I have always been an unashamed dog lover (the unashamedness becoming a little more pronounced - and the Kirstie Alsopp fan-dom, becoming a little more intense - in my early post-university days, upon reading this Observer article about Kirstie's misspent Bedales-youth: "Kirstie wore velvet hairbands and kilts and Puffa bodywarmers, when everyone else wore ripped jeans and DMs and grandad overcoats. She had framed pictures of domestic pets on her bedside locker, and liked mum music...Elkie Brookes, Neil Diamond" - how could you not love her?!) - and yet I have NEVER been one of those people who invests time and energy in pet-related artefacts. Soppy paintings of dogs staring lovingly into the eyes of little blue-eyed, ringletted Violet Elizabeth Botts have always left me cold, as have dog-portraits as accessories and, if I'm honest, most dog portaiture. This is my idea of decorative hell.
For some reason, though, I just can't get enough of Domenica More Gordon's dogs. They are the antidote to sentimental animal kitsch - partly because they don't seem to be trying to be anything else. They are individual, idiosyncratic, bizarrely realistic - and utterly sweet. I want them all - they make me want to stage my own little Crufts, in my own little pint-sized NEC. I can make them jump over match-stick hurdles, while pretending I'm Claire Balding.... but I digress.
Domenica More Gordon is from East Lothian and lives in Inveresk. She is the daughter of Harry More Gordon (watercolourist, owner of the most elegant studio I have ever seen, and landlord to Clarissa Dickson Wright - and he and Domenica are both included in her memoirs, Spilling the Beans and Rifling Through my Drawers). She studied textiles at Central St. Martins (following in the footsteps of her textile-designer mother) and over the last few years has been taking the art world by storm with her miniature felted dogs - the excitement culiminating in a Dog Sale at the end of 2011, in which the successful puchasers were chosen from a "well-shaken" hat.