Tag: Vintage

Mistress Antoinette

I’m going to close this series of vintage themed posts by returning to the first one in it. Several readers reached out via comments and emails to say that the domme in the photograph was a Mistress Antoinette. I’d not been aware of her until now, but by all accounts she was an amazing person.

This Rialto Report article provides some interesting background, with tributes from the likes of Dita Von Teese and Annie Sprinkle. Among her many accomplishments was publishing the fetish and femdom Reflections Magazine and creating the fashion company Versatile Fashions. You can hear from Mistress Antoinette as well as see some of her creations in this 1997 video of the Dressed To Thrill Ball.

One reader was kind enough to send me a lovely story of his interaction with her back in the 80’s. I’m sharing it below with his permission.

Way back In 1983, while driving back to San Diego after a few days of climbing in Yosemite National Park, I visited her fetish clothing store, Versatile Fashions Boutique. To my delight she was in the store that day, and was very kind when I told her that I was a longtime fan who loved being submissive to women. She had a reporter coming in for an interview, and for his benefit I was allowed to play her slave, footstool, bootlicker, and errandboy while she chatted merrily and casually with the reporter. It was a wonderful experience for me, exercising my macho rock climber persona on one day, and my worshipful slave persona the next. Plus she was just such a decent person with a big heart and a wonderful sense of humor.

She’s now retired and, based on this article, is sadly suffering from some health problems. She was clearly a kinky pioneer with a great personality. I’m sure we all wish her well in retirement.

Although Ms Antoinette has retired, the fashion company continues today under the brand Versatile Corsets.

Dominatrix Without Mercy

I’m continuing both the vintage and Jamie Gillis themes with this post. As I’ve written before, this movie popularized the title ‘Dominatrix’, despite being a really terrible movie. It was basically a regular 70’s porno with some weird sex acts thrown in.

What I admire in hindsight is the marketing of this kind of material. As a teenager it used to drive my crazy. I’d discover what I thought would be some hot kinky material, and it’d turn out to be 30 seconds worth of kink in 90 minutes of nonsense. Now, with more kinky material on the internet than I can shake a whip at, I can admire the chutzpah of the 60’s and 70’s porno salesmen. They repeatedly managed to sell the sizzle without the sausage being anywhere in sight.

Jutka and Jamie

I always enjoy posting and gently poking fun at the fashions and tropes of vintage fetish shots. However, I should make clear that I’ve the utmost respect for the people who created them. They were operating at great legal risk, with very limited funds and no easy way to distribute their material. They had no blueprint for what BDSM material should look like and no easy way to get customer feedback. Sex workers today complain – with total justification – about the limits credit card companies and social media impose. Yet the idea of being able to simply snap and tweet an image would blow the mind of a 60’s fetish photographer. They had to deal with printing physical magazines, postal inspectors keen to sieze their material, paper mailing lists of nervous customers and the mob money that funded a lot of pornography.

If, like me, you love reading stories about the early days of kinky porn, then I’d highly recommend this Rialto article on Leonard Burtman and his wife/model Jutka Goz (aka Jennifer Jordan).  Using a photograph of Jutka dominating Jamie Gillis as jumping off point, it tells the story of Leonard Burtman, one of the pioneers of kink and femdom porn. Along the way it touches on such famous names as Weegee, Bettie Page, Irving Klaw, Rene Bond and of course Jamie Gillis. I found it fascinating and touching. I particularly loved the 2018 interview with Jutka, who seems like she’s living her best life in Beverly Hills.

These two images are of Jutka and Jamie Gillis, both taken from the Rialto article. For anyone wondering if she was really dominant, I’m afraid the answer is no.

Jutka remembers the modeling work as entertaining and enjoyable: “It was fun to get dressed up and be outrageous,” she says. As for whether she had a personal interest in spanking, leather, or domination, she laughs: “It was only a role. I’m a good bullshit artist.”

My thanks to DrewP for point me to the article via a comment.

Vintage Pegging

I’m continuing my theme of vintage femdom imagery with another unusual image. This time it’s not the outfits or setting which are odd – they look pretty standard for 70’s kinky porn – but the activity. Whips, leather outfits and bad bondage are common in vintage shots, but you almost never find pegging scenes like this one. Until the last decade or so it was very risky in the US to combine sex with BDSM in pornography and anal penetration fell under that categorization. I’d therefore guess that this is from a European publication. Of course they wouldn’t have called it pegging at the time – that term wasn’t coined until Dan Savage came along in 2001.

