Philosophy

WHIPCRAFTs philosophy is to combine classic craftsmanship and beautiful materials to create aesthetic pleasure. The tools are no longer just accessories to play, but an integral part of it. Visual pleasure and physical ecstasy is the ultimate goal – where individual and tool merge into one.

If it were only a matter of function, then the design, in principal, would be unimportant. Human beings, however, have always been attracted by beautiful things that function well because the pleasure of use is thereby increased. The uncompromising quest for the sublime has pushed back the limits of attainability time after time. This is also the philosophy underlying WHIPCRAFT – a classic example of applied art – the point where utility merges with art.

Whips have probably been part of mankind’s history almost as long as we have walked the earth, though the historical sources cannot tell us exactly when humans first wielded them. The first whips were presumably just branches used for the control of domestic animals in the later Stone Age. Since then, and with great ingenuity, various types of whips have been specifically designed for corporal punishment, and the act of punishment is, in principal, still the ultimate purpose of the whip. However, nowadays in civilized societies the whip normally serves only two purposes: either to command obedience from animals - usually horses, or as an erotic seasoning. The whip is strongly symbolic, no matter how one chooses to employ it, and should of course only be used by consenting adults.

The voluntary desire to feel the caress of the whip is richly portrayed in literature. Homage is paid to erotic pleasure by means of the whip in the authorship of the Marquis de Sade and in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs and of course The Story of “O”, to name but a few of the more striking examples.

WHIPCRAFT is just the latest example of this positive development.