This is one of the delightful Wee Faerie Houses that is currently gracing the grounds of the Florence Griswold Museum.  The images below are all photos of other Faerie Houses in the exhibit.

 

The Florence Griswold Museum is a special place, but during the month of October it has also been transformed into a magical place.  Visitors to the museum can see the miniature houses of the “Wee Faerie Village” that are located throughout the grounds. 

Artists, designers, museum staff members, the museum’s garden gang, and docents have hand-crafted about 30 of these mini-dwellings. You can find them exactly where you would expect faeries to live—in the crannies of trees, along the riverbank, among the blooms, by the babbling brook. 

 

To guide you through this “fairyland,” visitors are given a map to tour the village.  Visitors also wear jingle-bracelets (to warn the resident faeries so that they have time to hide, of course.) 

Modern wizardry also plays a role.  The map provides a number so that you can use a cell phone to call the faeries.  At each dwelling, visitors hear a recording by the faerie who lives there.

 

But these are no mere “fairy tales.”  Each faerie was a muse to one of the artists who lived in Miss Florence’s boardinghouse a century ago and who became known as the Lyme Art Colony.  So the faerie muses give information and interesting tidbits about the famous artists they inspired. 

 

It was David Rau, the museum’s director of education and outreach, who took a “Tour of Fairy Houses”—an annual event which takes place in the gardens of Portsmouth, N.H.  He then came up with the idea of creating a faerie village on the museum’s campus that was linked to the story of Miss Florence and the artists of Old Lyme.

 

The Wee Faerie Village is proving to be very popular and drawing in the young and young-at-heart alike. 

As of Oct. 21, almost 5,000 people had already seen the faerie village—so many, in fact, that the museum had to print additional maps.  Rau said that it has been successful “beyond my fantasies.”

 

If the fun and fantasy of the faerie houses appeals foremost to children, those who are already familiar with the history of the Lyme Art Colony will also find much to delight them.  For instance, Henry Rankin Poore was the artist who painted the famous mural of “The Fox Chase” in Miss Florence’s dining room.  His faerie muse, “Foxie,” lives in the Poore House.
 

 

In the dwelling called Riverbend Way resides “R. Cadia,” the faerie who inspired Louis Paul Dessar to paint scenes of farmers and their animals working in the fields.  Allen Butler Talcott’s muse “Acorn” bunks down in Charter Oak Estates.  Talcott, who was born in Hartford, loved painting the trees and landscape of Old Lyme. 

 

This is also the “Year of the American Landscape” at the museum and the fall foliage season is a perfect time to take in the beauty of the Griswold grounds. 

You will be on the banks of the river when you visit the faerie dwelling Lieutenant River Lofts, in the middle of Miss Florence’s garden while admiring Vegetable Valley, beside the brook when you peek into Water Fall Downs. 

 

The Wee Faerie Village will be on view at the museum through Nov. 1 and special activities are scheduled.  For a complete listing of events, click to visit the museum’s web site

One of the highlights will be on Saturday, Oct. 31 when there will be a Halloween Costume Parade through the faerie village.  Prizes will be awarded for the Best Faerie or Elf, for the Very Very Scary, and for Laugh-Out-Loud Funny.  The parade and a pumpkin party will take place from 1 to 5 p.m.