Some while ago I made a blog post about an illustrated animal-gut condom which was sold at Christies in 1992, allegedly to a Swedish collector intending to establish an erotica and pornography museum.
Imagine my glee at coming across this report: Dutch museum to display 200-year-old condom probably made from sheep’s appendix:
A 200-year-old illustrated condom will go on display with Dutch golden age masters in Amsterdam this week, after the 19th-century “luxury souvenir” became the first-ever contraceptive sheath to be added to the Rijksmuseum’s art collection.
The condom, which was probably made of a sheep’s appendix circa 1830, is thought to have come from an upmarket brothel in France, most likely in Paris. It features an erotic etching depicting a partially undressed nun pointing at the erect genitals of three clergymen, as well as the phrase Voila, mon choix (“There, that’s my choice”).
The Rijksmuseum curator Joyce Zelen said the composition of the etching deliberately alluded to the Greek myth of the Judgment of Paris.
It's very pleasing to have the item more specifically located in place and time of origin, as well as being made available in a public museum. I am also very tempted by the exhibition of which it is part, 'Safe Sex: featuring Dutch and French prints and drawings on the themes of sex work and sexual health.' (I can't find anything about this actually on the Rijksmuseum website, as at today, though masses of press reports all of which focus on the condom.)
I'm intrigued, however, that the price given for its acquisition ('Bought for €1,000 (£840) at an auction in Haarlem') seems rather lower than what it (reportedly) fetched in 1992, £3300, at that time probably the highest amount paid for a historical condom. This gives one to wonder about the various journeyings of this artefact over the past 30+ years, and the state of the antique condom market over time. In fact, another source reports the curator as remarking that 'It was a bargain... as condoms with pictures on them have been fetching much higher prices in the last 20 years'.
(I would, however, dissent from the curator's quoted comment 'It enables us to pause and look at the sexual history of the 19th century which we haven’t done much with so far'. Or maybe I am being Anglocentric, because sometimes it seems there is no end of looking at the Victorians and their sexual histories.)
