About steampunkary.com
steampunkary.com is an illustrated field guide to steampunk style and making. Its business is to explain: what pieces make a look read as steampunk, and why; how each piece is put together; what it costs to buy or to make at three budgets; and where the style came from, in the books, films and workshops that started it. The reader we have in mind is building a first costume for a convention, a Halloween party or a themed wedding; or is a maker with a pair of goggles to modify and a bustle to sew; or is a reader of Verne and Wells who wishes to know what to read next; or is furnishing a room, or buying a gift for the steampunk one in the family.
We keep to steampunk and its near relations: neo-Victorian dress, gaslamp fantasy, Victorian science fiction, and dieselpunk where the contrast is useful. General Victorian history, farmhouse decor and general costume are left to others.
The site sells nothing and holds no stock. It is not affiliated with any costume shop, maker, publisher, convention or retailer it writes about.
Where the site came from
The steampunkary.com address dates from 2010. Its earlier pages were mostly lists of products; in October 2026 the site passed to its present publisher and is being rebuilt, page by page, as a guide. Where an old page still answered a reader’s question, its address was kept and the page rewritten; the rest were merged into the new guides or retired, so that an old link still leads somewhere sensible.
Who publishes it
steampunkary.com is published by Webhaus LLC, 2108 N St, Ste 4030, Sacramento, CA 95816, USA. Webhaus LLC also publishes guides to other subjects and is responsible for everything on this site. The editor can be reached at [email protected].
Who writes it
Nathaniel Toule, “the Gazette’s editor”, is the editorial byline of the steampunkary.com team at Webhaus LLC. It is not the name of a real person, and no individual of that name stands behind the pages. We chose a period name because the site is written in the manner of a Victorian illustrated periodical, which spoke with an editorial “we”; the name belongs to the house style, not to a biography.
Pages under that byline are researched from what museums, libraries, scholars, makers and retailers publish, drafted with the help of AI research and writing tools, and checked against the cited sources by a person before publication, as the editorial policy describes. Nobody on the team claims to have worn, built or tested what a page describes unless the page says so. The authority of a page comes from its sources, not from anyone’s credentials.
How the site is researched
Every fact rests on a source the editors have read: a museum’s catalogue entry, a scholar’s study, the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, a maker’s own instructions, a manufacturer’s safety sheet, a retailer’s own page for its own prices. Wikipedia and forums are not cited. A claim that cannot be verified is left out.
The articles carry no footnote numbers; it seemed to us that a field guide, like a well-made catalogue, reads better without them. The sources are not hidden for that. Each article ends with a link to its entry on the Sources page, where every source is listed with the date it was consulted. The editorial policy explains the arrangement.
Prices and shop listings change. They are stated with the month they were checked and re-checked at least every six months. If something is wrong or out of date, the contact page is the way to tell us, and it will be corrected.
How the site makes money
steampunkary.com earns a commission when a reader buys through some of its product links, at present from Amazon. It costs the reader nothing extra, and it does not decide which products are shown or what is said about them. The affiliate disclosure gives the particulars.