CAVALIER KING CHARLES

The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel carries a king's name. Toy spaniels were the favoured companions of the Stuart court, and King Charles II of England was so devoted to his that he was rarely seen without one at his side. From the seventeenth century onward the little spaniel became the emblem of gentle nobility, a dog bred not to work but to love.

Toy spaniels gaze out from the great portraits of European art, curled at the feet of princes in the canvases of Van Dyck and Gainsborough, a fixture of the royal nursery and the aristocratic lap. King Charles II is said to have decreed that his spaniels be admitted to any public building in the land. Few breeds have been so consistently painted, or so thoroughly beloved by those born to privilege.

The Cavalier edition is an ode to that inheritance. An antique rose linen cover, the breed's silken coat and melting eyes rendered through extreme macro photography, every feathered strand and soft expression captured with the tenderness of a court portrait. A book that restores the smallest of spaniels to its rightful place, on the lap of kings.