It’s one of the most famous trademarks of the 20th century: a dog, perhaps a terrier mix, looking at a gramophone horn, head tilted quizzically.
It’s from an 1898 painting called “His Master’s Voice.” The dog has a name — and a story that may bring a lump to the throat of any dog lover.
His name was Nipper. The official story says the name refers to his unfortunate way of greeting strangers when they came to the house, but that might be fanciful. People usually don’t wait until they detect a trait before they name a dog, or there’d be a lot more Droolers and Humpers.
Nipper belonged to Mark Barraud, a scenery designer for a London theater. Barraud died in 1887 and Nipper went to live with Barraud’s brother, Francis, a painter. The first painting of Nipper was called “Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph,” and showed an Edison cylinder player. Barraud offered the company’s representative the painting for use in advertisements.
Barraud took the work to Edison’s competition, the Gramophone Co. They offered to buy the painting, if Barraud would rework the to show Gramophone disks instead of cylinders. Within a few years it would be the Gramophone trademark in England, and also RCA in America. Nipper gained recognition on both sides of the ocean.
Nipper, who lived for 11 years, died in 1895, well before he was captured in the famous painting. He was buried in a park in London. The park was paved over decades later, and a bank now stands on the site. There’s a plaque inside that memorializes Nipper’s resting place, and the street outside is called Nipper Alley.
Nipper was long gone when Barraud painted him listening to a record, but so was the voice that came from the speaker. Mark Barraud had recorded his voice on some cylinders, and these passed to his brother. Nipper was not only listening to his master’s voice, he was listening to his dead master’s voice.
That might explain some of Nipper’s confusion, made obvious in the painting by the tilt of his head.
RCA, high technology even your dog can use
In a fall 1991 big advertising campaign, RCA declared war on high technologys confusing terminology. A large role in this assault on technological gobbledygook was played by “Chipper”. The campaigns TV commercials and print ads, through the Christmas sales season, reassured would-be buyers that RCA consumer electronics products uncomplicated high tech with built-in features, and left users with fewer buttons and gadgets to contend with. “Finally, a VCR everybody and his dog can program,” said the headline of one print ad. “At last, technology that serves man,” said the headline of another. “If your VCR is a pain to program, then get rid of it”, said an announcer in one spot. Research showed that, by blending older and younger elements, through the “Nipper”+“Chipper” combination, RCA products are contemporary yet traditional. Consumers are convinced that “Nipper” and “Chipper” should continue to tell the RCA brand’s story for the next 100 years. ×
Central America
América Central y el Caribe (Español) A smooth fox terrier, Ch. Warren Remedy, won the Best in Show award at the very first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, in 1907, and repeated in 1908 and again in ‘09. Between them, smooth and wire foxes have won seventeen Best in Shows at Westminster, more than any other breed (Scotties are second, with eight). The most famous fox terrier was Asta, a wire who stole scenes from William Powell and Myrna Loy in all those “Thin Man” movies in the nineteen-thirties and early forties, and the next-best probably Ch. Nornay Saddler, who won fifty-one Best in Show awards (then a record) between 1937 and 1940, but somehow never the top Westminster prize, and became the subject of the very first New Yorker dog Profile, written by E. J. Kahn, in 1940.
Dogly type deposes to take mild exception to a line in Tad Friend’s Talk of the Town piece, “Sound of Silence,” in the current issue of The New Yorker, in which he states that the Jack Russell terrier that appears in the new movie “The Artist” is “the breed that once cocked an ear to RCA Victrolas.” I don’t think so. The dog sitting attentively and eternally next to that old-fashioned phonograph horn on RCA Victor records is a pooch named Nipper, who looks to me like a fox terrier or something close. The canine belonged to a Royal Academy British artist, Francis Barraud, who painted “Dog Looking At and Listening To a Phonograph” (above) sometime in the eighteen-nineties. The picture was acquired by the Gramophone Company in 1900, and shortly thereafter rights to it went over to Victor, where the painting was edited into its famous His Master’s Voice trademark. Only lately has anyone suggested that Nipper might have been a Jack Russell, but a good second look at those elegant Ionic forelegs dismisses the claim.
Jack Russell terriers are the wildly popular, intense short-legged cutesters now probably visible (and audible) on a taut leash in your apartment lobby or around the nearest shopping mall. Fox T.’s, which come in the smooth or wire-haired model, are taller and narrower, and, by a fraction, more staid. Though probably outnumbered by Jacks just now, they are the older, more established breed; one version of Jack Russells, a country cousin, was developed in the eighteenth century by a British divine who gave the breed its official moniker, the Parson Russell Terrier. The American Fox Terrier Club was founded in 1885; the Jack Russell Terrier Club of America in 1976. I grew up in close proximity to dogs, but the first time I ever heard of a Jack Russell or laid eyes on one was in 1965, when an old Boston friend of mine, Kornie Parson (yes), introduced me to a delightfully waggling football he’d just picked up on a business trip to England.
Fox terriers were bred for foxhunting, but not on foot. After the much bigger, no-relation foxhounds (with their floppy ears and waving tails) had driven the fox to earth, the F.T. would be handed down from a bag or basket on the Master of Hounds’ saddle and would instantly dig out the poor beast. Foxhunting has pretty much been abolished now, even in England, but more than one owner of the breed must have noticed that somewhere along the line fox terriers—with their long faces, straight front legs, and pricked ears—had been selectively bred to look a lot like horses. The young incumbent at my house, Andy (above), has yet to encounter a fox or a horse, but doesn’t seem to mind. My son, noting his unusual patching, thinks he looks a lot like a cow.
Dogs have been getting a lot of attention from colleagues of mine in the magazine lately, what with the selection from Susan Orlean’s book “Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend,” which ran in the issue of August 29th, and Adam Gopnik’s Personal History, “Dog Story,” which recounts his recent conversion to the world of dogs, thanks to a charming Havanese named Butterscotch. My own claim to distinction in this arcane area began when my wife, Carol, took our fox terrier Willy out for a walk one morning in 1990, and encountered a fashion shoot in progress in Central Park: a photographer working with a chocolate-brown Lab and a tweeded-up male model for a Paul Stuart advertisement. When Carol and Willy came past again, on the way home, the photographer asked if he could please borrow our dog for a few minutes, and heartlessly made the switch. The resulting Paul Stuart ad ran in the issue of October 29th. My only disappointment was with Willy’s commission, which turned out not to be a fifteen-hundred-dollar Italian silk-Irish-tweed-mix jacket for his owner but a free copy of the Paul Stuart catalogue.
It’s from an 1898 painting called “His Master’s Voice.” The dog has a name — and a story that may bring a lump to the throat of any dog lover.
Nipper was long gone when Barraud painted him listening to a record, but so was the voice that came from the speaker. Mark Barraud had recorded his voice on some cylinders, and these passed to his brother. Nipper was not only listening to his master’s voice, he was listening to his dead master’s voice.
Barraud took the work to Edison’s competition, the Gramophone Co. They offered to buy the painting, if Barraud would rework the to show Gramophone disks instead of cylinders. Within a few years it would be the Gramophone trademark in England, and also RCA in America. Nipper gained recognition on both sides of the ocean.
It’s one of the most famous trademarks of the 20th century: a dog, perhaps a terrier mix, looking at a gramophone horn, head tilted quizzically.
Nipper belonged to Mark Barraud, a scenery designer for a London theater. Barraud died in 1887 and Nipper went to live with Barraud’s brother, Francis, a painter. The first painting of Nipper was called “Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph,” and showed an Edison cylinder player. Barraud offered the company’s representative the painting for use in advertisements.
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