Celebrating Bishop 8

04-12-2016
Hi there, CBAPers! This time, I would like to celebrate not one picture of the greatest bondage illustrator ever, but rather focus on an aspect of his work that clearly jumps out: the gags! The man has designed such a wealth of gags, you could easily fill an entire book just with those alone. (Come to think of it, I believe that has actually been done once, something named Gags Galore..) Just as his larger body bondage concepts, these 'mouth bondage' devices all look very functional. Well, functional in the way that they would make it impossible for the person to speak. We all know that gags never really work, other than in taking away the subject's speech: it is not possible to prevent anyone from making considerable noise however.


Now, like I said, there is great variety in his work, but most of these devices have one thing in common: the ball, or really any form of packing used, is always for the most part strapped firmly inside the mouth, the lips clearly going around it at the front. You may consider this a no-brainer, but in earlier art this was not always the case. In those days you might see a lot of 'over the mouth' gags, totally concealing the lower half of the face. When a ball gag was used however, the ball often ended up almost entirely in front of the mouth, making it completely redundant.

In photography, working with a live model, this would be explainable of course, because these things can be highly uncomfortable, depending on the size and the material of the ball. Some women would perhaps have literally a gag reaction, choking on the thing. But with us being artists, our models can happily adjust to gags the size of a watermelon, so there's no need for these compromises. I think Bishop illustrated that beautifully, time and time again!

Bye for now,

Coco

CBAP