Art pieces where discarded items are transformed into something new and old at the same time are among the coolest types of sculpture to me. The world is full of worn-out, tossed items, and with the right amount of creativity, they can become beautiful. Last week, I might have found one of the greatest examples of creative reuse. A small business in Minnesota takes old, weathered parts from cars, planes, motorcycles, farming equipment, and other machinery, then turns them into epic steampunk-style lamps and tables. I fell in love so hard with Machine Age Lamps’ wares that I bought an example for myself.
I have a confession to make. I’m so addicted to vehicles that they don’t just stay in the parking lot or in a garage, I bring them into my home, too. For the past seven years, I’ve had a Honda Spree scooter in my living room, hubcaps to some old Ford on my wall, and even a Smart Fortwo’s engine block in my closet. There may or may not have been a tailgate to a Volkswagen Touareg in my apartment for a couple of years. So you can only imagine my face when I stumbled upon the Machine Age Lamps booth at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh 2026 last week. Normally, I ignore most of the vendors at AirVenture, but I just couldn’t pass up on this one.
There are a lot of individuals and companies out there turning discarded items into functional art. In my bedroom right now is a retired taxiway light that was turned into a lamp. I’ve also written about countless old trucks, buses, and other vehicles that were turned into beautiful homes after their primary service lives ended. If you go onto Etsy right now, you can find hundreds of sellers all slinging lamps and other home decor that was made out of old machine parts. Just turning parts into decoration isn’t really unique in itself.
What makes Machine Age Lamps stand out to me is an attention to detail that I have not seen anywhere else. This company doesn’t just weld or bolt some car parts to a lamp and call it a day. Instead, each piece is unique and, if it could talk, would tell a story. At the very least, they reeled me in enough that I bought a lamp and hauled it all the way home from Wisconsin.
From Best Buy To Steampunk Art
Machine Age Lamps is a small business based out of Farmington, Minnesota, and its story sounds like the birth of many modern small businesses. From Machine Age Lamps:
Machine Age Lamps began with a simple idea and a meaningful gift.
Shawn Carling wanted to create something special for his father for Christmas. Something that reflected the life his dad had spent on the farmily farm. After finding a few old tractor parts, Shawn decided to turn them into a lamp. What started as a small, personal project quickly became something much more. His father loved the gift, and so did everyone else who saw it.
That single lamp changed Shawn’s life.
After spending 25 years in corporate management, Shawn made the decision to step away from the corporate world and follow a passion he had since childhood: building and creating with his hands. Today, he designs and builds one-of-a-kind steampunk industrial lamps using authentic vintage gauges, gears, and other industrial artifacts. Each piece is handcrafted and completely unique. What began in his garage at home has now found its way into homes, restaurants, bars, corporate spaces around the world. From Las Vegas to Hong Kong to Tasmania. Shawn loves what he does and doesn’t see that changing for a long long time.
Shawn says that, in his past life, he worked the daily corporate grind within Best Buy, and he was the only one who came to management meetings with grease trapped under his fingernails. The blue and yellow tech retailer giant paid the bills, but it wasn’t gratifying. Shawn really enjoyed working with his hands.
Machine Age Lamps started small, right in the garage shared by Shawn and his wife, Lori. To create his pieces, Shawn scours eBay and salvage yards for items to reclaim. Dash clusters from scrapped cars, airplane instrument panels, old pipes, and steam gauges from the early 1900s are some of his favorite pieces. Apparently, the shop has such a huge fanbase that people regularly email Shawn with unique pieces they’ve found that would make for great lamps.
Shawn says that his inspiration is the American industrial age from the 1800s through the 1900s. Back then, he says, companies proudly engraved, embossed, stamped, or painted their names on everything they built. These weren’t small logos, either, but large ones that were hard to miss. You couldn’t operate a machine without knowing what company built it.
These pieces also have character and stories. Shawn isn’t just pulling an instrument cluster out of a disposed car. The car that the cluster was attached to was likely once someone’s pride and joy. Someone drove that car to work, took it on dates, or who knows, maybe even had some naughty stoplight drag.
Shawn says that one memorable build began when a customer pulled an old steam gauge out of the basement of her grandparents’ home and asked Shawn to turn it into a lamp. That lamp reminded the customer of visiting her grandparents during her childhood and seeing that gauge in the basement all those decades ago. I love stuff like this. Even if your piece of equipment, plane, or car might never run again, maybe you can hold onto a piece of it, turn it into something new, and enjoy the memories from it.
Planes, Trucks, And Automobiles
The Machine Age Lamps booth at Oshkosh stopped me in my tracks. I suppose it was a mix of the yellow lights and all of the steam gauges, but I was drawn right in.
On the floor of the booth sat this table, and there’s just so much going on here. There are all sorts of valves, pipes, and gauges under the glass, and even the perimeter of the table has a lot to look at, from the wood to even more pipes and contrasting metal pieces. Apparently, the wood is naturally weathered as it came from an old barn. The lights can be dimmed or turned off, too. The price? $5,999.99.
The shop sells lots of tables like these, including some with engine blocks under them, a couple of tables made from vintage boilers, and one made from a water wagon.
The cheapest coffee table, pictured below, is the water wagon table at $3,195.
