Alchemist's box

Oookay... well, yes, this is another one of those Dracula things. And no, I’ve not randomly turned into some creepy vampire fan (although if I had, I still suppose Dracula would’ve been a slightly more respectable thing to base it on than, say, Anne Rice, or Those Other Books Which We Shall Not Name (For Fear Of Endless Wank)... if we were to be elitist about it, which is hardly the way of the gentleman, now is it). But, ah, no. I’ve a legitimate reason for making these, but I’m kind of ignoring it right now, so moving on¹...

Anyway, another instance of ‘oh come on, why has no one ever picked up on this (blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but still canon!) detail from the novel instead of making up tragic romantic backstory?’ With one of the main foci of alchemy being the search for the Philosopher’s Stone and eternal life, and the rather close ties between alchemy and the occult etc, you’d think there’s quite a lot of unmined potential there. Clearly, moustach’d alchemist Dracula > forlorn emopants Dracula. (Not that most adaptations I’ve seen portray him all that much in that way... more like *cough*certain subsets*cough* of the popular imagination took the touches of romantization and ran with it. )

¹ Now, a few years later, I guess I can divulge that I made these things as work samples for university. When I first uploaded them, I was too nervous about the outcome to want to talk about it. They did the job, for the record.

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Was a modern document briefcase before I got my hands on it. Other materials include a 2nd hand leather skirt, paints and enamel, twine, cardboard, aluminium tape, fimo, punchinella, shoe shine... and various other stuff. Ask if there’s anything you wonder about, but I mostly just made things all up as I went along with whatever I could afford on my shoestring budget. (Oh yeah, there’s some shoestring in there too, now that I mention it.)

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A closer look at the box lid, with the more fanciful descripton, is here. Inside views are here and here.