The titles of the drawings below are my own:
The Keyholder. 8 ¾" x 10 ¼" (approx). Pen and Ink on vellum affixed to art stock with blueline sketches on both sides. Unframed. $400.00 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees.
The Keyholder. Sketch on back for a page of "The Estate."
Bondage Family. 11 ¼" x 8 ¾" (approx). Pen and ink on vellum affixed to drawing paper. Unframed. $450.00 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees.
Man into Object. 8 ¼" x 10 ½" (approx). Pen and ink on vellum affixed to thin drawing paper. Unframed with three small indented gashes on the left side from the way Leo put it in his loose leaf art binder. Four panels for a different cartoon strip in blue line on the back. $450.00 plus $15 shipping. handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees.
Man into Object, sketches on back.
At the Bar. 7 ½" x 9 ¾" (approx). Pen and ink on vellum affixed to art stock with blueline sketch on back. Artist’s copyright mark: “Leo ’90.” Unframed. $500.00 plus $15 shipping, handling & insurance in the Continental U.S. Email me for foreign s&h fees.
Leo Ravenswood
The remarkable bondage artist Leo Ravenswood, also known as Leo, Lazy Leo, Dirk, Dutch to his friends or Robert Dirk Dykstra (his real name)—an art director in the 70s for that legendary publication, Drummer, among others—first contacted me in late 1989, when he responded to my request in Bound & Gagged for bondage experiences involving twins. He wanted to tell me about the bondage games he had played with his twin brother when they were kids. In the same letter he wrote me about his most meaningful bondage relationship as an adult, with a 21-year-old named David, fresh out of the army. A week or so later he sent me a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate the story (“Ex-Serviceman Paraded around Town Wearing Hood, Black Ties and Tail,”). I happily published his story, and the drawing ("At the Bar," above) in Issue 15 (March/April 1990) and will post it here on Tuesday.
Dirk and I only met once before he succumbed to AIDS in late February, 1992. It was in September, 1990. I was in San Francisco for a gay writers’ conference. Dirk traveled there with his lover Rick from their home in San Diego to bring me the final proofs of his extraordinary three-volume illustrated novel, “The Estate,” the magnum opus he had been working on for years, which we were preparing to publish.
He and I hit it off right away, and our friendship continued in long phone conversations up to weeks before he died. His seven-page comic strip, “The Abduction of the Great White Hunter,” which appeared in Issue 25 (Nov/Dec 1991) was possibly the most popular illustrated bondage story ever published in the magazine. Readers clamored for more comic strips from Dirk in letters I didn’t print. I didn’t have the heart to tell them he didn't have the strength to do more.
At that first and only meeting of ours, Dirk also brought along several looseleaf folders containing diverse drawings he had done over the years. He made a gift of them to me and told me to do with them what I liked. He was already sick, and knew he did not have long to live; those were the hopeless years where the only drugs available would be sure to kill you if the disease didn’t do it first.
Over the years Bound & Gagged did print a sizable selection of “Leo’s” drawings. His work was beautiful, and his bondage imagination staggering. To give you an idea of the amazingly talented man he was, this is from the obituary notice his (straight) twin brother Gino wrote of him:
“[He was] obsessed with quality and craftsmanship in every form. Tall and extroverted, plump to the point of lushness, impatient and easily bored, he was fascinated with the work of mind and hand. He could make sugar Easter eggs, illuminate and hand-bind his own book, do master-quality embroidery or decorate a home in virtually any historical style. He had a house built from his blueprints when he was thirteen. One of his books resides in the University of Iowa’s renowned Rare Book collection. His persistence and attention to detail assured that whatever he put his hand to would not be one of the best, but the best.”
It’s my hope that all of Leo’s bondage drawings will ultimately find their way into the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.
