Seated with heads turned slightly to one side and with tails curled about their haunches. Their coats carefully rendered in black enamel, the eyes picked out in green and with mouth part open to reveal tongue and teeth. A gilt bell is hung from an iron‑red collar around the neck.
Literature
Pug dogs, originally domestic Chinese animals, were especially popular in 18th century Europe. At the court of Augustus III, elector of Saxony in the middle years of the century, pugs were associated with a type of light‑hearted court freemasonry. Johann Joachim Kändler, the foremost modeller at the Saxon factory of Meissen, made realistic models of pugs in the mid 1730's and later. Copies of Meissen originals were made at most major English factories, including Chelsea, Bow, Longton Hall, Lowestoft and Derby. Chinese pugs are known in a variety of attitudes or stances. For another example see Howard and Ayers, op. cit., p. 599. fig. 623, cf., a single pug dog from the Mottahedeh collection dated to circa 1750‑70.
