If you've been reading this newsletter for long enough, you may remember our "Rabbit Room", the upstairs bedroom on the northern end of our front house, where child-sized rabbit dolls sat or lay on painted young-person furniture, and other pieces of antique furniture, toys, and miscellaneous props made this cheery room a fantasy world for children and adults.

In 2013, after much soul-searching, we decided that we needed to have a guest room for humans. Many pieces from this collection were sold during a wonderfully successful February online sale. We sent toys, furniture, and smalls all over the country, many pieces to collectors who valued them as much because they had been Jan's as for any intrinsic worth.

The thinning of these treasures left us with a significant number of pieces deemed indispensible: our own childhood teddy bears, child-sized rabbits created by Holyoke artist Louismarie Hubbard, stuffed vegetables, gift-wrapped boxes, small tools, miniature lighting, and a papier mache pumpkin, this last because we live in Pumpkin Hollow.

To accommodate these small treasures, we created a small stage above the dogleg stairway just inside our front doors. Because it's a small space, the creatures are packed closely into it. Since their heads are stuffed with sawdust, they are oblivious to the need for social distancing, and everyone appears to be quite happy with the situation.

The collection remains there, visited only rarely, but always a feast for our eyes whenever we enter this narrow passageway.

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Just before Easter we took a few pictures, which we edited into a brief video.

Please tap or click on this thumbnail if you'd like to watch it.

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