Skin and Bones: Shrines - Edward-Dean Reflection Pond

Goose Fountain

During the past thirty or so years, the reflection pool at the Edward-Dean Museum in Cherry Valley has been a favorite destination shrine for my daughter and me. We have visited the stone-bound pond perhaps a half dozen times to share a moment of quiet contemplation. The pool has come to be special place for me to realize the gratitude I feel for the unknown forces of cosmic arrangement that brought my lovely daughter to me. The garden also evokes my love of Japanese haiku poetry (though the garden and pond are classical, rather than Asian, in references). On one occasion, when my daughter was a small child, I took my favorite volume of translated haiku to the garden to read and to write. Today, the pond has koi, whose swimming silently animates the pool. A fountain in the pool provides the quiet music of dripping water.

Over the decades, the Museum, its gardens, and its several open acres have become an increasingly singular refuge, as housing developments have encroached on the nearby fields. Yet, even today, while land developer's grading tractors and carpenter's pneumatic nail guns are within earshot, the grounds provide unobstructed view of the charming mountainside landscape, from the rising escarpments to the North, snow-covered when we visited yesterday, to Riverside County's huge MWD reservoir, Lake Perris, to the South. The small pond in the garden is not a reflecting pool, in the architectural sense of term; but it has been a place of peace and contemplation mirroring the psychic meaning of the word, reflection, and I so use label for this photo-blog.

According to a museum brochure:

"J. Edward Eberle and Dean W. Stout were long-time admirers of European decorative arts and spent much time in England and France touring and admiring the musuems and houses. In the 1950s they decided to purchase a cluster of buildings on beautifully landscaped grounds in Cherry Valley - now the home of the museum.

"In 1964 Edward Eberle and Dean Stout gifted the museum and its property to the county. With this gift a treasure trove of 16th through 19th century decorative arts was passed on for public consumption."

(Images are thumbnails. Click on the images to obtain larger pictures with more detail and better color. Pictures will load in a separate pop-up window.)

Photographs of the Reflection Pool

Benches

My Daughter

Venus Statue

View of the reflection pool, looking south with Lake Perris in the distance (in the enlarged picture, the lake is visible as the small silver streak in the center of the image)

Miscellaneous Images of other gardens at the Edward-Dean Museum

Looking through the wedding gazebo to the reflection pool

The San Bernardino mountains to the north, viewed through the wedding pagoda

Statue of a child

Urn with flowers

Two boys, hunters

Photographs of the decorative arts museum

The decorative art objects are housed in a building with several galleries. The permanent collection was selected and arranged by Eberle and Stout in the building of their own design. Since coming into County ownership, the museum administration has devoted one of the rooms to rotating exhibits meeting the broad themes of the Edward-Dean main collection. I was able to photograph some of the objects in the current temporary exhibit, but not any of the permanent collection. The objects collected by Eberle and Stout are too sensitive to light to permit flash photography. I have scanned several pictures of the gallery rooms from the museum brochure. These scanned images are of poor quality, but they serve as references.

(Temporary exhibition)

Pine Room permanent gallery

"The spectacular paneling in the Pine Room was originally in the State Bedroom of Cassiobury Park, the home of the Earl of Essex. William Randolph Hearst purchased the paneling and had it installed in a home of Marion Davies. When Mr. Eberle, an admirer of this paneling, learned that Ms. Davies' home was to be demolished, he bought the paneling and had the museum, which was already under construction, reconfigured to accommodate it."

Picture Gallery (also known as the Music Room)

Photographs of the open landscape setting of the museum

Such views as these, unobstructed by buildings, are now quite rare, even in the inland valleys of Southern California. The first photograph looks south from the museum site toward the Lake Perris reservoir. The second photograph looks north to the snow-capped San Bernardino mountains.

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All historical information and quotations are from the Riverside County Development Agency's brochure, "Discover the Edward-Dean Museum & Gardens." The museum is located at 9401 Oak Glen Road, Cherry Valley, California 92223. It is open mainly on weekends. Call 909-845-2626 for information. To visit the museum, take either the I-10 or Freeway 60 in Riverside Country, east toward Palm Springs, to Beaumont. Take the Highway 79 exit, in Beaumont, and go north on Beaumont Avenue, which turns into Oak Glen Road. The Museum is about miles from the freeway.