Lobster Telephone

"Lobster Telephone" (also known as "Aphrodisiac Telephone") is a surrealist object, created by Salvador Dalí in 1936 with surrealist artist and patron Edward James. Dalí wrote of lobsters and telephones in his book "The Secret Life", demanding to know why, when he asked for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, he was never presented with a telephone.

The piece is a bizarre composite of an ordinary working telephone and a lobster (made of plaster). It is approximately 15 × 30 × 17 cm (6 × 12 × 6.6 inches) in size.

Dalí created this object with the specific intention of aligning the lobster's genitalia with the end of the phone into which one would speak, thus aligning the speaker's mouth with the lobster's genitalia.

Four copies of the full color object were made. One now appears at the Dalí Universe in London; the second can be found at the Museum of Telecommunication in Frankfurt; the third belongs to the Edward James Foundation; and the fourth is at the National Gallery of Australia.

There were also six all-white versions which were produced, one of which is on display at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and one at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.