handy handle dog

Unknown
Lid, 5th century B.C., Bronze
12.5 × 22.6 cm (4 15/16 × 8 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

If this is a lid for a lebes (a type of ancient Greek cauldron, used at one time for cooking), as is thought, then its Etruscan craftsman had a sense of humor when fashioning the handle.  Probably the model was flopped near the warmth of the metalsmithy, waiting for dinnertime and a chance to beg for some of whatever was in the family pot.

an array of cats

Lorenz Froelich, Studier af katte, 1839, Statens Museum for Kunst, www.smk.dk, public domain

One of these cat studies is the merest three-line ink sketch of two closed eyes and a nose.  Do you see it?  The wonderful thing about it is that it still looks exactly like a cat and nothing else.  This simplicity is all the more wonderful when you look at all the work of Danish painter/illustrator Lorenz Froelich (1820-1908). Froelich produced an extremely large amount of art including public art commissions and wall hangings, but it is as a book illustrator that he is best known.  You can see a sizable sampling of his work here.  He was best known, and very well known, for his illustrations for children's books.  Those tend to be intricately crafted and detailed, as you'll see here in his work for the book A Butterfly Chase.  This page of cat studies shows us how this craftsman built his forms from the essence up, from two eyes and a nose to a fully furred and articulated feline face.

a mouse, living forever

Theodore M. Davis Collection, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915
metmuseum.org

Usually ancient Egyptian seal amulets were fashioned in the form of scarab beetles.  This one, set into a ring, is a mouse.  Its seal is the cartouche of Menkheperre, the throne name of Pharaoh Thutmose III (reigned 1479-1425 B.C.).  Across the mouse's shoulders are inscribed the words "Menkheperre, living forever."  Was there a link between the sentiment and the creature?  Mice and rats raided Egyptian grain stores, but that very ability to be small and destructive gave them top billing in a passage from Herodotus in which they devoured the bowstrings of an invading army.  Did this mouse remind the wearer not to discount the insignificant?

and here is southey reporting on a stork

thanks publicdomainpictures.net

In the last post I shared Robert Southey's letter home from Leyden, at the end of which he takes care to check on the family cats.  Most of that letter describes the friendship between his host's son, Lodowijk, and a young stork that fetched up in the family garden:
* * *
. . . I must tell you about his stork. You should know that there are a great many storks in this country and that it is thought a very wicked thing to hurt them. They make their nests, which are as large as a great clothes basket, upon the houses and churches, and frequently, when a house or church is built, a wooden frame is made on the top for the storks to build in. Out of one of these nests a young stork had fallen and somebody wishing to keep him in a garden cut one of his wings. The stork tried to fly, but fell in Mr. Bilderdijk's garden and was found there one morning almost dead; his legs and his bill had lost their color and were grown pale, and he would have died if Mrs. Bilderdijk, who is kind to everybody and everything, had not taken care of him. . . . She gave him food and he recovered. The first night they put him in sort of a summerhouse in the garden, which I cannot describe to you for I have not been there myself; the second night he walked to the door himself that it might be opened to him. He was very fond of Lodowijk and Lodowijk was as fond of his "oyevaar" (which is the name for stork in Dutch, though I am not sure that I have spelled it right) and they used to play together in such a manner that his father says it was a pleasure to see them; for a stork is a large bird, tall and upright, almost as tall as you are or quite. The oyevaar was a bad gardener; he ate snails, but with his great broad foot he did a great deal of mischief, and destroyed all the strawberries and many of the vegetables. But Mr. and Mrs. Bilderdijk did not mind this because theoyevaar loved Lodowijk and therefore they loved the oyevaar, and sometimes they used to send a mile out of town to buy eels for him when none could be had in Leyden.

-- Colson, Elizabeth. Children's Letters: a Collection of Letters Written to Children by Famous Men And Women. New York: Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, 1905. pp. 64-5.

southey reports on dutch cats

Robert Southey, the English poet and adorer of cats, went travelling to Holland in 1825.  While there, he wrote home to his son, reporting mostly on his host's pet stork (I think I may post about that too).  He had this to add at the end, in order to inquire about the feline contingent of the family:

. . . My love to your sisters and to everybody else. I hope Kumpelstilzchen has recovered his health and that Miss Cat is well, and I should like to know whether Miss Fitzrumpel has been given away and if there is another kitten. The Dutch cats do not speak exactly the same language as the English ones. I will tell you how they talk when I come home.
God bless you, my dear Cuthbert.
Your dutiful father,
Robert Southey.

-- Colson, Elizabeth. Children's Letters: a Collection of Letters Written to Children by Famous Men And Women. New York: Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, 1905. p. 66.

flush

public domain

1843: on a used envelope, the poet Elizabeth Barrett (not yet married to Robert Browning) makes a quick sketch of her cocker spaniel, Flush.  The next year she would write a long, ardent poem "To Flush, My Dog" with sentiments like these:

Like a lady's ringlets brown, 

Flow thy silken ears adown 

Either side demurely, 

Of thy silver-suited breast 

Shining out from all the rest 

Of thy body purely. 

