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World's Most Important Porn in British Museum and British Library

Erotica

The “Porn Cupboard” of the British Museum houses some of the most important smut ever created. The top shelf of Cupboard 205 contains erotic material by great masters such as Turner and Dürer, as well as material of historical interests, such as erotic playing cards from the Jazz Age. The majority of the material, such as the 74 explicit antique illustrations of mythological and historical characters frolicking and having sex, was donated by wealthy British collector Henry Spencer Ashbee when he died in 1900. Some of the "top-shelf" material offended Victorian sensibilities, but not ours, and so has slowly been integrated back into the collections. For example, a Rembrandt etching called The Bed, depicting a couple making love with the man on top of the woman, is now part of the Rembrandt collection.

Read it at The Times