The Dolphin House Bimini
The Dolphin House in Alice Town, Bimini is the life’s work of its creator, Ashley Saunders. Every stone, shell, bottle, tile, and piece of driftwood that adorns this remarkable home and museum were collected by Saunders on the beaches of Bimini.
That is, except for the thousands of gifts brought to the house in its twenty-five years of operation – by visitors who also wanted to be a part of this continuing art project.
A young French girl on holiday merely searched through her purse for a trinket to add to the wall in Saunder’s Mermaid Room. Her bejeweled lipstick container is now a part of the Mermaid’s vanity.
Others plan their gifts more carefully and try to add a missing piece to Saunders’ existing collections of wall art; he now has a complete set of all U.S. license plates and is hoping to collect plates from every country in the world.
Some visitors, however, leave only words. Saunders keeps a notebook handy for his foreign guests to write down the word or phase that means “Welcome” in their language. He later copies these phrases (there are literally hundreds) onto sign boards and displays them throughout the house.
Everyone who enters the Dolphin House hopes that the house will never be completed: that the magic will never end.