The Story Behind Pips & Whiskers
Dominoes, Grandad, and a New Kind of Animal Lover Art
Every Collection Starts With a Story
Behind every Pips & Whiskers Vintage Whimsies piece is a story, one that starts not with dogs or cats, but with dominoes.
Anna Danielle, designer at The Little Dog Laughed, has collected vintage dominoes since her teens. She has a lot of them. For Anna, a domino tile is her adored grandad and her childhood. Those family stories sparked a lifelong interest in the 1930s and ’40s. A keen student of social history, especially the lives of women and the Second World War generation. The tiles have followed her ever since. They first appeared in her textiles degree work. Later they became decoration around her home. More recently, they became props in her product photography. Now they are the literal foundation of her assemblage art.
From Curiosity to Collection
Anna describes her creative process as “a rollercoaster of creative lightbulbs pinging and ‘think I’m on to something’ bubbles bursting!” Some pieces come together in a single sitting; others are revisited and reworked many times over. Her method is simple. She surrounds her workspace with the animal figurines and vintage curiosities, lets them sit while she works on other projects, and waits for the ideas to surface on their own.
The result is a growing collection of assemblage pieces that combine hand-stitched detail, curated vintage objects, and a soupçon of imagination!
A Tribute to the Individual
At its heart, Pips & Whiskers Vintage Whimsies is about finding character in the mass-produced. Every ceramic ornament, every domino, every found object has already lived one life before Anna gives it a second. Freeing that individuality and celebrating it with a caption and a story, turns a curiosity into a keepsake.
For animal lovers who want a gift with genuine depth and often over a hundred years of history, these new assemblage art creations will definitely appeal.
Discover the Collection
Interest piqued? Browse the Pips & Whiskers Vintage Whimsies collection here
