steampunk

from The Arcades Project:

Here was the last refuge of those infant prodigies that saw the light of day at the time of the world exhibitions: the briefcase with interior lighting, the meter-long pocket knife, or the patented umbrella handle with built-in watch and revolver. And near the degenerate giant creatures, aborted and broken-down matter. We followed the narrow dark corrider to where--between a discount bookstore, in which dusty tied-up bundles tell of all sorts of failure, and a shop selling only buttons (mother-of-pearl and the kind that in Paris are called de fantasie)--there stood a sort of salon. On the pale-colored wallpaper full of figures and busts shone a gas lamp. By its light, an old woman sat reading. They say she has been there alone for years, and collects sets of teeth 'in gold, in wax, and broken.' Since that day, moreover, we know where Doctor Mircale got the wax out of which she fashioned Olympia.

--Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, convolute H [The Collector]