Uptight Victorian bitch

I was just buying cushions in Dunelm Mill and spotted these. I love them and so should you!



Excuse the dodgy mobile photos, but you get the idea. How cool are those? And only £2.50 each too - I'm well chuffed with them. They are also, it's worth mentioning, more Victorian (as opposed to modern-twist-on-Victorian) than you might at first think. Despite the disapproval faced in his time by Charles Darwin for suggesting the fairly obvious, the Victorians were pretty keen on portraying themselves as animals - the period gave rise to many different artistic depictions of creatures with human bodies and animal heads* (and occasionally vice versa), or beasts in human clothing doing human things; and on the nastier side there were the taxidermied displays of people like Walter Potter, who became known for his pieces featuring stuffed animals in human contexts, such as kittens getting married and guinea pigs playing cricket. Personally, I think the whole dead animal thing negates any cute whimsy Potter's work might have had, but he was a product of his time, I suppose. (Don't think he didn't get complaints from his contemporaries, though - he did. The RSPCA was a Victorian creation, you know.)

Anyway, those are my new dogpeople. I love them quite unashamedly.


* Indeed, anthropomorphic artwork such as this predates the 19th century by a long way - look at the human/animal gods of ancient Egypt, figures like the Greek man-goat Pan, and the so-common-you-almost-miss-them human/animals like mermaids. Something in us has always wanted to pay tribute to our primal nature.