A Cabinet of Curiosities

According to Wikipedia, "The term cabinet originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture." and "Cabinets of curiosities...were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were...yet to be defined."  This led to the modern day use of "curio cabinet", which is generally a wooden cabinet with glass doors to protect and display special objects in the household.

The women in my family, from my Great-Grandmother to my mother, used them to store the sets of "good dishes", teacups with plates, and the occasional collectible figure.

The Covina Heritage house has amassed quite the collection of cabinets and curiosities over the years. These are a few of the ones we've cleaned and cataloged.

These are fun to clean because there are so many pretty designs to look at. There are even the occasional mysteries.  There are certain types of objects that have fallen out of use in the modern age but show up in cabinets like these.  Luckily, we have a conservation expert on hand to help us figure out what some of these things were used for!

I hope you enjoyed theses photos. I know, I always enjoy looking at the "stuff" inside the Covina Heritage House while volunteering.

Now that I've got curiosities and tea cups on the brain, I will leave you with the following quote from Alice in Wonderland:

"Mad Hatter: Would you like a little more tea?

Alice: Well, I haven't had any yet, so I can't very well take more.

March Hare: Ah, you mean you can't very well take less.

Mad Hatter: Yes. You can always take more than nothing."

- Thanks for stopping by!