Thursday 3 October 2013

The Greatest Dog Show on Earth

The Greatest Dog Show on Earth
Last Monday I managed to get along to see The Greatest Dog Show on Earth,

We really enjoyed rambling around Bristol, finding all the Gromits--take a peek at Gromit in the wild!  Part one, part two, part three, and part four--and discovering new areas of the city, so seeing them all together at The Greatest Dog Show on Earth seemed like the icing on top of the cake.

The mega-enthusiastic queues over the exhibition weekend meant that we didn't even attempt to queue to see the Gromits.  I love Gromit dearly, but spending six hours in a queue is not how I want to spend my weekend!  However, after seeing a queue update of 1.5hours on Monday morning, I hopped into my car and zoomed into town.

I fully expected the queue to be huge by the time I parked, but in the end, I queued for about 45 minutes, with the queue moving on at decent clip.  I did make friends with a lovely pre-school aged girl in the queue who could remember nearly all the Gromits names and asked me what I thought of them all.  She was super-cute and very excited to be able to see them all and then tell her friends at pre-school about it.  The Monday morning queue was mainly made up of parents and small children, I felt rather as if I was on a school trip!


Keeping an eye on the queue were some mini Gromit scultures.  They were unnamed at the time, but after a peek in the auction catalogue I can tell you that these ones were:

North-East Gromit, Bristol Gromit, Countryside Gromit, Franz and York Gromit.

It definitely made queuing more fun to see these "new" Gromits!

We shuffled along, excitement rising as we passed Nick Park who was being interviewed by the BBC--there is a faint chance that I was on t'telly, eek!--and finally reached the doorway.  Inside all the Gromits were sparkling under spotlights and looking rather splendid!

First up were the Rare Breeds...

Some of the Rare Breed Gromits
All of the rare breeds. Gromberry looks particularly fab!
Britain's Best Dogs--Jack, National Treasure, Lancelot
The lighting in this corner was truly dreadful, but these three did look rather lovely together.

A Mandrill's Best friend & Grant's Gromit
Working Dogs Gromits
Golden Gromit, one of the Artistic Gromits
The Artistic Gromits included my favourite Gromit--Golden Gromit.  There were others, but my eyes were only for him.

Upstairs I found Bristol Dogs, Space Dogs, Toy Dogs, Nature's Best Dogs, Novelty Dogs, Best in Show, Pedigree Dog, and Best in Show.  Here are a few photos of each class--I took hundreds, you don't want to be sitting through them all!

Some of Bristol's Finest
Space Dogs










This is the "81st Gromit".  He was actually created for the English Tourism advertising campaign that Wallace and Gromit did a little while ago and came along to the exhibition to see his canine relatives!

Grom-Voyage

I love his vintage leather suitcase design--he's covered with holiday snaps and stickers from holiday destinations in the UK.  Gromit Unleashed ran a competition to name him and the winning name was Grom-Voyage, a great pun!

The Gromit Unleashed auction is on the 3rd of October and the organisers are expecting it to make in excess of one million pounds!  Go, Gromit, go!

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4 comments

  1. These are definitely exciting works of art. I like the space dogs section!

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  2. I still can't believe that Gromberry's pips are painted on! Incredible.
    Dogs of the world look particularly awesome :o)
    M x

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  3. Wow, they all look spectacular! I would have loved to have gone to the show x

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  4. Loved this around Bristol. Our city is going to less colourful now without these guys around it!!! My favourite was the buzz lightyear one and the one Zayn Malik from One Direction done!!! Great blog.

    Katie from http://withloveandcrystals.blogspot.co.uk/

    Xx

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