Atypical Alchemist is Clint Zehner's collection and website about science, history, alchemy, and the things that make him want to know more. It began with the limits on travel around the COVID period and grew into a wall of historical reproductions, chemical elements, scientific demonstrations, old medicines, and objects that look as though they belong in a modern alchemist's laboratory.1 2
The website, AtypicalAlchemist.com, gives the collection room for its stories. The interest is often in the connection: a real mineral with a resemblance to Kryptonite, a medicine label with surprising ingredients, or laboratory glassware that turns out to make coffee.1 2
From staying home to building a collection
Clint had long wanted a reproduction of the Rosetta Stone. A job change in 2019 had limited his opportunities to travel, and COVID brought further restrictions. Spending less on going places left room for buying something he had always found fascinating. The Rosetta Stone reproduction became a starting point.1 2
Other reproductions followed, along with objects that demonstrated scientific principles. His interests already ranged across physics, history, science fiction, and fantasy, so the collection followed the questions rather than a single period or discipline. How did people understand the sky? What did they use in everyday life? What happens when a magnet, a material, or a bit of glass behaves in an unexpected way?2
Reproductions of the Antikythera mechanism and Nebra sky disc share the collection with a miniature Tesla coil, ferrofluid, a radiometer, and historical curiosities. Some objects invite an explanation of how they work. Others are there because the story attached to them is too good to pass up.2 3
The WoKE Wall
Clint calls the display the “WoKE Wall—Wall of Knowledge and Everything Wall.” As it grew, ordinary picture shelves stopped providing the setting he wanted. He designed and built iron-pipe shelves specifically for the collection, combining wood, metal, color, and lighting into a display that could accommodate its increasingly varied contents.1 2
The WoKE Wall and the iron-pipe shelving Clint built for the collection.
The alchemist's-laboratory idea also appears in the labels and symbols. Historical alchemical notation supplies part of the visual language; Clint has designed additional symbols where he wanted a consistent treatment for materials without a corresponding symbol in the system he was using. The Atypical Alchemist logo is a variation of the first tattoo he designed.1 2
Elements, Kryptonite, and cough syrup
The collection includes at least 50 chemical elements. Collecting them became a project of its own, extending the wall from things that demonstrate science to the materials themselves. The website groups elements and compounds into their own sections, alongside minerals, herbs, and other curiosities.1 4
Jadarite brought that collecting interest together with Superman. The real mineral's composition is close to the fictional formula used for Kryptonite in Superman Returns, although it lacks the fluorine in the film's description. For Clint, the possibility of having something close enough to call “Kryptonite” was another reason to go looking.2 5
Old medicines offer a different kind of surprise. One Night Cough Syrup belongs among those curiosities: the historical label lists alcohol, cannabis indica, chloroform, and morphia sulphate—morphine sulphate. The interest is in what people once put into an ordinary-seeming remedy, and how differently familiar objects can read when their ingredients are examined.1 6
A laboratory with useful potions
Clint's cold-brew coffee maker fits the laboratory unusually well. Its tall arrangement of glass vessels and a controlled drip looks appropriate among the apparatus, while producing something he actually wants to drink. In the site's account, the elaborate potion that restores a nearly dead person and makes them less dangerous to everyone around them turns out to be coffee.2
Kitchen Alchemy carries that curiosity into ice cream and other experiments. Mexican-tarragon, tiramisu, and color-shifting ice cream are among its subjects. The interest continues beyond a flavor name to ingredients, method, results, and what might be worth changing on the next attempt.1 7
Folklore supplies another part of the collection. Clint does not believe in magic, but his position is that if it ever starts working, he is prepared. Herbs, symbols, and his combination of salt, iron, and silver belong to that mixture of curiosity, fantasy, and practical-minded joking.1 2