Thursday, July 16, 2009

Collections

Do you collect anything?

I do. Several somethings, actually--aside from dust puppies.

Today, I'm going to share my Dala Horse collection. Dala Horses are also called Swedish wooden horses. Currently, I have ten horses, ranging in size from about an inch and a half to one that is probably a foot high. This is from the top of the ears, down to the 'hoof,' such as it is.

My collection began about thirty-five years ago when I was a six-year-old girl on a grand adventure to Denmark, visiting her grandparents. During one of my visits, I received two horses. They were well-loved and played with for several years.



My collection remained at two for about twenty years, when I acquired a third--the largest one.



Shortly after our family moved into (Air Force) base housing back in 1995, we needed furniture. It just so happened that a dear friend of my daddy's also lived in base housing and was selling some furniture in preparation for retiring from the AF and moving into a new home off base. So hubby and I headed over to Bobby's house, a few streets over from where we lived. Now Bobby and his wife were both career AF, and had no children. They had been stationed overseas several times, and had traveled Europe, and collected lots of cool things. Among their treasures was this foot-tall Dala horse. Now, I had never seen one that large so I oohed and aahed over it. Well, darn it if that man didn't just pick it up off the shelf and hand it to me. What a gesture of generosity! I treasure that particular horse to this day. (I imagine if he hadn't known me and been close with my dad, none of that would have happened...but it did, and it's a really cool story!)



As for the other seven horses, I bought those via the Internet over the last several years so that I really did have a collection. Here they all are...



What do you collect?

1 comment:

mtnchild said...

I love your collection!

I have looked for unfinished ones and from what I can tell, you have to buy them from Sweden. You might as well buy finished ones.

Love, Mom