ARCHIVE No. 026
Shih Tzu
Choose your piece. Colours and sizes are on each product page.
TeeGarment-dyed heavyweight cotton£42.00Choose tee →
SweatshirtHeavyweight brushed sweatshirt£58.00Choose sweatshirt →
HoodieHeavyweight college hoodie£62.00Choose hoodie →
PrintMatte fine art print, two sizes£30.00Choose print →
Archive No. 026 / UTILITY group
The Shih Tzu story
TIBET & CHINA
Drawn as an original engraving in its own landscape and printed as a full archive plate. Comes as a tee, a sweatshirt, a hoodie, a print and a pack of cards, from £30.00.
Tibetan monasteries kept small lion-like dogs and sent them as gifts to the Chinese imperial court, where palace breeding produced the Shih Tzu proper. The Dowager Empress Cixi ran substantial kennels in the late nineteenth century, and after her death in 1908 the lines scattered; a handful of dogs reached England in the 1930s, and nearly every Shih Tzu alive descends from that very small founding group. The character is not what people expect of a small coated dog. Shih Tzus are neither anxious nor clingy but self-possessed, faintly amused, and expert at locating the single warmest patch of sun in a house. The archive drawing gives the face its proper width, keeps the undershot jaw honest, and lets the coat fall without a topknot, closer to the temple dog than the show ring.
- Archive number
- No. 026 of 39
- Group
- Utility
- Origin
- TIBET & CHINA
- Comes as
- Tee, Sweatshirt, Hoodie, Print
- From
- £30.00
- Printed
- In the UK for UK orders, in the USA for North America
The Shih Tzu plate
Every plate in the archive is drawn from scratch as a natural-history engraving, the breed set in the country it was made for rather than floated on a white background. The Shih Tzu is Archive No. 026. The drawing is printed as a full plate across the back of the garment, nothing on the front, and the same plate is used for the print and the cards.
Garments are made when they are ordered, so nothing is printed until it is wanted and nothing is held in a warehouse. UK orders are printed in the UK and North American orders in the USA, which keeps the parcel on the same side of the ocean as the person waiting for it. If it is not right when it arrives, it can go back within 30 days.
