A remarkable assembly of original drawings, manuscript and type-written pages, nude self-portraiture photography, etc… comprising a hyper-sexual and explicit archive focused chiefly on an imaginary world called “Priapus,” created in about 1933 by an Eldon, Missouri man named Charles H. Craver (1909-2007).

Craver was born in Eldon, a small Miller County city of about 3,000, some 30 miles southwest of Jefferson City, in 1909 to Charles, a conductor on the Rock Island Railroad,, and Sylvia (nee John) Craver, as the youngest of two children (a sister, Mary, was born in 1907). He attended Washington University in St. Louis in the early 1930’s, though we note conflicting reports on exactly when. A biographical note attached to a small collection of his professional illustration work (he was a freelance and longtime staff illustrator for the state of Missouri) held in the Dowd Illustration Archive at Washington, University states he graduated in 1933 with an A.B. in fine art, while a 1982 article in the Eldon Advertiser notes he’d graduated in 1933 with a degree in history and stayed on an additional four years to study at the WashU-affiliated St. Louis School of Fine Art. The materials here are largely stored in two contemporary Washington University-branded card folders, suggesting this was created during these years of study in St. Louis (around 1933, give or take).

The material here is profoundly unusual and provocative, particularly given the time period and Craver’s rural Missouri roots. It incorporates obvious elements of Greek mythology into what appears to be an otherwise original imaginary world with a complicated bureaucratic structure governing a citizenry of highly sexual, pan-sexual, often gender-fluid beings (“Priapans”) as well as inhabitants of a nearby colony he names “Heteromorphs.” The illustrations broadly depict members of the bureaucracy (the “Privy Council of Priapus”) with titles including Chief of Sanitation, Examiner of Whores, Emperor, Regent, Proctor of Womanly Beauty, etc… Pencilled notes alongside a typed document outlining the hierarchy suggests their likenesses were based on a blend of contemporary film actresses and fellow University students. The bulk of the writing describes behaviors and customs among the Priapans and his own imaginary sexual escapades in the world. A list of sexually-enhancing drugs includes a “sacred potion” bath called “Wombus”:

“Wombus - changes sex of man or changes him back again. Change takes only 24 hrs. Is done in temple. Placed in bath of Wombus which is just like salt water. Just fit comfy. Solution up to waist shield placed around so change cannot be seen. First penis tickles about two hrs. Itches about 5 min. draws(?) about 55 min, then penis begins a dully achy engorgement. In about hr. Feels as tho will burst then am given chloroform as always is done. And do not wake up till change is complete. Room is darkened. Cover taken off and I see myself in mirrors. Just like girl-long hair, big breasts, big(?) hips and fat buttocks and hairy groin. Feel like peeing so chamber is brought. Feels very queer. So uncontrollable. Tickles labia and between legs. I like I am peeing all over myself. Two old matrons lay me on table and finger fuck me to see that jizz comes. Extraordinary feeling. Like poking finger in rectum except for more sensitive and erectile with nervous vibration. Am dressed in tunic and put out.” [sic all]

Amid scattered notes on world organization dozens more pages comprehensively document similar fantasies with the illustrations mostly depicting their characters. The assembly of 40 original photographs, each self-portraits, likely captured alone via a stationary camera on a timer, are most often set in a small tiled bathroom and depict him in various states of undress, sometimes using a prosthetic phallus, in poses and situations we suspect relate to the fantasies recorded to the page ; it is our contention he is “in Priapus” during these photographs or at least he created them as a visual aid in imagining such.

Whether the materials here, which seem at least somewhat fragmented, represent the process behind a more cohesive work is unknown. What survives as the present archive is an entirely as-found, remarkable, and freshly-discovered body of work singularly focused on one rural Missouri man’s visionary world, providing a raw glimpse at sexuality and sexual behaviour in the 1930’s otherwise unprecedented in Missouri collections.  

CRAVER, Charles H. : [Missouriana] : [Sexuality] : [Visionary Art]. [Charles H. Craver Archive of Material on a Sexual Fantasy World Caled "Priapus"]. [St. Louis, Missouri]: [ca. 1933]. An archive of typed, manuscript, hand-drawn, and photographic material comprised of 40 black and white photographs (30 approximately 5" x 7" ; 1 approximately 6" x 4" ; 9 on 3 - 10" x 2 1/2" contact strips) ; more than 65 drawings and sketches (most pencil on paper, some gouache-colored) ; more than 50 pages of manuscript or typed writings on paper ; and a collection of a couple dozen clippings, loose photographs, etc... (seemingly used for reference). All contents neatly hooused in an a new 14" x 11" x 2" achival clamshell box. Some general, miild handling wear, light brittleness, toning, and edgewear to some paper, overall no remarkable or urgent condition issues and about very good overall.