Updated: Bacchus of ErosBlog added an amazing comment with some detailed research on this image. It looks like it came from Candy Films, a forerunner of Color Climax Corporation. Almost certainly it was published in the early 70’s, and probably in a magazine called Man Servant.

Equally Strange

Odd and unsuitable outfits for dommes are nothing new in femdom porn. Her leather outfit and big gloves aren’t what most people would pick for a sunny afternoon on a patio, but I’ve seen stranger. What’s unusual here is his metallic looking corset. That looks very uncomfortable and not in a sexy way. It’s a very weird combination of outfits and setting. At least she gave him a shaggy rug to kneel on.

I’ve no idea where this is from. From the style I’d guess it was shot in the early 70’s.

Size Con

The Daily Dot has put up a thoughtful article on the subject of shame and kink. It’s anchored around the authors virtual attendance at SizeCon – a convention for fans of microphilia and macrophilia. I had no idea such a convention existed, but I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Where there is porn of something, then there will be forums and fansites, and that means meet-ups and conventions can’t be far behind.

One of my takeaways from the article is that being kinky doesn’t always translate into being open minded or tolerant. As the author writes…

Most of the sex clubs, 18+ panels, and sex ed courses I’ve attended make plenty of room for D/s, S/M, and bondage but don’t really care for anything more fantastical. Or if it comes up, it quickly becomes a joke.

Just because people are operating outside mainstream ideas of sexuality, doesn’t mean they’re not going to set up their own alternative hierarchies and gatekeepers. Much like with free speech, it’s easy to be supportive when something fits with your proclivities. The challenge is to be inclusive and supportive when it doesn’t align. I always try to remind myself that me not liking something – whether it’s a particular kink or a food or a movie – is my loss. It’s not a problem with the thing itself.

I don’t have a kink for size, but I do like this image. The tweet I sourced it from credited it to ‘Gibson’ from 1920.

Updated: Thanks to a helpful email I believe the Gibson in question is Charles Dana Gibson, an American illustrator who created the Gibson Girl.

Oh Sir!

A final post on school bullies. This one continues the theme from yesterday of nervous teachers with very forward students.I particularly like his expression and the position of his hands. He looks like he’s trying to become one with the wall. In contrast she’s pushing forward, pulling backwards and floating in the air.

I’d guess this in an illustration from a 1950’s or 60’s pulp novel about college professors and their insatiable students. Sadly I’ve not managed to track down who the original artist was.

Update: This is the front cover of the Amy Harris novel Prize Pupil, publish in 1966. Based on this page, the artist is unknown.

Update 2: A reader suggested that the artist in question is Robert McGinnis. That’s very possible as it’s definitely in his style, but I don’t have a link for the attribution.

Paul Kamm

I’m continuing the fine art theme with this post. In fact, I’m even continuing the theme of German artists working between the World Wars. This is by Berlin artist Paul Kamm, who published work in the 1920’s and 30’s. Sadly there’s not a lot of information available online about his background or work. Goddess Ezada Sinn has a post on him along with some of his drawings here.

Offered Prayer

This is by the German artist Rudolf Schlichter. Born in 1890, he survived the the first and second World Wars, despite his work being labelled as degenerate by the Nazis. I’ve featured his work before, and I assume the model in both paintings is the same. According to this article it’s an Elfriede Elisabeth Koehler aka Speedy, who shared his interests in “buttoned boots, bondage and masochistic games.” Clearly the disdainful sneer, beloved of many twitter findommes, is not a new invention.

Wighead

This drawing is by the artist Wighead for a 1930’s novel entitled ‘A Genoux Esclave’. You can see more from the book here and there’s an article on the potential identity of the artist here. I discovered the art and its background via this tweet.

These days the idea of a French maid in a sexy black and white outfit with stockings and a little cap exists almost entirely in fetish scenes and silly Halloween outfits. It has become purely a sexual trope. Yet black and white maid outfits in the 19th and early 20th century were a real thing. They were just far more practical. Here’s a picture of one I found from the same era. So what we’re looking at here is a fetishistic interpretation of what was a contemporary uniform of the time. I find it interesting to look at the artwork from that angle. It has a different feel when you consider it from the perspective of a 1930’s kinkster.