The Dirty Potz collection is original and dedicated to plant lovers with dirty minds. Its goal is to enhance your floral display with raunchy humor and eye-catching, handmade quality. But it’s not the first time pottery has incorporated provocative jokes to break the spell of tedious and repetitive ceramics.
Sex and pottery go hand in hand as far back as the first pages of human history. Most ancient civilizations depicted erotic motifs on ceramic pots, cups, and tableware. Some kept it softcore with the occasional drawing of a nip slip. In contrast, others adorned their planters with sexual scenes so explicit they would make nymphomaniacs blush.
Looking at the history of erotic art on ceramics, we can assume that most cultures produced pots with dirty jokes as soon as they discovered the potter’s wheel. This article looks at how people worldwide and throughout history decided that the best decoration for a pot was a penis, a pair of breasts, or an erotic pun.
So, leave prudery at the door and join us on a journey into the history of sex jokes on ceramics!
WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT
Sex and Pottery in Ancient Greece
Ah, the Ancient Greeks! Those long-lost souls who mastered philosophy, art, science, and…ceramic pornography. That’s right! Pottery dating as far back as 500 B.C. reveals painted erotic imagery in remarkable detail. Sexual scenes depicting heterosexual and homosexual couples doing the funny business are present on everyday items, such as cups, bowls, vases, and pots.
Some of the most outrageous sexual images (by present-day standards) were painted on Kylix cups. These wide-bowled drinking ceramics were often used at symposium meetings. They were today’s version of stag parties, where philosophical and political talks would take center stage. That is, until enough wine would have poured down the men’s throats to make the drawings on the cups more interesting than the conversations. At that point, they would usher in the Hetairai (courtesans) and Pornai (prostitutes) to put into practice some of the erotic paintings on the vessels.
It seems that serving a piece of moussaka to your grandmother on a plate with explicit scenes from a bedroom rodeo was pretty standard back then.
It’s not clear if the ancient Greeks used kinky ceramics as sexual stimulants. But considering erotic magazines and porn websites were still a few millennia away from being invented, the many pottery items showing amorous congress in all its forms may have functioned as pornography in its heyday. This is suggested by the numerous artifacts unearthed across and beyond the Greek peninsula. Notably, the Etruscans, who lived next door in the Italian peninsula, amassed extensive collections of sex-inspired pottery, proving there was a high demand for it throughout antiquity.
The Romans’ Passion for Erotica Ceramics
While the Etruscans were busy looking at images of people boinking on their ceramic cups, a small tribe of noisy neighbors was rapidly growing and vying for world domination. The Romans may not have been a cultural superpower at first, during their early squabbles with nearby tribes. However, they overpowered their opponents through military prowess and the ability to incorporate everything of value they would encounter along the way into their culture. That’s how they adopted the Greek gods, the Etruscan hydraulic systems, and, of course, the erotic ceramics.
In Ancient Rome, erotic imagery was common in most public areas and depicted on most household items. Archeological excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, the two cities destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., unveiled numerous erotic ceramics and artifacts. Moreover, the Romans spread their pottery with sexual content to every new territory they occupied, from ancient Britain to Cleopatra’s Egypt.
Judging by the countless explicit representations of genitalia and people doing the hanky panky, we can easily state that the Romans were big on sex. They most likely had open-minded attitudes and behaviors that even the most liberal Western societies of today would consider obscene and offensive. Back then, you would serve fruit to your in-laws from a ceramic vase depicting two women doing hot yoga or a couple bumping uglies, and no one would bat an eye.
The Moche Culture and its Kinky Pottery
If you got so far, you might think that ceramics porn was just Greek merchandise forced by the Romans down the throats of the people they conquered. However, making pottery that’s too hot to handle for the prude is not a European obsession. In fact, distant cultures across the world produced kinky pots and pans without ever exchanging ideas and practices, such as the short-lived Moche people.
The Moche culture ruled over a stretch of land in modern-day Peru between 100 and 700 AD. They never met ancient Greeks or Romans and collapsed nearly 800 years before the European conquistadores set foot in South America. Nevertheless, they left behind a remarkable artistic legacy, best known for its unique ceramics depicting various sexual encounters.
As we can see in this vast collection of highly explicit ceramic pieces, the Moche artists did not have a single ounce of pudor in their bodies. Most likely, they never saw sex as a tabú, as they used their hands and creativity to plaster 3D images of genitalia and people shaking the sheets on everything from cups, kettles, and vases to plates and fireplace ornaments.
Archeologists claim that today’s collection of Moche erotica pottery stored at the Larco Museum in Lima, Peru, numbering over 500 pieces, could have been significantly higher. Unfortunately, when Spain colonized the ancient Moche homeland in the 16th century, it bestowed the highly influential and extremely prude Catholic Church with complete cultural control over the region. As a result, the overzealous Jesuit priests destroyed all the sexually explicit artifacts they encountered because they differed significantly from the Christian views on sexuality. The few “huacos eroticos” that survived the destructive censorship were later retrieved from Moche graves and remote archeological sites.
A Timeless, Global Trend
Elsewhere, archeologists worldwide have recovered ceramics with sexual themes produced by various cultures across history.
Some of the earliest erotica appears on pottery tiles, terracotta pieces, and ceramics. They were produced by ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and Mesopotamians between 2,000 and 1,500 BCE.
Centuries later, the Chinese adorned porcelain ceramics with colorful copulating scenes. Other such examples were found in Japan, Vietnam, and Mexico, showcasing a timeless, global knack for kinky ceramics.
How Dirty Potz Fits in the History of Kinky Ceramics
The Dirty Potz collection aligns itself with the ageless tradition of erotic innuendos on ceramics but in a less explicit way. Unlike its ancient predecessors, Dirty Potz doesn’t display genitalia or people rolling in the hay. Instead, they only incite the reader’s imagination and tickle their sense of humor. Your annoying, prude aunt may find them outrageous, but at least she’ll never visit again.
Ancient erotica pottery reveals how the people back then viewed sexuality and understood public decency. It also proves that humans have an inherent and eternal taste for kinky jokes. That type of lighthearted humor transcends time and space and makes you giggle every time you pick a teacup with its penis-shaped handle. Centuries from now, archeologists unearthing a long-lost Dirty Pot won’t be able to learn much about our sexual predilections. Still, at worst, they’ll get a good chuckle out of it.
A Dirty Pot will liven up your floral display and bring a smile to your fun-loving friends. But these original planters are much more than pots with funny text. Each Dirty Pot is handmade and hand-stamped, making it unique and special. The collection features high-quality, naturally sourced clay and a lifelong dedication to making proper homes for plants that every nature lover will appreciate.
Buy a Dirty Pot today and make history!