Illustrated condom revisited

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.)

 

 

 

Collector's item - very rare, something for the private cupboard, sir?

Currently in the process of looking through some boxes of my own archives, going back some considerable while, and coming across various ephemera and memorabilia that colleagues and friends passed on to me as possibly falling within my sphere of interest. One of which was the photocopy of a page from a catalogue of a sale at Christie's in the summer of 1992, 'The Property of Maxwell Business Communications Ltd' - this included various items of medical/pharmaceutical historical interest, so I can see why my colleague had it.

One item was A rare male contraceptive device, of animal membrane, with printed satirical scene, inscription 'Voila mon choix', and thread and silk tie, French, early 19th century - 7⅞in long. (The satirical scene consists of a nun, two monks, and a bishop, all flashing one another.)

The Times Diary, 10 June 1992, reported that 'the dubious honour of auctioning the world's most collectible condom falls to Christie's next month.... expected to to fetch up to £800'. In fact, it finally went for £3300, to an art dealer purchasing on behalf of a Swedish client who was said to be opening an erotica and pornography museum (Aberdeen Press and Journal, 3 July 1992). This possibly remains the record amount paid for a historical condom.

Digging about to find out any more details on this, I discovered that Christie's did a certain amount of business in antique johnnies: in November the same years the Associated Press reported 'Five 19th century condoms have been sold for more than $12,000 in an auction at Christies' (one said to have been illustrated). A 19th-century French reusable condom, 8 1/2 in long, made from animal membrane with a yellow silk pull-string and maker's envelope inscribed 'moisten before using', was auctioned in 1993 and  two 19th-century condoms with blue silk drawstrings in 1995. Three C18th sheepgut condoms were sold in 2000; and one in 2001, illustrated with a sketch of a sexual encounter.

As historical items, the thought arises that these items must have very considerable conservation and storage requirements.

The other thought that arises is, did illustrating a condom affect its efficacy? What were the health and safety implications in use of the substances used to create the image? Or was an illustrated condom merely a novelty item not intended for actual use?

Status update

Haven't been particularly moved to blog here for a while, between the pressures of being one of this year's judges for the Arthur C Clarke Award, work, feeling rather under the weather, etc etc. Didn't even manage to post about Richard Cleminson's great seminar on sexology in Portugal at the IHR a month ago (podcast).

The looming news in these parts is that I am retiring as Senior Archivist, Special Collections, Wellcome Library, at the end of May. However, I shall not be entirely shaking the dust of the Wellcome from my feet, as I shall be moving to a new desk and a new role as a Wellcome Library Research Fellow, concentrating on my research project on Interwar Progressives.

In connection with which project, I shall be participating in the following conferences in the near-ish future:
Being Modern: Science and Culture in the early 20th century, IHR, 22-24 April (not giving a paper but imbibing the wisdom of others)
Also at the IHR, during the same week, in fact on the afternoon of 23rd, I shall be giving ‘Bearded fruit-juice drinkers: the queerness of inter-war progressives’ as the keynote at Marginal Presences: unorthodox belief and practice 1837-2015
In June, I shall be attending The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914-1945
2015 conference, At Home in the Space Between speaking on 'Feminists and the domestic sphere in early 1930s Britain'.

I have also been making a number of updates to various pages on my website, including adding some recently discovered condom pictures, c. 1930 and an image of that invaluable device, the Le Brasseur 'Re-Rolling Apparatus' for the better preservation of washable reusable condoms:

 

New Directions: Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in C20th Britain

This was an excellent small and focused conference that took place today at University College London.

It reflected several things currently happening in history of sexuality - the spatial turn, from postwar planning of domestic spaces to produce new forms of masculinity to the very specific space of Cardiff's Butetown associated with prostitution and cross-race sexuality; the recognition of the continuing significance of religion, both in the panel dedicated to it and in Sean Brady's compelling paper on the role of sectarianism in attitudes towards on homosexuality in Northern Ireland; the importance of popular media (in this case the tabloid press) as a means of circulating sexual knowledge, not necessarily in the way the editors intended. Material culture also made an appearance in the form of the repositioning of the condom in the 1970s.

There was a very welcome attention to differing regional experiences. Besides Brady on Northern Ireland, and Simon Jenkins on transgressive sex in Cardiff, we had a taster of Helen Smith's impressive work on working-class men in South Yorkshire who related sexually to other men in the pre-Wolfenden era, and Jane O'Neill's work on Scottish young peoples' negotiations around sexuality since World War II.

There were also plenty of opportunity for informal interactions over lunch, coffee, and eventually wine.

The organisers can be congratulated on a very successful day.