but other vendors have to adapt their stock to mesh in the Hartness House festivities. Freighthouse Unhinged, overseen at the festival by Donald Champney, for example, takes a portion of their stock to the Steampunk Festival to conform to the theme. “We have so much stock we can kind of go any direction, really,” Champney said. The Freighthouse Unhinged tent sells items from Victorian material culture, like components to make Steampunk costumes and weapons, and even a display of veneers a Victorian person may have purchased at a trip to the dentist. But, Champney’s collection is adaptable to a number of themes. “Just for the shows, we’re steampunk. We had stuff for the era so we went for that,” Champney said. Meanwhile, Carissa Valerie, who runs Pepper Pots, a ceramics and bookbinding tent, thinks the impulses behind her business alone fit well within a Steampunk environment. She points to a mug, for example, that has a doily pattern pressed into the clay. The doily was a family heirloom from her husband’s grandmother, so Valerie made the pattern live on in her ceramics. “I feel like it carries on her heritage. She was a maker from years ago, and I think she would appreciate using the past and the present,” Valerie said. “That’s sort of the steampunk feel: let’s remember what we like about the past, the pretty things. So there’s that theme that continues in my work.” Others in attendance at the event simply do a craft too appropriate to Steampunk not to find themselves in the fold, like Jason “Smithie” Ritchie, who demonstrated blacksmithing to passers-by at the event. “I got adopted into the steam bunch community years ago because of my wrench axes,” Ritchie said. This is Ritchie’s first year at Springfield’s Steampunk Festival, but he also performs at the Steampunk World’s Fair in New Jersey, and he says the Steampunk community has been amazing to him. Vendors from neighboring regions are drawn to the festival, too. The Windham Antique center, for example, runs a tent at the Steampunk Festival, and village president from neighboring Bellows Falls appeared Victorian clad to man the tent. “When [the antique center] first came to the festival there wasn’t a lot of authentic Victorian. It was more reproduction, so we thought we’d bring the real deal,” Myles Mickle said. “We have all kinds of stuff, Victorian jewelry, costume supplies. Not just Victorian clothing, but trimmings and things. A lot of Victorian hardware as well.” Others at the festival are locals trying to support the event, like Julian Leon, who lives in Springfield and runs a food tent at the festival, Bowls of Braggot. In the festival’s first year, Leon ran a Hawaiian themed tent, Freaky Tiki, but decided to switch his fare to a steampunk theme. “I kind of look at it like some slow-cooked stuff in a big bowl that I imagine eating in a tavern in England in 1890. Good, hearty fare,” Leon said. Braggot is a 1900s honey mead drink they made back in 1800s, though Leon has kept world foods in his menu, with moroccan and polynesian ingredients. “When I time travel I go to different countries,” he said. Leon wants to support the event because the proceeds benefit a scholarship fund, but also because the event benefits the town of Springfield at large. “Springfield is going through revitalization right now, so this is kind of our part,” Leon said.
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