If steampunk tables aren’t your jam, the company also makes tables out of Jeep front ends, outboard motors, tractor radiators, car front clips, and more.
It was the lamps that caught my attention the most. Machine Age Lamps has lamps made out of Chevrolet Bel Air instrument clusters, vintage brake lights, pistons, air cleaners, and even truck tailgates.
These parts aren’t just welded together and sent out. Look at the cluster there; it has working lights, a clear crystal, and bold paint. Yet, it still has patina from years of use.
It’s the same deal with the outboard motor lamp. It was scratched up with faded, thin paint. The motor is well-used, and who knows how many lakes it’s seen. Yet, it’s also in good enough condition to look stellar.
I especially like how the light is buried inside this one, and the glow comes out from underneath. The price? $1,999.99
On the wall was something really special. Shawn took the nose and some Lycoming engine parts from a Piper PA-22, then connected the nose cone to a rotating platform from Semco Motion. It was mesmerizing to watch the lightbulb “propeller” spin. How much? $4,399.
Machine Age Lamps also has an entire line of art and furniture with officially licensed Shelby branding. Apparently, the tables and other art here feature real engine blocks and parts from Shelby vehicles.
From the shop:
Every piece is signed, numbered, and officially registered with Shelby American. Each creation also features an authentic aluminum placard, styled after the iconic Shelby identification plates used on historic Shelby vehicles.
Through our licensing agreement with Shelby American, we are able to use official Shelby colors, logos, designs, and Carroll Shelby’s signature on our Shelby-featured creations. These elements can be incorporated into custom builds—allowing us to create a one-of-a-kind piece tailored to the vision you have for your space.
Machine Age Lamps is honored to be the exclusive licensed furniture and home decor company to hold this unique agreement with Shelby American. We have proudly held this partnership since 2019, allowing us to bring authentic Shelby design elements into our handcrafted creations while celebrating the brand’s legendary heritage.
The company’s most popular product is #130, which pairs a 1900s steam gauge with a bunch of pipes and bulbs for $1,499.
I Got A Valve Cover Lamp
My lamp was one of the Machine Age Lamps’ simpler creations. It pairs a discarded and dented Avco Lycoming valve cover with piping, a tractor gear, and a stylish lamp.
What drew me in was the soft glow of the light over the Lycoming branding on the cover.
I also love looking at the finer details, like the damage to the valve cover and the markings on the pipes.
The whole creation is heavy, and its vibe feels like something from the world of BioShock, or some contraption made by a survivor in a Fallout game. I paid $399.99, and I think it’s worth every penny.
My images just don’t do it justice. I could stare at this thing all day. If I had unlimited money, I’d have a garage full of these works sitting next to my motorcycles. I could even see someone justifying the huge prices of the steampunk tables.
I Want To See More Of This
So, if you have hundreds or thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket and you’re looking for some sweet car, motorcycle, plane, boat, or other mechanical art, I cannot recommend Machine Art Lamps enough. Of course, you sort of have to be into steampunk style. If you aren’t, I wouldn’t blame you for not liking it.
Even though I cannot afford most of what Shawn makes, I’m happy he’s doing it. So many things get thrown away, abandoned, or scrapped. There’s a whole world of vintage everyday items that are getting lost to time. I love that there are people turning them into something new.
The next time you’re thinking about throwing out some old equipment, maybe consider if it has a second life. Who knows, maybe a weirdo like me will come by and buy it!
Top graphic images: Mercedes Streeter; Machine Age Lamps
At one point I strongly considered pulling a C4 Corvette hood I found in a junkyard and turning it into a coffee table; but it was gone before I got back to the yard after building a frame.
Every chair in my house is a repurposed automotive seat on a custom frame and caster wheels, as is my office chair at work.
I love the repurposing of these unique items, esp the car and plane bits. Not 100% my style, but cool nonetheless. My grandfather used to build lamps out of found materials such as wooden pulleys, “repowered” railroad lanterns, and cast iron coffee grinders, amongst many other crafty projects that he and my grandmother would sell in their antiques shop alongside regular, non-modified furniture.
To those working with their hands and creating things, big ups to you!
I’m gonna be a big negative Nancy here…
I’m way over the fake patina and preserved patina look. Half their stuff has that.
I also think it’s crazy there’s so many ugly booger welds on these things for the price. Heck, on the threaded black pipe, don’t weld the joints at all. Torque them to east-bejeezus or use some red thread locker.
And personally, I think most of this stuff looks like it belongs in the garage of that rich blue collar guy who owns his own excavating company and has a 60x150ft shop and probably owns a ’31 Ford, ’55 Chevy, ’64 Corvette, and about four other stereotypical Boomer cars (hey, I like them too).
I will nance negatively with you.
I 1000% respect the desire to work with your hands. I essentially work professionally to fund the ability to do things I want to be doing – I just bought a welder not two weeks ago.
You’re right-on both about the aesthetic, which is admittedly mostly a matter of taste and the associated culture (as you mention) and the execution. I saw that exact same globby weld and had the exact same thought about the black pipe.
These look like high dollar Cracker Barrel props, Machine Age rococo, without the wood-and-brass warmth of steampunk, the elegance of the Gilded Age, or the sleekness of modernity or futurism.