“Pretty ‘Fido’ the women Pet,” marketing trade card, signed “W” on the stone, most likely 1880s.
This cross-eyed pug appears on a “stock” chromolithograph marketing trade card. This seems to have been a prominent card; numbers of them make it through in collections. Mine is not printed on the back, so the service that provided it away is unknown. The front pictures on trade cards orten didn’t have much to make with the services providing them out. I discovered one example on the internet that was distributed by a business that offered trusses!
While this is particularly targeted to pugs, the genealogy of this type of picture lies in the satirical representations of small “lady’s dogs” (spaniels, bit poodles, as well as others of uncertain breed) in eighteenth-century comic prints. The pug ended up being a target for trade-card satire when the breed took pleasure in a burst of popularity in the U.S. beginning in the 1870s. It was admitted to the stud book of the American Kennel Club in 1885, the year after it was founded.
The trade card satire is meant to represent a studio photograph. The subject is dolled up with a ribbon collar as well as looks into the “camera.” The number of studio photos of pugs surviving from the last quarter of the nineteenth century suggest exactly how much their owners valued them, as well as why.
Portrait of an unidentified gentleman pug. cupboard card, ca. 1890. Edgecomb photography studio, Stoneham, Massachusetts.
Take this pug, for example. Leaning against the back of a photographer’s “posing chair,” the well-fed subject (male or female, it’s impossible to tell) looks serious, even worried. I’ve always believed that this photo, which I bought lots of years ago, is of a bit human trapped in a pet dog suit!
Unidentified woman as well as her pug. photograph by Prezeau & Tougas, San Francisco, California, dated 1904. Prezeau & Tougas seem to have been photographic itinerants who worked in new England after 1906.
Not all pugs were portly members of the bourgeoisie, however. This San Francisco pug, a young male, appears like an energetic fellow; his mistress has to hold his collar to keep him in the chair for a picture that seems to have been taken in the family’s back garden.
In both these portraits, I’m struck by exactly how different the pugs’ faces look compared to pugs today. While the trade card satirizes the short muzzle of its subject, the pugs in these pictures really have much longer snouts than the ones I see today. This is one a lot more small piece of evidence about exactly how much pet dog breeders have been able to reshape the appearance of purebred dogs considering that the “fancy” for them shown up in Victorian America.
A extremely hectic semester as well as a bout of the flu have indicated that I’ve been not able to publish as commonly as usual, however with the break of the holidays approaching, I will share some new artifacts in my collection of the material culture of pet keeping. stay tuned!
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