Autodidactic Rabbit Trails: In which I meander around the net picking up all sorts of tidbits and share them, and we all pretend this is intensely educational. Whereas a lot is gleefully "ew gross" or "whoa, really?!" depending on your preference for weirdness. Strange history - it's still history! Note, I do quote wikipedia frequently, but be aware they're not to be entirely relied upon for all facts. (Do correct me where needed.)

In this episode: pottery figures of tiger mauling and murder, the story of Lt. Hugh Munro and the tiger, a musical tiger mauling a human, and a freaky Greek myth about breast feeding I'd somehow missed in classics studies.

If your grandmother (or grandfather, or other relative) has this kind of china figurine I REALLY want photos and stories, because seriously, share that stuff. Specifically Staffordshire pottery figurines showing pop cultural topics like boxing, bull baiting and mermaids - and deeper strangeness like the scandal of eloping to Scotland, the 1823 Marriage Act, being attacked by a tiger, and a historic murder or two.

I'm now about to link to Collectors Weekly, which I should possibly warn you is indeed a rabbit trail you can follow for many an hour, if you simply like looking at collections.

I was going to post an image from the article (to lure you in) but 1) copyright, so you really should visit the link below (even if not to read, just to scroll through all the images) and 2) I can NOT choose just one, too much delightful weirdness on display. Here's brief quote and link before I go into more detail:

Murder and Mayhem in Miniature: The Lurid Side of Staffordshire Figurines
Hunter Oatman-Stanford, Collectors Weekly, August 22nd, 2013

 

"...The subjects that graced Staffordshire pottery more than 200 years ago weren’t for the fainthearted: Imagine giving grandma a figurine that mocked discriminatory marriage laws or portrayed a gruesome series of animal attacks. Welcome to the world of Staffordshire miniatures.

Long before people had Us Weekly or 49ers t-shirts, they bought Staffordshire figurines to celebrate pop culture. During the late 1700s, potteries in the Staffordshire region of England created these figures to commemorate everything from classical artwork to sport heroes, from political movements to tabloid headlines."