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www.metmuseum.org Gift of Renée E. and Robert A. Belfer, 2012 Fashioned by a Roman craftsman in the third century A.D., this graceful glass flask is unusual for several reasons.  It's a mouse, for one thing, with the flask's neck placed to serve as the tail.  It's cobalt blue.  Last but not least, it's embellished with an applied linear detail we currently call "snake-thread."  Read more about this piece here .  And if, like me, you were wondering "Which emperors were there in the third century A.D.?"  maybe this will help .

https://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/263603; commissioned 1997 CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Who is Marjorie Fox?  The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa commissioned this supremely adorable woolen tea cozy from her in 1997.  I wanted to see if she had created more fiber artwork, but not a fiber more can I find.  At least this one exists for our admiration:  a sheep bearing a washing-line full of clothing.  Ah, yes, you say to yourself as you pour a hot cuppa, a fleecy fellow creature makes the wool that keeps me and my tea warm.  Remember to say thank you.

Today I'm going to send you right over to Hyperallergic's article on a certain set of rock engravings found in the Arabic Peninsula. Created over 8,000 years ago, the hunting scenes show the very earliest evidence of dog leashes in use.  What an exciting find !

thanks reusableart.com C. Howard Young suffered from a number of ailments during his life, and even so managed to live a decent span of days (1853-1927).  His 1897 memoir, Sunny Life of an Invalid , isn't as grim as you'd think (a little of it is).  In fact, most of it is chatty, informal, witty and self-deprecating, and appreciative of every comfort that came his way.  He dedicates an entire chapter to "Cats as Doctors: A Debt of Gratitude Paid to Cats."  Here's one of the tribute tales: * * * I should allude more at length to the pussy who cared for me at Asbury Park, NJ. Sitting on the veranda, one summer eve, a poor, woe-be-gone cat slunk by, with pitiful appeals. It was soon to become a mother. We called it, but in vain. It feared. All men's hands, it felt, were against it. And men's feet, too. My sister, who had sympathy for all that suffered, always had good influence on all animals. She followed it, and talked soothingly, and soon came back with it...

The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection, 1982 https://www.metmuseum.org Because it's a snuffbox!  Get it?  (Groan.  Yes, I know.) Not only is this Meissen porcelain snuffbox (Germany, c. 1745) gracefully made, but it has additional surprises inside and on the bottom.  Have a peek at the extra photos on its page at the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

Sumerian.  Recumbent Dog , ca. 2100 B.C.E. Aragonite, 5 3/4 x 3 3/4 x 9 in. (14.6 x 9.5 x 22.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection, 51.220. Creative Commons-BY (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 51.220_SL1.jpg) What has he been guarding so carefully for four millenia, this thoughtful fellow?  At his page on the Brooklyn Museum's website you can see an additional image of him in black and white which really points up the wrinkles of his brow.  Measuring all o f  5 3/4 x 3 3/4 x 9 in., this stout mastiff-type dog was sculpted during the Neo-Sumerian period, a time of order and calm exercise of power.  This webpage has more on that subject as well as a number of artworks, if you're interested.

Another fable from Aesop that I had never seen before, and one with a particularly bittersweet lesson for those of us watching our dogs grow old.  I've left it in the older English of the source. * * * Men ought not to dispraise the ancient, nor to put them backe, for if thou be young, thou oughtest to desire greatly to come to be old, also thou oughtest to praise the acts or deeds, which they have done in their young age, whereof Aesop rehearseth to us such a fable. There was a Lord which had a dog, the which in his youth had beene of good kind: as namely to chase and hunt, and to have great lust to run and take the wild beasts. And when this dogge was come to old age, and that he could no more run, it hapned once that he let goe and escaped from him a Hare, wherefore his Master was wroth and angry, and in great rage began to beat him. Then said the Dogge unto him, My Master, for good service thou yeeldest me evil: for in my young age and prosperity, I served thee right well, and...

public domain courtesy of the livrustkammaren (royal armoury museum, stockholm). object record here Years and old lacquer will make any fur look more yellowed than white, and that's most likely what has happened to this oil portrait, which dates from the 1600s. The "Spanish" part comes from the paper label pasted onto the lower left, which reads in translation: "No 22. // An Oil Painting Table // A Small White // Spanish Dog".  No one seems to know why he should be Spanish, as he certainly looks like a poodle (a breed originating in Germany).

