silken rabbits

www.metmuseum.org
Gift of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, in memory of Jean E. Mailey, 1994

This Ming Dynasty textile (China, late 16th - early 17th century) shows rabbits gamboling about in the clouds. Made of silk gauze with silk and gold threads, it's not only luxurious but fortunate: rabbits brought all sorts of good things, and were companions of the ageless Moon Goddess.

happiest bowl ever

Queens College, Daghlian Collection of Chinese Art, photo by Brita Helgesen 01/24/14. (PD)

You know those mugs that are made with a creature waiting at the bottom?  You're drinking your coffee, tea, whatever, and then there's a frog peeking out at you two-thirds of the way down?  I wondered if this bowl from Six Dynasties China (220-568 CE) was the same kind of thing.  However, this bowl is only 2.25 inches high (and 4.375 inches wide), and he sticks up quite a bit.  Perhaps it was fun to eat around him.  I would throw pretzels in with him any day.
Six Dynasties China is particularly interesting; while it was a long period of political upheaval, it was also a time of cultures intermingling.  Longtime Museum readers know how much I love those for their fresh, fascinating results, and here's proof right here.  Traditional Chinese art standards were mixed with influences from Buddhism as it infiltrated popular thought, as well as from Central Asian ruling classes.  I love that this long-ago potter felt free as a result to make a perfect little dog and - bonus style points - extend his spots to the bowl around him.

ancient dog bell

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Lidow (AC1998.251.46) www.lacma.org

This bronze bell, about 1.5" x 1.75", hung on the collar of a dog in late Shang Dynasty China.  That means the dog who wore this was trotting about going "ding ding ding" somewhere round 1300 to 1050 B.C.

nursery rhymes from china

british library flickr (PD)

1900:  Isaac Taylor Headland, an American missionary and academic living and working in Beijing, takes some time from his post as a science professor to translate some traditional Chinese nursery rhymes.  Here's a few.
*
If you steal a needle
Or steal a thread,
A pimple will grow
Upon your head;
If you steal a dog
Or steal a cat,
A pimple will grow
Beneath your hat.
*
We keep a dog to watch the house,
A pig is useful, too;
We keep a cat to catch a mouse,
But what can we do
With a girl like you?

*

The thieving old magpie
has taken our food,
The chicken eats millet as if it
were good,
The faithful old watch-dog looks
after the house,
And the cat has come over to
catch us a mouse.

*

Yellow dog, yellow dog,

You stay and watch,

While I gather roses 

In the south rose-patch.

- from Headland, I. Taylor. (1900). Chinese Mother Goose rhymes. New York: Fleming H. Revell company. Passim.
 

designing your pekingese

Today I'm bringing you a snippet from a 1914 book, in which we learn that being an Imperial Pekingese involved, in essence, punching oneself in the face repeatedly.
* * *
The Lion, or Sun Dogs, as they were also called, were so highly prized by the Emperors of China and the Court that they were kept exclusively in the Imperial Palace at Pekin, and in the Temples, as Sacred Dogs. No person outside the Palace or Temples was even permitted to see them, and anyone who ventured to remove one of these dogs from the Sacred Precincts met with the certain punishment of a lingering death. 

The greatest care was taken of them, each having a slave girl to attend to it and massage its nose to the flatness regarded as one of the chief beauties in this breed. One method of attaining this flatness of the nose, and the prominent eyes, was to nail a piece of hard meat to a wall or board, and the dog in jumping up to get it hit its nose, and its eyes started out of the head, in the many vain attempts to get the tough dainty.

-- from Daniel, M. N. (1914). Some Pekingese pets. London: John Lane company. 10-11.

i will guard you forever

Gift of Diane and Harold Keith and Jeffrey Lowden (AC1997.137.2) www.lacma.org

China, Sichuan Province, Eastern (Later) Han dynasty, 25-220 AD: you may have departed this life without rating an army of clay soldiers, but you may certainly have a dog.  Even allowing for the characteristic liveliness of Han animal sculpture, this guardian is a big spirit in a small vessel, and look how seriously he takes his job!
Want to read a little more on Han Dynasty culture?  Try this from the Met.