If you've never read the poem before, or would like to again, here it is. Flush was later the subject of his own fictionalized biography by Virginia Woolf.

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library. "Original pencil sketch of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, Flush. " The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1764 - 1973. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/c69fcf3d-dbe9-ff39-e040-e00a1806027d

vintage wednesday

Small dog, circa 1870, Dunedin, by Burton Brothers studio. Te Papa (O.034227)

I'm currently out of my own discoveries for Vintage Wednesday, but I found this fine portrait at the Museum of New Zealand's collection.  This was taken at the Burton Brothers studio in Dunedin, NZ.

a cat's fond, funny sendoff

In which a cat has ceased to be, and his or her human smiles and praises through the tears.

TO A DEAD CAT.
So thou art dead, fair, fondest cat!
Whom more than horse or dog
I loved, because thou wert the best
In nature’s cat-alogue.

No matter what hour I came home,
Thou never showed’st surprise,
Nor reasons for my being late
Wou‘ld’st ever cat-echize.

While, were I wed, my staying out
Would meet with criticism
From angry spouse, and, I’ve no doubt,
Of tears a cat-aclysm.

And now the cat-enation long
Death breaks twixt thee and me,
And I am left alone to weep
O’er this cat-astrophe.

So good-bye—since a cat-acomb
Must hold thy youth and grace,
The motto I’ll place o’er thy grave
Is “Requies-cat in pace.”

Colton, Charles Joseph, 1868-1916. Volume of Various Verse. New Orleans: Press of Searcy & Pfaff, 1899. p. 87.

gold ring with dog, c. 1770-75

rijksmuseum.nl (PD)
http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.52094

Here is a simple wide gold band, made in the Netherlands around 1770-75.  Its only embellishment is a hunting dog's head in profile.  Here's a better look:

See how worn the ring is?  Someone wore this on their finger for a long time.  Was this just any dog, provided as a sign for fidelity, or a special little portrait to delight the ring wearer?

ancient friends

http://collections.smvk.se/carlotta-mhm/web/object/3203029 (PD)

They may be crudely chiseled of limestone, but you can feel the happiness of this pair.  A smiling woman sits with her impressively pawed dog, sharing eternity.  Not a bad way to spend it.  These two were found during the Swedish Cyprus Expedition of 1927-1931, and date from either the first or second Cypro-Classical period (475-323 BC).  Go to the page for this item at Varldskultur Museerna Medelhavet for several more views of this affecting piece.

tiny ride

Gift of Elizabeth, Julie, and Catherine Andrus in memory of John and Marion Andrus
collections.artsmia.org (PD)

Which Aesop's Fable is this?  I thought I knew/could find every one, but I don't know yet which improving tale belongs to this "Horse with Two Monkeys and a Dog." The Flemish engraver Nicolaes de Bruyn created this scene in 1594 as an illustration to a book of fables.  It's another tiny artwork:  1 5/16" x 2 3/8", and yet full of action.  Every player seems to be mugging for the spectator, particularly the monkey in the upper right and the horse. If you have a hard time looking at it on this page, try this link to its page at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

dr. seuss' dogs and other tidbits

I can always count on the Guardian online to offer up something interesting.  Here's what I found today without even trying:
Photoessay on Dr. Seuss's dogs, including his childhood pet Rex, who sometimes decided to walk on three of his four feet
In Japan, the Kofukuji temple provides funerals for defunct Aibo robot dogs.  Love is where you find it.
I don't know Britt Collins, but we feel a lot alike about cats.
Barbra Streisand cloned her dog - twice!  Did you know that?
Why are kittens so cute? No, seriously, inquiring minds want to know.

the king's white squirrel

David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

He's an odd-looking fellow, but he seems happy enough to stay put and have a nibble.  This is a white squirrel presented as a gift to Sweden's King Charles XI in July of 1696. He liked it so much that he commissioned its portrait from court painter David Klocker Ehrenstrahl, a prolific Rococo-influenced artist whose work encompassed the royal horses as well as the courtiers.  Ehrenstrahl also painted this sympathetic portrait of a dog with short spine syndrome.

happy 4th of july!

May all in your family, human, finned, feathered, furred, celebrate happily and safely!  

And while you're hanging out for the holiday, I'd like to point you toward the story of two unusual Presidential pets: Mr. Protection and Mr. Reciprocity, opossum chums of President Benjamin Harrison.  The Presidential Pet Museum has a photo of Harrison with one of them. Look.

dog shaped box, sweden

https://www.nationalmuseum.se/  (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The National Museum of Sweden does not identify what this small, enameled copper box held back in its day.  I imagine it was snuff. (If you'd like to go look at the item's record page, it's here.)  Have you ever asked yourself what was so attractive about snuff?  Here's an article describing what it's like.

modern fable: the hound and the bulldog

From a book of wacky fables, published in Kansas in 1900:

-- McNeal, T. A. 1853-1942. Tom McNeal's Fables. Topeka, Kan.: Crane & company, 1900. p. 139.