Country Life
By IAN NIALL
FASHION, in most things, radiates from towns, hence the long-haired youths with drain-pipe trousers seen in quite rural villages. Fashion in furnishings spreads in a similar.manner, but country folk have a more utilitarian outlook and while the modern cottager's 'best' room may contain veneer and rexine, in the kitchen there are oak chairs, a table, a dresser or a chest belonging to generations long gone. I was pottering along the hedge the other day when I came upon fragments of the less durable past in the shape of a broken china dog. There was a time when almost every other cottage had, in addition to its solid furniture, a brace of china dogs on the mantelpiece, siding at least a couple of candlesticks burnished like the rising sun. China dogs, and Lord Roberts on his china charger, went out of fashion after the First World War and found their way to corners hidden from view. Perhaps some of the candlesticks went too, but candlesticks and warming pans stand rough handling while china dogs made fragile lumber. This accounts for their scarcity today and makes them sought-after curios. Curios these things may be. but. as I remember them, they were most unlovely lumps of glazed clay, treasured far too long in the days of samplers and antimacassars.
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