vintage wordless wednesday redux

from the museum's collection, and a personal favorite!

dog on the bank

www.mfa.org Leonard A. Lauder Collection of Japanese Postcards

This luminous, immediate little lithograph postcard was created in late Meiji-era Japan by an unknown artist.  (The Meiji era dated from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.)  You can see the object's page at the Boston MFA here.

a greek dog on egyptian soil

www.mfa.org Egypt Exploration Fund by subscription

This terracotta dog is all of 1 15/16" x 1 5/8", but the roughness of his modeling gives him a big presence.  Isn't it amazing how a few well-placed pushes and pulls on a lump of clay create something that's unmistakably a dog? 
He lives at the Boston MFA, where they don't have a date of manufacture listed for him, but they know where he was found (by the great Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, no less).  He's from Naukratis, which was a Greek trading post in the Nile Delta established in the 7th century BC.  The British Museum has a research project about Naukratis; you can read more about it here.  If you search the research project catalog for "dog" you'll see this guy and a number of his fellows pop up, as the project worked with museum collections worldwide.  I learned there that he might be a representation of Sirius the Dog Star, whose rising happened around the yearly flooding of the Nile.

vintage wordless wednesday redux

from the museum collection

walter savage landor, not savage at all

thanks british library flicker (PD)

In 1844 the English poet Walter Savage Landor - by all accounts a man tender to children and animals, giving the lie to his name - received the gift of a white Pomeranian dog.  He named the dog "Pomero," and the two became inseparable.  Pomero makes many charming appearances in Landor's letters, and I'll share a few soon.  Today, though, I'll share this poem in which Landor compares his friend to the Dog-Star (Sirius), and guess who wins in his eyes?

On the Dog-Star
I hold it unlawful
To question the awful
Appointments of Heaven, or hazard a doubt;
But needs I must say,
Heaven's Dog had its day,
And Pomero beats the said Dog out and out.

Landor, Walter Savage, and J. B. Sidgwick. The shorter poems of Walter Savage Landor. Cambridge University Press, 1946. p. 50.

the official's other dog!

By Karen Green (IMG_6422) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Here's the companion dog to yesterday's, as found on a wall at the tomb of Sarenput I.  He's a she, and she's lactating - I wonder if there's ever been any tomb reliefs of tiny Egyptian puppies?

the official's dog, 12th dynasty

By Karen Green (IMG_6415) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Sarenput I was an official in 12th-dynasty Egypt under Pharaoh Senusret I (1971-1926 BC.  That's okay, I hadn't heard of that pharaoh either).  His tomb in the Qubbet el-Hawa complex contains several reliefs of his relatives -  and his dogs, of whom we see one here.  Over at the left you can see the snout of another pup.  I'll show you that one tomorrow - it's so enjoyable it deserves a post all its own!

vintage wordless wednesday redux

from the Museum collection, a mid60s halloween photobomb