Tag: Vintage

The lure of the ankle

There’s an old myth that women in Victorian Britain were so uptight that they’d dress the legs of their furniture in small skirts to save them from the lascivious gaze of men. It is of course bullshit. Unless you’ve got a very unusual kink for carved wooden furniture, nobody is getting off on piano or table legs.

I’ve also heard it said that Victorian men were inordinately attracted to the lower legs and feet of ladies, because being covered by long skirts made them all the more enticing. It’s true that something being forbidden or taboo can be a natural for kinks, but this view seems equally unlikely to me. Almost nobody wears very long skirts these days, with feet, ankles and lower legs regularly on full display. Yet despite that, foot and shoe fetishism is still a huge kinky niche. Femdom porn is packed with it. Clearly it’s just a common kink that some people have. So while I’m sure there were plenty of Victorian men who enjoyed admiring a shapely ankle, it wasn’t a function of their fashion and prudish social values, but just kinky people being kinky.

I’m not sure when or where this image was originally shot. In the original tweet I sourced it from (by @mrunderheel), it’s labelled as coming from the 1920’s (about 20 years after the Victorian era). Personally I’d suspect a scene from an early movie, but a reverse image search doesn’t give me anything to go on.

Update: Thanks to Bacchus at ErosBlog I can now attribute this to a 1925 play called The Grand Duchess and the Waiter starring Basil Rathbone. Fans of early British cinema may recognize that name, as he played one of the most famous incarnations of Sherlock Holmes in the 30’s and 40’s. So in a strange twist, if you’ve got Amazon Prime, you can actually watch the man in this image from the 20’s in several movies streamed digitally to your home. They’re pretty entertaining even today.

Easter Bunny

It’s Easter weekend, so what could be more appropriate than a very sexy Easter bunny image? Presumably this lady didn’t want to mess around hunting for eggs and went straight into torturing the source for their location.

What I love most about this image – among many things – is the nipple clamps on the bunny. I can’t imagine they’re particularly effective over that fluffy suit. Although when you’ve got a chained up giant bunny in a corset and a domme wearing sunglasses in a dungeon, then clearly Mr Logic has long since packed his bags and left town.

I’ve no idea where this is originally from. I found it here.

Checklists

Writing yesterday’s post about bucket lists reminded me of another type of list – the BDSM checklist. If you’re not familiar with the concept it’s basically a quick and easy way to build a list of activities that you’re interested in exploring or absolutely want to avoid. Typically they’re used as an aid to negotiating a scene, but I also like them to give me new ideas or reminders of things I haven’t tried for a while.

Back in the day – when kinksters had to get up half an hour before they went to bed and pay mill owner for privilege to come to work – you’d actually print out a list and mark off interests. These days you can build and share a profile online, no dead trees or leaky pens needed. For example, somebody recently sent me a link to the Kinkomatic site, which seems to have a pretty comprehensive list of activities, as well as a fairly slick interface for creating, sharing and finding lists. You can read more about it via their FAQ. Alternatively, if you’d rather go with an old school approach, there are plenty of  basic activities lists online you can search for (e.g. this one has 256 entries).

Talking of old school – this magazine cover would certainly qualify. Presumably this gentleman ticked 36 (chains), 40 (choking) and 134 (leather clothing) from this list. However, I don’t see any options for ‘wearing hideous y-fronts’ or ‘roleplaying being a really bad actor’.  No matter how long the list, it seems there are always a few popular kinks that get left off.

Vintage Whipping

A final post to finish my trio of vintage images. This comes courtesy of this tweet by Pitt Prickel. It’s apparently a scene from the early 1930’s. For me it has the feel of an artists studio – as though it might be models posing for a picture or a sculpture. There’s a real sense of physicality and solidity to the scene. Almost like a statue from the classical era of Greece or Rome.

John Willie

In writing yesterday’s post I stumbled across this page, featuring a series of photographs by John Willie. I primarily knew about Willie as an artist via his famous Sweet Gwendoline series. I hadn’t realized quite what a talented and prolific photographer he’d been. The photographs featured have a surprisingly modern feel to their kinky dynamic. Perhaps the biggest difference is in the type of rope used and the style of bondage. These days everyone has access to fancy dyed bondage rope and tutorials on artistic knots and fancy rigging techniques. Back in the 40’s and the 50’s they were figuring it out for themselves as they went along.

If you’re a fan of his imagery, you might like to know there’s a hardcover book of his photographs available. I’ve just ordered a copy for myself. It’ll sit nicely on my bookshelf next to Eric Kroll’s book on Eric Stanton.

The Importance of Hydration

This tweet from Victoria Rage made me smile…

Every Domme about to attempt a golden scene has a secret stash of multiple beverages hidden away to better the odds of making things happen. Look hard enough and you can almost always tell what’s in store.

That’s very true. Whenever I spot a domme regularly swigging liquids during a scene, I have a pretty good idea of what’s to come. However, sometimes it turns out the domme was just feeling dehydrated, and then it’s a little disconcerting.

We’ll get to the end of the session and she’ll be  – “Well that was fun. Take care. See you next time!” And  I’ll smile, hug and wave goodbye, but internally I’ll be thinking – “Huh? What’s going on with all that liquid? Don’t tell me it’s simply going to be flushed down the toilet! What a waste.”

I’m not sure of the original source for this artwork, but I do like the caption. ‘Ah!’ indeed. But is that his satisfied exclamation or hers?

Slurping her Cherry

This very vore like image is actually a film poster from the 1970’s that someone has cropped and modified. You can see the original here. A site selling the original poster entitles it ‘Maraschino Cherry’ and credits the producer Radley Metzger.  I’m sure the original 70’s flick was a lot less kinky that the poster suggests. In those days the advertising of pornography and the actual pornography in question often had little to no connection between them. Plus, I doubt the vore kink was on anyone’s radar in the 70’s porn industry.

Spiky Submissive

Over the years I’ve poked fun at a fair number of domme outfits. This vintage photograph is one of the rare examples where the WTF factor is all about the submissive. I’d love to know what the thinking was behind the spikes. Shouldn’t it be the submissive in the predicament situation, not everyone around her? That rather striking domme is going to feel pretty silly if she stabs herself while trying to apply her flogger. Perhaps it’s designed as an all body chastity device? No matter how cute she might be, you can’t get close enough to enjoy any sort of intimate encounter.

According to this tweet, it’s from Studio Biederer around 1935.

Side Eye

This is a lovely old shot from the era of Weimar Berlin. The two figures are Margo Lion and Wilhelm Bendow, cabaret performers from 1927. She looks fabulously composed and stylish. He makes me think of every date I’ve ever been on. There’s a touch of cat and mouse about the pair, assuming that mice brought flowers for cats prior to being eaten.

I believe I found this on the twitter feed of Severin.

1930’s Domme

This is a companion shot to a well known image that has been floating around on the web for years. I featured the more common shot in a post way back in 2011. I always liked that image, so was very pleasantly surprised to discover this other, less well known one, of the same domme by photographer Charles Guyette.

I think they’re both wonderfully erotic shots, and that’s from someone who has spent a couple of decades experiencing all the kinky imagery an uncensored internet has to offer. I can’t even begin to imagine the effect they’d have had on a submissive male 80 or more years ago. I’m guessing that for anyone lucky enough to have a hard copy of this back in the day, it was a well hidden and highly treasured possession.

I discovered via the mrunderheel’s twitter.