It is pretty effortless to order up apparel with any print or slogan that one sees fit nowadays, or even to print a three-dimensional rendering as a keepsake of anything that has transpired. In the past, people have said some pretty obtuse things, which I thought ought to be embroidered on a throw pillow or stitched on a sampler, if I had that talent.
Showing that figurines were not only sentimental subjects in eras gone by, I think that this excellent interview with an accomplished collector of some of the more sensational and gruesome pieces of Staffordshire pottery from
Collectors' Weekly, show that people even back then wanted to have conversation pieces—even if it was not always material fit for polite conversation, the tabloid scandals of the day, maulings, murder, emancipation, and discriminatory marriage laws. It's amazing how these unusual figurines, especially the Ersatz hunting dogs, sort of totems for the unlanded gentry who were not allowed by law to keep real dogs, tell a story and capture an elements of the times that would otherwise be lost.
