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Seattle- The Mecca for Glass Dildos

Seattle- There is a face people make when they learn about glass sex toys for the very first time. It’s a blend of fascination and concern. It’s quite possible that people are imagining (with a grimace) toys that are hollow and prone to shattering. Or maybe they’re just wondering why? Well, really, why not?

It’s a question best asked in Seattle, Wash.. Yes, the birthplace of grunge music and Starbucks is also a mecca for glassmakers and, as such, is responsible for the popularization of glass sex toys. It’s the home of Standard Glass, a company owned by Levi Belber [pictured], an artisan who has put his company’s glass sex toys in a shops across the continent.

Though it produced only glass art at first, Standard Glass started on sex toys in its second year. “The first dildos were made in 1998,” says Belber. “Our original toy was made as a wedding gift for two young ladies in love, and it was a great hit. More prototypes followed.”

Yet glass sex toys aren’t new. According to Belber, they first appeared in the mainstream media in a 1970s issue of Playboy. Before that, they were an item made by European glassworkers on their lunch breaks for wives or girlfriends.

Thanks to increased media coverage – whether it be in a Vivid porn film, in the pages of Hustler or on HBO – the past decade has seen a rise in the popularity of glass toys worldwide.

One of Belber’s first stops with his glass wares was Toys in Babeland – now just Babeland – a progressive women-friendly sex shop in Seattle that today has stores in Los Angeles and New York, as well as a significant online business.

Rachel Venning, co-founder of Babeland, says that the store now sells glass toys from about five different manufacturers, but recalls her first reaction: “My first appreciation of them was as a piece of art,” she says. “You can leave them out as an objet d’art, and no one would be the wiser. They’re really great looking.”

Okay, so they’re pretty, but what everyone wants to know is, will they break?

Most manufacturers and stores will tell you no. “Because of the shape, thickness and process used, these glass dildos are very strong,” says Belber of his own products. “As long as they are not dropped on a tile or concrete floor, they will last forever.”

Many stores that carry the toys will kick them around a bit to see if they hold up, most with positive results.

In Canada, more and more stores are selling glass toys, and Standard Glass toys are sold at Come as You Are and Lovecraft.

But Womyns’ Ware, a sex shop in Vancouver committed to women’s health and pleasure, warns against using the toys.

“Sure, we haven’t been able to break their samples through any kind of basic tests likely to happen in real life (dropping them into a sink, dropping them onto a concrete floor etc.),” says the shop’s website, “but that hasn’t convinced us that, in the long run, glass is a safe material to make sexual devices.”

Chipping or breaking may not be the only thing to think about with glass dildos. “Glass has no give,” says Venning. “Steel toys are similar that way, and if the toy has no give, it’s the body that will be what has to give.”

Her advice? “Be intelligent about it,” she says. “It’s not so much about gentleness, it’s about awareness.”

But the fact that they’re so hard can also mean they’re great for things like G-spot stimulation, provided you get the angle right. They’re also smooth, non-porous (thus easy to clean) and they can even be heated or cooled for different sensations.

Heated or cooled, however, does not mean boiled or frozen. While many glass toys are made from borosilicate glass (also known as Pyrex) – which can withstand extreme temperatures – some are made with soda-lime glass, which can’t stand up to too much heat or too much cold.

Priced anywhere from $40 to $400, there certainly is a wide variety of glass toys now available. Take the products from Phallix Glass, the self-proclaimed “world’s leading manufacturer and distributor of functional, erotic glass art.”

You can select from a variety of colours, shapes and sizes and the names sound like varieties of orchids: Prince Valiant, Spiral-Wrapped Prized Perennial, or Inside-Out Filligrino. They even offer glass vibrators, butt plugs and fist-shaped dildos. Yes, you read that right: fist-shaped.

“Some customers tell us that they leave their glass toys out on the coffee table for dates as `art,’ hoping to start a sexual conversation,” says Belber.

But that’s likely the exception.

“Most live in sock drawers, bedside tables and under pillows,” he adds.

They may not quite be Dale Chihuly sculptures, but glass sex toys certainly are something to consider.

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