Land of Bliss and Shadow

Ch apter 4 Heading Sketch : Even though Collinwood is chock full of ships models in every era and parallel time band and Mrs. Johnson is tired of dusting them, this sketch is not from any of them.  It's an interpretation of the ship that Hannah sees, based on an illustration in the book The Encyclopedia of Ships , edited by Tonty Gibbons, Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, CA. Credit:  Dark Shadows TV Series screen capture The Dinkus riddle solved: Cincy Merritt Yeats you got it right!   Disembarking in the Seaview Terrace porte cochere you gain admittance through the heavy carved oak double doors to the foyer.  The iron gates are grudgingly opened for you by Mrs. Johnson, who ushers you into the two-story high great hall,.  She asks you to wait for Mrs. Stoddard to greet you. To your left are the marble stairs, the arched whispering gallery and the upper floor's carved wood balcony.  To your right, the triple stained glass windows.  Directly ahead lie...

  The Hill and the House Chapter 5

 Chapter 3 Heading Sketch : I bet a lot of you will recognize this when you scroll down to see a screen capture from the early black and white episode 236 of Dark Shadows. Dark Shadows Old House set:  Josette's room Guess the Dinkus Clue: The dinkus is a detail from an object somewhere in Seaview Terrace/The Carey Mansion.  If you have ever been inside, you have walked under this object several times.   Which room?  What object?

  The Hill and the House Chapter 4

  Chapter 2 Heading sketch : Kudos to Mick Massey over at the Facebook group Fans of Carey Mansion/Seaview Terrace - Historic Treasure for guessing it first! My interpretation (meaning I don't think I got it quite right) of one of the crystals from the absolutely gorgeous central drawing room chandelier in The Old House.   -Exact source of screen cap not known The Dinkus : I just discovered through the magic of the internet that a section break within a chapter, like this: **** Is called a dinkus.  What a funny word! This is a really tough one:  See if you can guess where my dinkus (dinkuses?  dinki?) are from: I'll give a hint with the answer for Chapter 3, coming next week.

The Hill and the House Chapter 3

Guess the Sketch:   Answers from Chapter 1!   Chapter 1 heading and Synopsis: Synopsis: This sketch is from the parapet of the Spratt Mansion, which no longer exists.  It is The Old House. This photograph is from hudsonvalleyruins.org: If you really want to geek out, you can see from the graph paper I drew the sketch on that the proportions of each of the three sections is 3 (high) to 5 (long).  The proportion 3:5 is one of the ratios of the Golden Mean or Golden Ratio, used extensively in classical architecture.  The Golden Mean is based on the Fibonacci Sequence of prime numbers (1,2,3,5,7, etc.) and found just about everywhere in nature.  The most famous examples are the chambered nautilus and the sunflower. Chapter 1 Heading : Ok, I admit this initial one is pretty obscure, probably the most obscure reference in all 12 chapters.  I imagined it as one of the posts of the open gate that Hannah drove through to get to the great house of Coll...