I want one of those. Very badly.
So the artist stuck a raven on a writing desk?
Nice.
I think it looks like a steampunk interocitor though.
Damn. Beat me to itâŚ
Pretty, butâŚ
Actual lab equipment can look more arcane, and is functional. Vacuum/plasma tech is a nice example, where glass is married with stainless steel and high voltage insulators.
A common example is a fusor, images here:
https://www.google.ie/search?tbm=isch&q=fusor
There are more kinds of such lab-as-art tech, e.g. electron microscopes or accelerators, but fusors are the perhaps best (and best known) example.
Edit: Picture:
I am in full agreement on the arcane potential of actual hardware (a nice mercury arc rectifier is functional and looks like something intended to be placed where the fabric of the world is weakest for some dark and terrible purpose).
That said, I suspect that the piece above is partly aimed at evoking the appearance of lab equipment that would have been deemed âfunctionalâ under a substantially different set of presumed physical laws.
As it happens, Team Alchemy was sufficiently wrong about the world that they only got results when they stumbled into what is now chemistry; but they definitely werenât proto-chemists. Vitalism, sympathetic magic, astrology, and assorted hermetic oddities were all definitely on the table. All dead ends; but all theories that would include someâŚvery curiousâŚobjects within the bounds of âfunctional lab equipmentâ.
For pure functional retrotech, Iâd favor the various beautifully fabricated brass mechanical devices (astrolabes, armillary spheres, ball and disk integrators, etc.); but had Athanasius Kircher been correct in his theories, Iâd probably get to choose rather differentlyâŚ
Hello, Fuzzy Fungus, Thank you. I enjoyed your comment. Accurate and thoughtful points. Particularly your mention of Kircher, as you had noticed his astrological map that I painted on my piece.
Donât get my grumbling wrong, the thing is pretty. 
I just have a little different ideas about what counts as a âmad scientistâs apparatusâ 
(Make it âmad alchemistâsâ and weâre on the same wave.)
âMad Alchemistâ is fine.
Given the (arguably understandable) fascination among alchemists with the fact that mercury, that crazy stuff that looks like liquid silver and weighs more than any decent substance should, can dissolve gold, that noble metal that resists most other forms of attack, and then turn back into gold when you boil the mercury off, I suspect that mad alchemists were not in terribly short supply.
(That said, this technique can be used for mercury gilding, which produces excellent results if you are risk-insensitive enough to try.)
Thanks for dropping by; and Iâm glad I guessed accurately, thought it was Kircher but wasnât sure. Such a fascinating character, that one. On the wrong side of future developments in the field almost across the board, so he doesnât come up much in the list of people mentioned as antecedents of todayâs science; but a man of impressively broad and ambitious activity in his vast range of interests. Plus, Iâm pretty sure that he is the source of our first and best surviving account of the âcat pianoâ and its workings!
(Probably for the best that you didnât include that feature, though.)
Mercury is COOL!
The galinstan replacement crap is by far not so good, though it has some fringe advantages (e.g. wetting glass, which can also be a disadvantage).
Or if you work in a hermetic apparatus, e.g. a glovebox.
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