BD-014
Standing phallus
Wear at the base suggests it stood. We are not going to invent a god to go with it. Votive is the safest word, and it is still a guess.
An educational institution for adults
The Berwick Dildo Museum
and Gift Shop
Berwick, Maine
Opening soon in Berwick, Maine. Come for the galleries. The shop is at the end, if you want it. The Berwick Dildo Museum is a forthcoming adult museum in Berwick, Maine.
This is an educational museum for adults. We collect and exhibit the phallus as it turns up in ordinary human business: worship, medicine, jokes, housewares, and private life. You walk through cases with labels. There is no dance floor.
The collection
The opening collection brings together antique phalluses from more than thirty cultures. A few of the pieces are over a thousand years old. Sizes run from about three inches to a little over ten. You will see stone, wood, ceramic, metal, glass, bone, and later manufactured materials.
The labels are written in plain English. We are not going to pretend every object was a “fertility charm” and leave it at that. Some were. Some were not. People have been making this shape for a very long time, and they did not all have the same reason.
Photographs below are from public museum collections and are here to show the sort of object we mean. They are not studio shots of our own inventory. Full credits are on Wikimedia Commons.
A longer, still unofficial history of the phallus
What follows is our working history, written for the wall, not for a journal. If a specialist wants to argue a date, they are welcome to write. We will keep the objects where they are.
Before anyone apologized for it
The English word “dildo” is late. The object is not. Stone and clay versions turn up as soon as archaeologists start bagging small finds, which is to say almost everywhere someone has bothered to look. They get buried with people, stood in fields, and carried in pockets. The older record is blunt about it. A lot of later writing is not.
One shape has been asked to do a lot of jobs: rain, graves, thieves, midwifery, and, now and then, sitting in a box until somebody in Maine writes a card for it. That is as good a place as any to begin.
The classical habit
Around the Mediterranean it was not treated as a secret. You find it over doorways, in festivals, and on dishes people actually ate from. A winged phallus was supposed to keep off bad luck. Whether that counts as a joke or a blessing depends on who you ask; often it was both. Greece wrote about it. Rome made lamps, hanging bells, and street carvings in quantity. Neither place invented the form. They just did not lower their voices.
The Nile, the Levant, and the long dry archive
Egyptian and Nubian workshops left faience and stone pieces that last, in part, because dry ground is a decent storeroom. Further through the Levant and into Mesopotamia you get votives, amulets, and household objects. Some are obviously sexual. Some are so simplified that a visitor stares until they read the card. That is what the card is for.
Asia, Africa, and the long Pacific
In parts of South and East Asia the phallus is tied to increase and to temple practice. A Shiva lingam, a Japanese festival carving, and a piece of worked jade are not the same thing, and we do not file them as if they were. They do sit in the same family of forms. In West and Central Africa the shape turns up on staffs, masks, and figures that were used, not parked behind glass. Pacific workshops often chose very hard wood; some of it still takes an edge. We show them together so you can look. We do not mash them into one explanation.
The Americas before and after the catalog
Some ceramic traditions in Mesoamerica and the Andes include figures that are frankly sexual. Later collectors had a habit of writing “fertility” on the box and closing it. Farther north, stone and bone examples are thinner on the ground in public collections and more often fought over. We show what we can attribute and we say when we are guessing. Embarrassment is not a date.
Europe grows modest, then inventive
Medieval Europe did not stop making them. It stopped putting them on the letterhead. Folk carvings, pilgrimage badges, and objects catalogued as medical kept the shape moving while official culture looked past it. By the 1600s and 1700s, glassworkers in Italy and leatherworkers in more than one port were taking private orders. The English word on our door is younger than the habit. Victorian households then had a talent for buying a thing in one tone of voice and putting it in a drawer in another.
Industry finds a product
Rubber first, then early plastics, then silicone. At that point the phallus is a catalog item. Something that used to be carved for a town can be boxed and sent a long way. We treat that as a change in materials and sales. How people felt about it is their business. Our part is to put a few examples under glass and say what they are made of.
A note on the cards: the measurements are the length of the object.
Selected objects from the opening hang
A handful of the accession cards. The rest of the thirty-odd cultures will be in the cases. Dates are our working attributions, not holy writ.
BD-031
Winged phallus (tintinnabulum fragment)
The bells are gone and the wings are stubbed. Hung near a door, it was meant to send bad luck somewhere else.
BD-044
Double-ended stone
Too heavy to carry around as a trinket. One end is more finished than the other. It looks like workshop work.
BD-057
Temple offering
Shown with the grain of the stone, not painted up for tourists. Increase, protection, or both; the card allows either reading.
BD-062
Festival carving
Tool marks are still easy to see. It was made to be carried. Largest object in the opening hang.
BD-078
Household figure
There is use-polish on the shaft. Somebody handled this. We are not going to call it a masterpiece to make it sound expensive.
BD-083
Pocket amulet
Small end of the range we advertise. Easy to hide and easy to lose. A customs clerk in 1912 would have had questions, which is probably how a few of these ended up in private drawers.
BD-091
Medical pattern glass
Catalogued in one century as an instrument and in the next as a curiosity. Both can be true. Neither covers it.
BD-106
Catalog model
This is about the moment the thing becomes a stock item. Cracked at the collar. Useful to look at. Not for sale in the shop.
BD-118
Jade pendant phallus
Drilled for a cord and worn, not stuck on a stand. Three inches is sometimes the whole object.
Galleries planned for opening
- Origins. Stone, clay, and wood phalluses, including pieces dated over a thousand years old.
- Thirty cultures. A comparative case: one form, many workshops.
- Scale. Three inches to more than ten, shown as craft and proportion, not a contest.
- Materials. What survives in dirt, and what only survives in storerooms.
- The modern object. How the dildo became a manufactured good.
Who it is for
Adults only. That is the rule. Come read the labels and look at the work. If you are here to perform shock or to mind other people’s business, stay home. LGBTQ+ visitors are part of the ordinary public, not a sidebar. The shop at the end will have books, casts, and a few small things tied to the galleries.
What you will not find
- A nightclub
- A lecture on your neighbors
- An owner biography
- A children’s corner
For the easily alarmed
- Is this a sex shop with extra signage?
- No. It is a museum. There is a gift shop after the last gallery. The objects have labels. The lights work. Nobody is selling club memberships.
- Is this appropriate for Berwick?
- Berwick already has adults in it, and history, and things people argue about. We are adding cases and captions. If these were spoons, there would not be a meeting.
- Will children be admitted?
- No. Adults only. That is the policy.
- Are the old pieces real?
- Each piece in the working collection has an accession number and a card with material and a date range. Some objects are more than a thousand years old. Some are much later. If two people disagree about a date, that is normal. It happens in every collection we know.
- Is this meant to shock the town?
- No. We are not putting this up to get a rise out of the town. That would be a short project.
- Who owns this?
- The museum. There is no founder portrait here and no staff list. When we have a mailing address, questions about the collection can go there.
- What if I am offended?
- Then don’t come. We are not going to recaption the cases to spare you the subject.
- Will there be protests in the parking lot?
- Not if we can help it. Either way, stay off the cases.
Location and hours
Berwick, Maine. We are looking to purchase or lease a building downtown. We will post progress here as we have it. Please look in now and then. Street address and hours will go up before opening day. Until then there is no building to visit.
Opening notice
Our grand opening will be by invite only. Make sure you get your name on the list.
Leave an email if you want to be notified when we set an opening date. We will not sell the list or post it online.
Thank you. We have your address.