Birdie, I've been thinking on the exact same wavelength as your topic for the past few days ... maybe it has something to do with my just having purchased one of the Josette's Music Box replicas ...
Besides having the music box now, as well as a Barnabas ring (which just sits closed up in the box), I have a couple of other items that remind me of DS. Both of these are placed on the very crowded top of a large oak bookcase I have with four glass doors.
One is a tall glass antique-style oil lamp I've had for some years. I hoped to actually use it and thought it would cast a warm, comfortable glow, especially during the winter. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to use it. The lamp oil I purchased was called "pure and odorless," but it still gave off fumes that really bothered me. In the 19th century, my understanding is that the finest oil used was whale oil, which probably didn't have the irritating effects of kerosene (which is all that today's lamp oils are, though supposedly more refined).
The other item is a hand-crafted model ship from the East coast that was given to me when I was 10 by a distant cousin who was visiting from Europe. I mentioned this model ship once in the past and referred to it as a schooner (thought I'd try to get technical in my description), but my nautical knowledge is practically nil and I realize now that it isn't a schooner. It looks exactly like the ship used in the movie "The Bounty" (the Mel Gibson version) and also like the one in the movie "Moby Dick" (the TNT version -- don't remember the ship from the original movie). Does anyone happen to know what kind of ship this might be a replica of?
Finally, when I was growing up my sister and I sometimes played on the grounds of a Jacobean-style mansion built in the early 1900s and situated on a lake shore. Although the exterior doesn't resemble Collinwood, there is a small 19th-century-era cemetary adjacent to the grounds that's enclosed by a wrought-iron fence. The interior of the mansion, which I've seen a couple of times, does remind me of Collinwood, with the dark carved wood paneling and stained glass windows on the landing.
Not to mention the fact that I came very close to moving into yet another "Collinwood" just a couple of weeks ago ... and the fact that there is still another house, even closer to where I now live, that is built in the same style as the Old House (albeit on a much smaller scale). It has the same white columns built around the circular rotunda (I know that's not the correct term but I can't think of what it's called -- similar to Monticello.) When I walk by, I often wonder if Barnabas is home and am tempted to go up and knock...
* * *
Midnite, did you have to rub it in about sitting outdoors in a tropical garden?!?
