Wear Your Pug on Your Heart (or Your Sleeve)

Each year, I maintain my studio tradition of making a new ceramic pin design for my equine art collectors. As I have only been selling Pug art formally for two years, I have very few pin designs "out there". In 2009, I debuted two tie-tac molds in a wide array of art glaze colors. Those were the faces of my two ceramic miniatures, "Pug With Ball" and "Scratching Pug".



I also offered the face of "Invitation to Play" as a pin, in both realistic fawn and shaded black colourways. The pin was molded directly off of the wax clay original sculpture for detail integrity. They were only made last year, and sold out at the PDCA Nationals.





For 2010, two new pins in realistic colors will make the scene at the PDCA Nationals. These, unlike last years' pins, were specifically sculpted to be pins. The head pin is very earnest and sweet, with one side of its neck ruff highlighted. It resembles our Poots and her sister Lilly, who have wonderful worry-brows and are slightly "frog-faced".



The full body pin is based on multiple requests from last year: "Do one looking over its shoulder!" This one has the accompanying familiar expression, with the rolling eye. The traces (back stripe) vary from light to dark.



Perhaps, the draw of these ceramic pins is that previously, very few full-color tie tacs and brooches have been available. Most canine-themed jewelry is made of precious metals or tiny enamel portraits on white porcelain. Owners and handlers respond very positively to the full color glazed pins. Pug people are very fond of the richness and tone variation in their breed's two official colors. The art glaze tie tacs caused a lot of commotion, with customers making comparisons and choices based on handlers' apparel. Both pins and tacs make subtle but classy accents in presentation, and I am very happy to fill a need.

Even as the first two tests were hot out of the kiln this weekend, I couldn't resist pinning one on my husband and one on myself.