Putting Some Steam Back into Steampunk

This week, we're revisiting an old friend, Japanese Steampunk watchmaker, Sueyoshi Haruo (also referred to as Haruo Suekichi), featured nearly a decade ago on The Watchismo Times blog. Having created thousands of custom built Steampunk watches, all nearly one of a kind and with completely hilarious mechanical functions like flapping leather dragon wings to celebratory noisemakers and hidden compartments for obscure objects.  Here are a few of his most recent creations...

Many of his designs feature side-viewing displays but these also showcase cases carved of wood.

The mixed media of his contraptions personify the Steampunk aesthetic and for those of you living under a rock for the past decade; it's a subgenre of speculative Science Fiction. The term denotes works set in a world where steam power is still widely used - usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England.  Incorporating retro-futurism styles of fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells.  Summed up, it's a modern world of today if electricity or electronics had never been realized.

Many of the timepieces feature multiple displays on, above or to the side.

Caught somewhere between sadistic torture devices and timepieces, these artisinal watches are prolifically original, fantastically bizarre.

These watches with wings actually mechanically flap away, I've seen them working! Why you ask? How dare you...

More of the quintessential sideviewing watches, some more organically designed, others pure Steampunk utilitarianism.

Excerpts from a an interview with Sueyoshi Haruo:

"I started to work in a toy store, as a salesman. Across from the toy store was a watchmaker, and he would sometimes come over during work hours, and we became friends. I asked him if he could teach me how to make watches, and... [nods]."

"So did your watches start out as unique as they are now, or have you built up to this level of weird?"

"In the beginning, they were pretty simple, a strange drawing maybe, but that's about it. But at the flea market, a one-armed man came up to me. And he said to me, well, with only my left arm, I can't put on a watch. Wow, I thought, he's right...I wonder if I could make a watch like that? So I made - and you can see one upstairs in the showcase - I made a watch that you put your wrist in it and it shuts around your wrist."

Find other Steampunk inspired watches at Watches.com