Y'all Come Sit a Spell

The origin of the Sunstone Grove Menagerie

I did not set out to build a menagerie.

I did not wake up one morning and decide that what my life needed was a growing population of glass animals, pottery creatures, unidentified inherited objects, and the occasional paperweight with an attitude.

It happened slowly.

One piece caught my eye from across a booth. Another felt too strange or beautiful to leave behind. Some came from family members who had kept them for years before passing them to me. Others were sitting quietly on thrift-store shelves, waiting for someone to notice what they were.

Then they began acquiring names.

That is usually the point of no return.

A glass cat became Zelda. An elephant became Douglas. The rabbits became Bevin and Calliope. Agatha the frog arrived with enough personality to launch herself onto an entirely new social-media platform.

Some pieces come home because I recognize the maker or see the possibility of resale. Those are visitors. I research them, photograph them, tell their stories, and help them find the next person who will appreciate them.

Others take one look around and become permanent residents.

There is not always a sensible explanation for the difference.

A valuable paperweight may be destined for resale while a twelve-dollar glass pig receives immediate lifetime residency because she looked at me from two booths away and I whispered, “I’m coming.”

I do not make the rules.

Over time, I realized I was not simply collecting objects. I was becoming their keeper.

Glass and pottery survive because somebody decides they matter. Somebody carries them carefully through moves, wraps them in old newspaper, remembers which grandmother owned them, and refuses to leave them sitting unnoticed on the bottom shelf.

Not every piece is rare. Not every piece is signed. Not every piece will ever be worth much money.

Value and worth are not always the same thing.

The Sunstone Grove Menagerie is where these creatures get their names, their histories when I can find them, and their mysteries when I cannot. It is part collection, part research project, part rescue operation, and part evidence that I should never be left unsupervised near an estate sale.

I may have brought them home.

But I suspect they were building the Menagerie long before I realized I had been appointed keeper.