thanks pixabay Another find in the "memorial poem" genre:  this one a twofer, turtle and cat.  I chuckled to see that while the poet spoke to the tortoise, he let the cat speak for itself, and assertively too, from the beyond.  Probably wisest. ON A TORTOISE. Slow were thy steps, and yet they reached their goal; Cold was thy blood, but warm enough for thee; Thou hadst a will, methinks thou hast a soul— A breath of immortality. ON A CAT. Let neither fork nor spade upturn this plat. For eighteen years I had my way; I mewed, I purred, I scratched, I was a Cat— And what I am thou canst not say. -- Ernest Hartley Coleridge, found in Newbolt, Henry John, Sir, 1862-1938, Mary Lancaster Nott, and Kohler Collection of British Poetry. Animal Poems And Stories . London: H. Rees, 1916. p. 15.

Gift of Arnold Whitcomb Morse in memory of his parents Guilford Alden and Isabel Barton Morse collections.artsmia.org (PD) A little boy, wearing the dress-like children's clothing of the time (c. 1835), listens to a ticking watch.  The family dog watches over him with an alert expression, or at least that's what I think he was meant to do; in a larger view you can see that he actually seems to be behind the boy, and so he's actually looking offstage.  It's all part of the charm of this simply fashioned oil portrait by Samuel Miller of Boston, about whom there's not much available.  In its flatness, the portrait also takes on a certain timelessness, which becomes more poignant when we learn that the act of listening to the watch likely indicates this as a posthumous portrait (see the painting's pag e at the Minneapolis Institute of Art).  The same bright yellow picks out the watch, its chain, and the dog's collar.  Did Miller mean us to contrast how quickly t...

image courtesy of publishers  A young samurai and his mistress take a leisurely stroll outdoors in a print dated 1777 by Isoda Koryusai.  The man turns to his love with an eager face. He either hasn't noticed, or doesn't care, that his girlfriend walking so gracefully in her chic kimono is . . . a cat. Specifically, she's a bakeneko yujo, a shapeshifting cat prostitute.  She's only one of the many supernatural felines we meet in  Kaibyō: The Supernatural Cats of Japan by Zack Davisson ($18.95, Chin Music Press and Mercuria Press, copublishers). This gorgeous little book is full of creatures which will give you new respect for your own household demons.  After all, if they've been around long enough, they might grow a second tail and start walking upright, becoming fierce and frightening magical spirits known as nekomata.  Even scarier are the corpse-eating cat monsters known as kasha, and the Cat Witch of Okabe who lured travelers to their deaths.  Ot...

thanks british library flickr (PD) "Of course I know the cat's origin, the incubation of 'grey beard';  on a stone was obtained the cat with the nose of a girl, with the head of a hare, with a tail from Hiisi's plait of hair, with the claws of a viper snake, with feet of cloudberries, from a wolf the rest of its body comes." That is the whole song.  It seems that ancient Finn origin songs are used as charms to shame and humiliate the supernatural cause of a disease or harm, thereby to scare it off and bring healing.  Hiisi was, in essence, a trickster god. Abercromby, John, baron, 1844-1924. The Pre- And Proto-historic Finns, Both Eastern And Western, With the Magic Songs of the West Finns. London: D. Nutt, 1898. p. 312.

Print made by Alfred W. Cooper, active 1850–1901, British, The Young Squire (tail piece), undated, Wood-engraving with hand coloring on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper, Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection recto Who's The Young Squire?  Is it one of these two, or are they waiting on the young squire to come down?  Why can I find lots of artwork by Alfred W. Cooper (British, d. 1901), and almost no information about him?  By the way, this is a "tail piece," and that's not a pun; a tail piece is a design or illustration at the foot of a page or the end of a chapter or book.

John Caius wrote the first book on English dogs in 1576 (we've seen him before, writing of terriers ).  Here he speaks of a breed we love well here at the Museum, for as longtime readers know, the "staff" includes Briar, the English Setter.  I have left it in the original English of the time, so sometimes you'll see a "v" is used for "u" and vice versa, as in "vpon" (upon) and "indeuour" (endeavor). * * * Another sort of Dogges be there, seruiceable for fowling, making no noise either with foote or with tounge, whiles they followe the game. These attend diligently vpon theyr Master and frame their conditions to such beckes, motions, and gestures, as it shall please him to exhibite and make, either going forward, drawing backeward, inclining to the right hand, or yealding toward the left, (In making mencion of fowles my meaning is of the Partridge and the Quaile) when he hath founde the byrde, he keepeth sure and fast silence, he...