Join us for an Old-Fashioned Christmas!

Guided Tours

Thanks to the hard work and dedication of our volunteers,
we are now able to offer guided tours to the public 

starting on September 18, 2016!  

Call to schedule your tour today: 
Craig Chyrchel

(562) 321-1552 

· Tours will last one hour.

· Visitors will learn about the Nash family, a bit of Covina history, and a discussion of Craftsman style architecture and furniture.

· Guests will also have access to ten fully furnished rooms with multiple exhibits located on the first floor of the house.

· Group size is limited to 12 persons.

· Minimum tour age is twelve, due to numerous antiques and artifacts inside the house.

· The residence is accessible via a ramp by walkers and wheelchairs with some Internal space limitations.

· Questions are encouraged during and at the conclusion of the tour. 

· Tours are free, but donations gratefully accepted.

-----------------------------------------------

If you would like to help us spread the word, you can find flyers to share on social media here.

We appreciate your continued support!

- Covina Heritage House volunteer team

Open House 2015

Welcome to the Heritage House!

 Covina Valley Historical Society providing information.

Heritage House director Craig Chyrchel leading tours.

 Fall table setting, designed and set up by volunteers.

More tours inside the house!

 Kitchen cupboard and food display.

The lovely Lark Ellen, Covina's famous concert singer.

 The Nash exhibit.

OPEN HOUSE

I'm going to just post the flyer that I made, but I do want to point out that this is a special event with invited guests so if you would like to attend PLEASE CALL Craig Chyrchel at (562) 321-1552.

Oh Man, I Can?

The Covina Heritage House is home to many a splendid thing.  But while the team has been busy cleaning and sorting through the vast collection of wonders, they have also found some rather odd (and arguably creepy) items throughout the house: mannequins.  Yes, plural. A plethora. A group. A gaggle? (Perhaps not THAT many).

Nonetheless, they infiltrated the bottom floor wearing fancy dress and starched uniforms...

...While upstairs, they removed their dignity along with their clothing and appear to be enjoying themselves WAY too much.

First we met this lovely lady, as we enter one of the doors to the house, just enjoying a moment's repose in her fine frock.

Then we were greeted by this charmer dancing with a hat rack.  In fairness to her, the dance floor was very crowded that night. 

I have no idea what she's doing.

----

Recently, the team decided that the mannequins were not part of our vision for the Covina Heritage House Museum and  it was time to send them on their way.  

 We stacked them all on nearby table as efficiently as we could and went back to work inside the house.

Then, about 30 minutes later, we saw that someone had come along and done this.  It gave us all a good laugh.

 I hope you enjoyed it as well.

We still have a lot of work to do and we can always use more hands on deck.  If you're interested in volunteering or have questions please don't hesitate to contact Craig Chyrchel at (562) 321-1552. 
In the meantime, I'll keep ya posted.

Thanks for reading!

Hi Ho Silver!

Its been quite an adventure going through all the historic objects in the house - cataloging, cleaning, identifying (what we can), and taking photographs.

One of the more prolific collections we have is the spoons.  Many are sterling silver, some silver plated, some others a combination of metals.  There are spoons from most of the 50 states, a multitude of other countries, some engraved with first names, or decorated with symbols from famous works of art.

We recently had a guest who offered her insight into the polishing, storage, and identification of our silver.  

Some basics we learned are:
1. Sterling silver should be marked with the number 925 (or .925).
2. The United States has a reputation for not marking it's sterling silver, making it harder to identify.
3. Many countries such as England, Scotland, and Ireland have done a very good job marking and documenting silver in the past and there are some great book resources available to help with that.
4. Once silver is cleaned up and polished, it should be wrapped in silver cloth, kept away from the elements, and polished once or twice a year.

Jackson's Hallmarks

As we sift through these symbols of our past, it can get overwhelming. Luckily, over the course of the last hundred or so years, we have become more aware of the value of our cultural past and have taken time and care to document and preserve what is important.  Hence the value of a book with Maker's Marks (or Hallmarks) for Silver such as this one.

Now, on to the fun part!

 Here lies a spoon between the pages of the book mentioned above.

 When you look at the maker's mark under good light and magnification, what do you see?  Two distinct set of stamps.  Let's start by identifying the ones on the right.

 To put it in perspective, we'll zoom out and look at a few different charts with similar stamps, all three of which would put the origin of the spoon in Birmingham, England.  The stamp includes an anchor, a lion, and a cursive letter, but the shape of the shields is how we make a final identification.

It may be hard to see, but the "squares" around the shapes are flat with rounded edges on top and indented on the bottom.

 Looks like we have a match! Our spoon was manufactured in 1927-28.  Pretty neat, huh?

 Now, there is a second stamp to decipher as well.

Here's the front of the spoon nestled between two more pages of potential matches for a Maker's Mark.

We found it! 

Our spoon was manufactured by Elkington & Co. Ltd., in Birmingham, England sometime between 1927 and 1928.

I hope you found this little adventure as fun as I did when I was first learning about it.  Now I have an urge to go watch Indiana Jones or Lara Croft Tomb Raider... 

As always, thanks for stopping by!

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!