Playboy invites you to yet another exclusive showing of the antique-erotica collection of Boston dealer Charles Martignette. This is the fifth time since 1980 that we've sifted through this eclectic collection to highlight rare, titillating artworks that span centuries of arched eyebrows. As before, we've culled a significant sampling of delightfully whimsical and provocative relics. To date, Martignette has excavated more than 3500 artifacts—arguably the world's largest assemblage of materials that celebrate human sexuality, as expressed in the most giddy forms of craftsmanship imaginable. Many of these treasures were recovered from the now-defunct International Museum of Erotic Art in San Francisco, while others turned up in flea markets and musty antique shops. They include three-dimensional art-deco and -nouveau objets and everyday items, such as those displayed here, along with a full complement of French postcards, vintage nude photographs and the notorious eight-page cartoon booklets once known as Tijuana Bibles. Martignette's collection also includes original pinup and popular-magazine art (he has recently procured 101 original Alberto Vargas canvases), and conservative estimates would fix the total value of his acquisitions at more than $25,000,000. (For an extended viewing of the Martignette trove, watch for an upcoming feature on the Playboy Channel's Sexcetera ... the News According to Playboy.)
What especially piques him, he stresses, is the fact that artisans of every social stratum have dallied, at I some point, in erotic themes—even if I it meant subtly injecting innuendo I into ostensibly benign works. The pieces pictured on this page, for instance, each represent classic examples of how wily craftsmen playfully conceal their hide-and-go-peek comic payoffs. Martignette claims to have I seen 100 clam-shaped candy dishes like the one above, but none with comparably vivid image reproduction, which is why this one has a current market value of roughly $2500.
There is irony, perhaps, in the notion of a native Bostonian's amassing such a large collection of erotic art. The incongruity is not lost on Martignette: "It is interesting that this particular collection was spawned in the cradle of American conservatism," he chuckles. "In fact, all of my earliest pieces were acquired in the greater Boston area. In those days, when I visited antique stores to ask about erotica, I would encounter a lot of blushing and wrinkled foreheads. Some dealers threw tomatoes at me." While several curators are discussing plans to mount retrospectives of the collection, the bulk of Martignette's treasures are safely squirreled away in bank vaults. "My dream," he says, "is to open a Museum of Love and Romance." May we suggest a theme park—complete with rides?
