A Resounding "Woof" for Staffordshire Dogs

Diana Vreeland, the grand dame of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines from the '30s to '70s, was a lover of the Staffordshire ceramic dog figurine, as was the legendary interior designer Dorothy Draper, who placed them throughout the fabled Greenbrier Hotel.

A pair in interior designer Anna Spiro's office. 

During the Victorian era, it was considered fashionable protocol to put a pair of Staffordshire King Charles Spaniel figurines at each end of one's mantel. This Victorian era find, grouped as an lavish collection, is in the home of Libertine co-designer Johnson Hartig. 

I got this odd incarnation of a King Charles Spaniel at GasLamp Antique Mall in Nashville. Granted, it is not a Staffordshire dog, as evidenced by the bizarre color and the lack of the tell-tale chain that typically joins the collar. But for $16, it's a whimsical deviation. 

Wouldn't this silver whippet statue look fabulous bookending a fireplace? 

£135.00 at alexanderandpearl.co.uk.

Greyhounds flanking a fireplace in House & Garden, May, 1988, photograph by Oberto Gili.