About Me

My photo
Washington, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Thursday, April 16, 2015

no doubt this is a beautiful dog embellishment

British Library HMNTS 010077.f.3. (PD) thanks europeana
Often I find 19th-century embellishment too heavyheanded for my personal taste (unless it's William Morris), but this has a playful Italianate feel to it that I like, and the smiling greyhound/whippet dogs only add to my pleasure.  This page decoration is taken from page 305 of a book in the British Library that dates from 1882, titled  Voyage au pays du Doute, accompli par Fortuné Rampal et raconté par J. Sigaux.  That translates to "Voyage to the Land of Doubt, done by Fortune Rampal and narrated by J. Sigaux." And while I can't dig up anything about the book's contents, I can point you to a collection of the illustrations in this book.  Not about dogs, apparently, but then that doesn't surprise me; dogs rarely doubt anything.

No comments: