San Diego, Hour 1

MARK WALBERG: Welcome to Antiques Roadshow,

this week from San Diego, California.

Holy moly.

Uncle Moe would be very happy to hear that.

Uncle Moe did good.

Uncle Moe did good.

(laughing)

I'm a little breathless.

Now I don't know what to do.

No!

Really, really spectacular.

More treasures from the Golden State

are waiting to be discovered right now on Antiques Roadshow.

Captioning sponsored by SUBARU,

LIBERTY MUTUAL,

the CORPORATION FOR PUBLIC BROADCASTING

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(firecrackers exploding)

ANNOUNCER: Now, the people who make Antiques Roadshow possible.

Welcome to Antiques Roadshow.

Hi, I'm Mark Walberg,

and this week we're in San Diego, California,

famous for the expansive and impressive Balboa Park.

The park is home to beautiful gardens, 15 major museums,

and, of course, the world-renowned San Diego Zoo.

We're going to show you more of the zoo

a little bit later on in the show,

but right now it's time to check out

San Diego's antique attractions.

WOMAN: I received these as a gift from my mother-in-law,

who received them as a gift from her mother-in-law.

My grandparents-in-law were very active

in the Hopi reservations in Arizona.

They sponsored children's education

and that kind of thing during the early '70s, late '60s.

And during that period of time,

they befriended an artist by the name of Charles Loloma.

And I brought the original receipt with me.

My husband's grandfather purchased these two bracelets

for his grandmother.

She game them to her daughter-in-law...

and, actually, I have to confess.

My mother-in-law gave them to my daughter,

but I didn't trust her with them, so I took them from her.

Sounds like a good plan.

This is a copy of the original receipt.

The silver one was purchased in 1977 for $750,

and the gold one was purchased in '76 for $2,500.

These bracelets were made in Arizona in the 1970s.

Charles Loloma was born in 1921 and he died in 1991.

So he died 15 or 20 years after these bracelets were purchased.

The bracelets were made using a technique called sand casting.

A piece of rock is cut into a flat slab

and the bracelet is carved out flat in the rock.

And then the silver or the gold is poured into that channel

that's carved into the rock, and then it's bent to shape.

So there's really no sand involved;

it's more like rock casting.

Yeah, and it's real particular to the Navajo and the Hopi

because that's where the stone comes from.

These bracelets are as much pieces of sculpture

as they are jewelry.

All his work is just incredible.

This is a little different for him.

He usually does pieces with a lot of lapidary work,

or a lot of stones in them and around them.

These are nearly all metal.

They're real striking and real fine examples of his work.

Now, the catch is

a great show was done several years ago of his work,

and people decided to capitalize on that in illegal ways.

And so there are a lot of fakes on the market.

Oh, really?

And the question every time you see one is, "Is this real?

Or is it not real?"

Well, first of all, both these bracelets,

they are marked right inside here.

And it's the proper mark.

However, that doesn't mean they're real.

The marks can be copied.

So it all becomes about provenance,

and the history of these bracelets,

and you have all the history.

You have the receipt made out to a relative.

You know everything about them.

Great examples-- a sterling piece with turquoise

and a gold piece with turquoise.

Walk into a gallery, try to buy one of these, $20,000, $40,000.

Holy moly!

Yeah, nice.

Oh, my goodness.

The little one's$20,000?

Yeah, yeah.

A similar one to this in silver recently sold for about $22,000.

Oh, my goodness.

Now, I've knocked it down a little bit

because this one's slightly plainer.

Wow.

Wow, and we just stumbled across the receipt recently

because we're moving my mother-in-law

and we were packing her house

and we just found this receipt like three weeks ago.

Don't lose it.

I won't.

It's as important as the bracelets.

Wow, I didn't expect to hear that.

WOMAN: Well, when my husband was assigned to Bahrain

in the early '60s-- about 1962--

he asked the company librarian

to get to him some books on the Arab life.

He wanted to learn a little about it.

She came back and told him that she had written to England

and they could send her the three volumes

of Richard Burton's trip to Medina and Mecca.

I'm not sure my husband really knew who Richard Burton was,

and turned to me and told me what the librarian had said

and I said, "Buy 'em.

I want 'em."

It's a good choice.

Richard Burton was one of truly the most interesting figures

in the 19th century.

He was a poet, a linguist,

a fencing master, an Orientalist,

a great traveler and explorer,

but also he was a bit of a roughneck.

Even though he became Sir Richard Francis Burton,

he was never quite accepted by a lot of people

in the positions of power.

But what he achieved was extraordinary.

And someone has a great quote

that he lived the lives of six men before he was middle aged.

At the time he was 30, he was serving in the army in India

and he was fairly familiar with the Muslim way of life.

So he got a leave from the army to undertake a great expedition,

which was that of a Westerner, a nonbeliever, taking the hajj,

the pilgrimage to Mecca.

And this is his record of his pilgrimage to Mecca

as a Westerner, which he had to do disguised

because the penalty for a nonbeliever going to Mecca was death.

Yes.

And he studied for many months before he did this.

In fact, he got himself circumcised before he did this,

which was real dedication.

He was almost discovered a few times,

but he managed to do it, came back,

and this three volumes was the first book

that really launched his career.

And he went on to other explorations as well.

He translated the Thousand and One Nights, the Kama Sutra.

He was quite a character for a Victorian gentleman.

And I wish we had a picture of him

because he's got a great scar down the side of his face

from a swordfight.

So he looks every inch the explorer

that would have gone to Mecca on his own.

This is the first edition that was published in 1855

for the first two volumes and 1856 for the last volume.

And part of the reason it took so long

was that Burton wasn't back from his travels

to supply the manuscript to the publisher.

Now, what I love about these is the condition.

This is one of the best examples of this set that I've found.

If you look at the bindings, the gilt here is very bright.

This is the original cloth, the way it came from the publisher.

It hasn't been rebound.

You don't have any of the foxing that you usually see,

the spotting.

You said you got...

you and your husband bought these in the early '60s, right?

Yes.

You've kept them in really good shape.

Do you know what he paid for them?

$60-- $20 apiece.

$60?

Yes.

Well, you were really right to tell him to buy them.

As well as being an incredibly good read--

it's still in print today, in fact--

a great set like this in this condition today

would easily sell at auction between $10,000 and $15,000.

Oh, my goodness.

Without a doubt.

My goodness.

Thank you for bringing them in.

I'll take better care of them.

Okay.

All my children will be interested.

Yeah.

(laughing)

Her name's Fanny Fletcher.

She was my great-great-grandmother.

She was born in 1797.

And the painting was done when she was 20 years old.

So the painting's actually...

in a few years, it'll be 200 years old.

And we think she's pretty good looking.

She is.

One of her daughters is my great-grandmother.

And I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for her.

This is true.

This is a really good example of American folk portraiture.

She's young, she's attractive, she's beautifully dressed.

Somehow this picture over the years has survived

in remarkably good condition.

I can see that it's had very little if anything done to it,

with the possible exception of the frame.

This frame probably dates from the late 1870s, early 1880s.

So it was a means by which they could modernize the picture.

The artist has taken a particular care

in painting her clothing and her best features.

When you brought it in, I thought,

"I've seen this hand before.

I have a feeling I know who painted it."

And we've decided that it's probably painted

by a man by the name of Thomas Ware.

Ware?

Who was from Vermont.

And Thomas Ware painted primarily most of his portraits

in Vermont in the first two decades of the 19th century.

So I think there's a very good likelihood

that Thomas Ware is responsible for this portrait.

So all of those factors make it pretty special.

She's someone that a collector, for example,

you'd just love to have her around the house.

I would estimate the picture,

let's say in an auction situation,

would bring between $8,000 and $12,000.

That's good.

MAN: I've known this song for quite a while.

This song was written in part by my grandfather, Ted Koehler.

And he wrote it with Harold Arlen.

It was in 1933.

They wrote it for one of the Cotton Club revues of that year.

And this stationery that he wrote it on

I think was sort of a normal practice for him.

From what I know about the composition, it was quick--

you know, maybe an hour or two, from what I've read.

We don't have any other examples of these original lyrics,

and I think the fact that they wrote it so quick

is maybe why they have it all just on one page.

Even though your grandfather wrote other great lyrics,

like "As Long As I Live,"

"I've Got the World on a String,"

"Don't Worry About Me," "Ill Wind."

Yeah, it's...

I don't know why

we don't have more of that stuff.

I'm sure glad we have this one.

Now if you go back to the Cotton Club,

it was actually established by boxer Jack Johnson in 1920s,

the Club De Luxe.

But it was taken over by gangster Owney Madden in 1923,

who renamed it the Cotton Club.

Your grandfather, Ted, and Harold,

they were two of the staff at the Cotton Club

from 1930 to 1934.

And they wrote some of the greatest songs for Cab Calloway,

Duke Ellington.

They wrote for the revues that came up twice a year.

In '33, what I read, they wrote this at a party.

You know, how fun is that?

Yeah.

And they did it for Cab Calloway,

but Cab left the show.

They got Duke Ellington, but he had no singer.

It just so happened that Ethel Waters,

who was singing for fellow gangster Al Capone in Chicago,

moved back to New York and they gave her this song.

But where it really became a standard is in 1943,

and that's when Lena Horne, who, interestingly enough,

got her start as a 16-year-old chorus girl at the Cotton Club,

sang it in Stormy Weather,

which is one of the few nearly all-black ensemble cast movies

that was really made for a white audience.

And it became a standard and a classic to this day

and one of the greatest jazz classics of all time.

This is a great period photo.

Here's your grandfather Ted Koehler

and there's Harold Arlen, who he collaborated...

Irving Berlin, they're out having a good time.

Yeah.

We also have this great painting.

It would seem that your grandfather was multitalented.

It's a fabulous Harlem scene at 135th and Lennox.

But then we look at the lyrics,

and what makes these lyrics so great,

their original words were "Clouds are dark up in the sky"

and then they changed to "There's no sun."

Think about the resonance that gave it.

They changed "blues" to "gloom".

"The blues came and met me";

instead, "the blues walked in and met me."

"All I do is hope"; instead now it's "All I do is pray."

You see the thought process of the composer

and obviously made it the song that it is today.

Just on the painting, on its own,

I would probably put $2,000 to $4,000 on the painting.

I think it's fantastic.

I think it's a great scene.

And the fact that it was done by your grandfather,

who had an appreciation.

But the lyrics, you know,

there aren't a lot of comparables out there.

If I were going to put an auction estimate on it,

I'm being conservative here, I'd put $50,000 to $75,000.

Wow, wow.

And if I were going to insure it,

I'd insure it for at least $100,000.

It's a fabulous piece of history and social history.

Oh, that's great, thank you so much.

I got it from my Uncle Moe in Minnesota.

He was a gun collector.

And when he passed away, my dad had his eye on this one,

so this is the one we received.

Well, Uncle Moe left you

one of the most important guns of the Civil War.

No...

It's an Enfield rifle, model 1853.

And we have the production date

of 1862 on the lock plate.

Enfield made guns that went all around the world,

but we know this one came to the United States

because of a couple of markings on the gun.

Here we have the mark

of the Schuyler, Hartley & Graham Company of New York.

And they imported things

for retail to high-end, well-to-do customers.

Of a million guns that came here of the Enfield style,

this is one of the few

that we know was here during the Civil War.

This gun, what do you think it's worth?

$5 million?

(both laughing)

I can't make you that happy, darlin'.

Oh, darn.

But...

I'll take what I can get.

(laughing)

It is worth about $2,000 on today's market.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Uncle Moe would be very happy to hear that.

Uncle Moe did good.

Uncle Moe did good.

WOMAN: I bought it at auction back in Manassas, Virginia,

outside of Washington, D.C., at an auction many, many years ago.

I don't even know the exact year.

Do you have any idea what you paid for it?

Probably $200, but I'm not positive of that.

It wasn't much more than that.

And what do you think it is?

It's a Tiffany lamp.

And why do you think it's Tiffany?

Because it has it written up here on the inside

and it's on the bottom of the brass piece, too.

Okay.

I'm going to take the shade off the base.

I'm wearing my glasses

especially so that nothing happens.

And there is a Tiffany signature here.

And it's a fake signature.

It is a fake signature?

It's a fake signature.

You're kidding.

I'm not kidding.

But there's another marking on it.

That's the real signature.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

That's the real signature.

Okay.

This is a very early Tiffany lamp.

It was made probably the late 1890s,

and it was made for fuel.

It was not made for electricity.

The reason why you have the wide opening in the shade

is because it had to accommodate the chimney that you have.

Later on, as they electrified these lamps,

the openings got smaller

because they didn't have to put the chimney through it.

At the time that these types of shades were being blown

in the glass factory that Tiffany owned

in Corona, Queens, they didn't necessarily sign the shade

"Louis C. Tiffany Favrile," as you saw it.

You just wouldn't see that on an early shade.

What you would see

is this prefix letter that you see right here.

It's says "S" with a number on it.

And that's all you would see.

But whoever owned this lamp at some point

thought that wasn't good enough.

Now, a secure Tiffany collector

would have no problem with that because they would know

that that meant that the lamp was made in the 1890s...

Okay.

...and that it was original.

The other part about this lamp, though,

which is a bit of an issue, is that it's been stripped.

And really the finish probably was

more along the lines of a brown finish.

But it's been taken off over the years,

probably before you bought it.

Yes.

And what you see is someone really had a good time

cleaning this and got a little crazy.

I didn't touch it with anything

because I didn't know if there was something I should...

I had a feeling you didn't do anything

and you shouldn't do anything.

I want to show you that this is actually a real Tiffany signature,

as is the signature on the underside here.

That is also real.

Now, unfortunately,

this is not a very good conversion.

These actually might be original Tiffany components,

but I don't know what they did.

But you see they've been sort of soldered together

and put together.

Well, they wanted to electrify it.

Yes, they did.

And I can understand that.

There's a good reason to do that,

but that does affect the value of the lamp,

both the fact that the finish is gone

and you do have that fake signature.

I have to take these things into account

when putting a price on the lamp.

In today's market, the lamp, as it is,

in a retail store, would sell for around $5,000.

Oh, good.

Most of the value is in the shade, which is a lovely shade.

Now, if it were in perfect condition,

it would be $15,000.

Oh, wow.

That's wonderful.

I'm originally from southwestern Pennsylvania.

I was born and raised in New Geneva,

and my mother's family was from this village also.

So I grew up around this area with all these pieces.

They were very familiar to us.

This particular piece I purchased

from a local farm owner, had it for sale.

This piece I purchased at the estate auction

of a very dear friend of ours,

also right on the edge of the village.

And that was in September 1979.

So, what did you pay... how much was this?

I believe this one was about $825.

Okay, and then this one here?

A little bit less,

but I also purchased it that fall of 1979.

Okay, these two pieces were made circa 1880.

When I first saw these, I said,

"Well, I've never seen stoneware jars, or crocks, this big."

They're normally about, you know, two gallon, three gallon.

12 gallons were really pushing it, and major.

But these are 20 gallons.

And it's written right on it.

New Geneva, Pennsylvania, was a very famous pottery town.

Several potteries operated there in the 1870s and '80s.

One reason is they found a local clay deposit

near the river there.

Yes, the Monongahela River.

Exactly.

The process of making these,

they had to put a huge lump of clay on the wheel.

They had kick wheels, they kicked the wheel to go.

Now, a piece this big

would have taken two men-- one man to kick the wheel

and the other to put his hands inside and turn this.

It took an incredibly athletic man to do that.

And both of these are really, really heavy.

Well, it took about 17 hours for these to fire in the kiln.

Then it took about three days to cool

because they were pretty hot.

Wow, yes.

And then after they were cool,

they were put on huge, 80-foot ferry boats

and shipped down the river, or sold locally.

Now, this one here is marked "R.T.

Williams."

Richard Williams, he was a potter.

"Manufactured New Geneva, PA."

Well-known potter.

Now, this one here is all stencil.

The free-hand decoration is rarer and more desirable

by collectors.

This is mostly stenciled except for the "20" here

and then this piece across here.

The value on this is about $6,000.

Okay, that's good.

And this is probably worth in the range

of $7,000 to $10,000, this one piece.

That's wonderful, wonderful.

You brought in a painting of a Parisian landmark

of the Porte Saint-Denis.

Have you ever been there?

Never been there.

I have.

I know it well because I was trying to get to the garage

from my hotel and I kept going around like six times

the Porte Saint-Denis, so I know it quite well.

I can understand that.

Now, it's not by a Parisian artist, though.

Who's it by?

A Czechoslovakian artist, Emil Artur Longen,

sometimes used the name Pitterman.

Pitterman, yeah.

He was a director, a painter, a writer, and he was an actor.

I found another painting that he did in Paris

around the same time, 1919, of the Place de la Concorde.

It's a beautiful work, and that's the only two I've found

as far as France goes.

Now, where did you get it?

My mother-in-law lived in Salt Lake City in the '40s and '50s,

and she had a dear friend who gave this painting

to my mother-in-law and then we inherited it.

We've had this painting possibly as long as about 40 years.

Now, was that lady Czech, do you know?

I know her name, but I don't know her roots.

She probably was, I would think,

because I was very surprised to see this painting.

You know, very few of those paintings getting outside of that area.

He was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1885

and died in the Czech Republic in 1936.

He only lived about 50 years.

And he went to Paris in 1919.

And we can see down here "Paris" and "Porte St.

Denis."

And then it's clearly signed down here as well,

"E.A.

Longen" and dated "1919."

So you have all that information, which is great.

What I was impressed with was the brushwork.

You see the staccato brushwork of these little figures.

And you look in on them, and you zoom in,

they just dissolve in the brushstrokes,

just individual strokes are all these crowded people

waiting for the trolley car that's supposed to come here.

And then you get these areas of color with the trees.

And they're all, again, this rhythmic kind of brushstroke.

Beautiful evocation of a summer day in Paris.

For a long time, his paintings at auction

were selling for $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, $5,000

for landscapes and still lives and things like that.

And most of the auctions are in Czechoslovakia.

Recently, in 2009, a couple have done very well.

Landscapes have made $16,000 and $20,000.

This painting, compared to those, is miles beyond that.

This is a fabulous painting.

The colors on it, this composition.

This would be, as far as I can see, one of his best works.

I'd probably put a pre-sale auction estimate

at $30,000 to $50,000.

Wow, that's fantastic.

Do you think the frame is original?

I don't think it is.

It's actually not a great frame;

I might recommend that you think about maybe cleaning it

and then putting a new frame on it.

Thanks for bringing it in.

Thank you very much.

One of the most popular and diverse zoos

in the United States is the San Diego Zoo,

home to over 4,000 animals from more than 800 species.

(growling)

Over 130 years ago,

a little stuffed elephant launched a plush toy phenomenon.

Expert Marshall Martin met with us to discuss

a different sort of animal attraction--

the appeal of vintage Steiff animals.

People have been wild over Steiff animals

for years and years and years,

but tell me how it all got started.

Well, they started in Germany

with a woman named Margarete Steiff,

polio victim at an early age.

And she was determined to become self-sufficient.

She started a tailoring business.

In about 1880, she found a pattern in a ladies' magazine

and made a little elephant to give as gifts.

They became popular and she started selling them.

Well, what we have here is a reissue

of that original elephant.

Of course, we have some original elephants right behind us,

but that's not what we're talking about.

Tell me about this reissue.

Well, this was reissued for the 125th anniversary.

Now, a reissue means

they actually took patterns from their archives

and made this animal.

It's not a reproduction.

Reproduction would be if another company made a copy

of a Steiff animal.

Made a copy of a Steiff animal.

I understand.

So, there's some integrity to it in that

it is still a Steiff animal.

If we could find one of those original Steiff elephants,

what would be the retail value of that?

If you found one you'd be very, very lucky.

They'd probably retail for at least $2,500.

As opposed to this reissue.

And the value of this?

It sold for about $150 and it stays around $150.

We've got an example of two cats here.

One is an original and one is a reissue.

Tell me about these cats and why they're so popular.

Well, the gray cat, obviously the reissue,

was made about seven years ago.

Probably retailed for about $150.

Do they hold their value?

Do they increase in value?

They don't really increase in value.

That probably would still retail for about $150.

The original one would retail for about $500,

even though it is worn.

Velvet and velveteen animals are very popular.

When you say Steiff, you immediately think Steiff bears.

Right.

But, as we can see,

the Steiff Company makes all kinds of animals.

And you've got some tigers here that kind of remind me

of my childhood.

What era are they from?

They made these tigers between the late 1950s

into the early 1970s.

Can you give me an example of what the retail value

would be on these?

Well, the larger one,

we're probably talking about $400 retail.

And the smaller?

They scale down to the middle one about $200

and the small one about $125 retail.

You know, these Steiff animals are so great,

I can see why people are wild about them.

And now, as I go looking,

I will go on my own Steiff safari

and see if I can spot some originals.

Right, we can do that today.

Yes.

Thanks, Marshall.

Okay, thank you.

WOMAN: I would go to the Stanford University Renaissance Fair,

a big flea market, every year.

And this was in the '60s.

And these were on a table one day.

And there was another woman and I sort of eyeing them together

and we each picked out and scooped them all up.

I love the Deco period; I just like the artwork a lot.

Well, all three of these were done by different artists.

They do have one thing in common--

one man, whose name is Frank Pick.

And Frank Pick began as the publicity director

for the London Underground in the 1910s, 1920s,

and that's when the campaigns really began to take off.

And under his guidance, he thought,

"People ride the subway to work every day,

"but wouldn't they ride the subway more,

"wouldn't we make more money,

"if we could convince people to ride the subway

for leisure activities?"

So he basically began an advertising campaign

and every month the Underground would issue

dozens of new posters.

And one of the great things about London Underground posters

that's different from other posters

is that they actually tell us how many were printed.

And here we can see that there were 1,000 of these printed

in 1928.

Now, because they were printing so many different posters

advertising leisure activities,

the styles were all over the place.

And I'm just so happy

that you brought three completely different styles.

Beginning here we have this great image

of not just the light at the end of the tunnel

but the bouquet of flowers at the end of the tunnel,

this sort of abstract depiction of the tunnel itself.

It gives you this feeling that through the doom and gloom,

you can arrive at a much more beautiful destination.

Mm-hmm.

And then in the middle,

we have a really classic Art Deco stylization.

The concept here is speed, so you have the lightning bolt,

you have the bow and arrow.

You also have the London Underground roundel,

the logo for the Underground,

which was something else that Frank Pick worked on.

He was really into corporate identity.

You have the image of the sleek train.

It's an excellent image and it epitomizes the style

and the design sense

that the London Underground was trying to convey

back in the 1930s.

And then next to you,

we have something that really emphasizes

all the different leisure activities.

They're saying ride the train to dog races,

ride the train to the theater, ride the train to the movies.

Now, how much did you pay for these?

They were a dollar apiece.

A dollar apiece back in the 1960s.

Correct.

On this poster closest to me, I would say, at auction,

the estimate for this would be $2,000 to $3,000.

I think on the poster in the middle,

which is this great Art Deco stylization,

I would say at auction today, $3,000 to $4,000.

Okay.

Now, the poster closest to you, in many ways,

while it's not my favorite artistically,

it really is the most interesting of the three

because it's extremely rare to see Mickey Mouse

used on an advertising promotion

that's not related to Disney proper.

I thought so, too.

They didn't just use Mickey Mouse in a rogue fashion.

As you can see under Mickey Mouse's foot,

it comes with the copyright permission

of the Walt Disney Company,

so this really was a legal usage

of one of the world's most famous characters.

And we would estimate that piece also at $3,000 to $4,000.

Now, a quick tabulation,

these three posters, I would estimate together

at $8,000 to $11,000.

Very good.

Very good indeed.

Thank you very much.

WOMAN: Well, I got them from a friend who passed away

a number of years ago,

and I really don't know much about them.

He got them from his longtime companion.

He thought they were from the Edwardian era.

The Edwardian era would be right after the turn of the century,

around 1900, 1910 or so.

I understand that people have admired them in your home.

What do they say about them?

Well, an interior designer came into my home

a little while back

and said, "Oh, I know someone that would want to buy those."

But I didn't pursue it.

I don't want to sell them, so...

Okay.

Well, Edwardian period, that's not the right age.

Oh.

That's way off.

They're actually from about 1790,

Oh...

So they're much older than you thought.

Oh, wow.

These are a type of English creamware,

or a better term would be pearlware.

And what pearlware means

is that the cream-color glaze which we see on these

has a slight blue cast to it.

And then they're decorated with this wonderful blue color here,

and then this mottled color here.

These are decorated to look like a stone called porphyry.

Porphyry was a rare and expensive stone

that was very popular in the late 18th century.

Oh, wow.

Let's take a look at the bottom here.

Now, these have an old label on the bottom.

Sometimes old labels are right, sometimes they're wrong,

but you still look at them and consider what they say.

Apparently it was an old price tag,

but someone scratched off the price.

It says "pair of obelisks, Enoch Wood."

So that gave us a clue who they might be made by.

I did some research on these, and they might have been made

by Enoch Wood, but more than likely, they were made

by the successor of Enoch Wood, which is Wood & Caldwell.

Now, in some sources these are attributed

to another company which is related, called Ralph Wood.

And these are all factories in Staffordshire, England,

which made various types of English pottery,

pearlware and so forth,

in the late 18th century.

This was the height of popularity

in the late 18th century.

They were very much into neoclassicism.

So these were modeled a little bit after Egyptian obelisks.

Now, you see these little balls on the top?

Yeah.

I was going to ask you about those.

Those are not original.

They were not there when they were made new,

and they're not supposed to be there.

Now, if you like them and you want to leave them there,

there's nothing wrong with that.

Or if you want to take them off, you could do that.

They don't really hurt the value, but they're not original.

What someone's done is they've drilled holes

right down the center and inserted those little balls.

There's one other thing that's wrong with these.

We notice

that there's a little chip here on the corner.

Yeah.

Tell me about that.

I chipped it.

You did that.

And do you have the piece?

I can't find it.

(both chuckling)

Well, keep looking.

If you can't find the piece, that could be restored,

that could be filled in professionally,

or if you can find it, it'll be easier for a restorer

to put that back in place and cover that up,

or you can leave it alone.

Okay.

Now, they're very popular

with collectors of 18th-century English pottery.

They're very decorative, which leads to the second factor,

is that this sort of thing is so decorative

that there are a lot of people who don't care much

about English pottery, but they decorate with them.

A high-end interior designer...

Obelisks are the cat's meow.

They look great on the mantel, they look great

in several different places.

They really have a lot of presence,

especially with this faux stone surface.

Despite the minor damages,

a retail or insurance value for these would fall

somewhere between $3,000 and $5,000 easily,

perhaps a bit more.

No...

They're really, really spectacular.

Wow.

And actually, it's really hard to find a true pair.

The fact that they're still together

really enhances the value.

Wow, I had no idea.

That's amazing.

WOMAN: It belonged to my father-in-law's

great-great-grandmother.

They lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It was given to her on the birth of her son in 1864.

And was he the first child, do you know?

Yes.

That was not uncommon

in the 19th century, and it's still a tradition today

that usually when you have a child,

you're given a gift by your husband.

This is quite an interesting gift, though,

a little more elaborate than what we typically see.

What we have here is a beautiful cameo set.

And we refer to this type of set as a parure,

meaning that it's a collection of different pieces of jewelry.

So we have here

a bracelet, earrings, a brooch.

There's another brooch down here as well.

On the Roadshow, we see many cameos.

Mm-hmm.

Cameos are carved either out of shell or out of stone.

The stone is much harder,

and so the more beautifully articulated

the stone cameos are, the more valuable they are.

And with most cameos,

you get that side profile of the figurine itself.

What's unique about this is the absolute thickness

and dimensional quality of these particular cameos.

When you look at a side view of this, you can really see

how thick the material was here.

This is all one stone, and it was a banded agate,

so the bottom layer was a sort of grayish material,

the middle layer was this white, and they carved the white away

to expose the contrasting background and also to create

the detail of the portraiture.

So these very large three-quarter portraits

are really quite unique.

Oh, really?

The other thing that's nice about this is

that if we look in here, we see

that the retailer was Tiffany & Co.

And based on the address of Broadway,

combined with the year date that we know that this was,

this was a piece that was retailed by Tiffany.

It was not a piece that they themselves made.

Right.

It was probably purchased in Italy

and then re-retailed through the store.

Now, in terms of who actually made the set, that's unknown,

although we know based on the carvings

and the type of gold work, it is Italian.

It's not signed, and that's very typical of jewelry

from this period, which is the 1860s, 1870s.

Okay.

I wondered if this was 18-karat gold?

This particular gold value here is 14 karat.

14, okay.

The other thing about the piece here is the cuff buttons.

Ladies actually wore cuff buttons in the same way

that men wear cufflinks during this period.

But what happened was,

I think they didn't like them as cuff buttons.

So somewhere later in the 19th century,

they created the bar pin.

But these bottoms here were actually cuff buttons.

Oh, okay.

Have you ever had the item appraised?

Once at a local antique show,

and all they could say was, "Oh, this is priceless,"

and so they never put a dollar figure on it.

So they weren't willing to quite commit to a price.

You know, it's understandable.

It's not something that most people are familiar with.

A set of this scale and magnitude, I would say

for insurance purposes should be somewhere

between $25,000 and $35,000.

Okay.

(chuckling): Mmm, great.

WOMAN: Recently I got married, and I had always admired it

in my now husband's grandmother's house,

so she gave it to us as a wedding present.

She said it was my husband's great-great-grandmother's

and that possibly it was Lalique,

but I didn't know anything else about that

or what that could possibly mean, so...

Well, that's a French glassmaker,

and I'm afraid it's not glass and it's not French, actually.

Yeah.

I think it's Austrian,

and it was made about the turn of the 20th century, about 1900.

And it's what we call Austrian majolica ware.

And there was a time 20, 30 years ago,

when this kind of thing really had very little value.

Most antiques dealers and collectors

kind of overlooked it.

But just in the last, I would say, ten years,

Austrian and continental majolica in general,

this richly colored glazed earthenware,

has really become collected.

What I like about this and all my colleagues like

is it's one of the biggest pieces we've ever seen.

Yeah.

And it's got this beautiful young lady on the front

who's really well modeled, so all in all,

it's a piece that has quite a good collector following.

I mean, I would say today in an antique shop,

someone who understands continental majolica,

it would be priced at at least $2,000.

Wow.

And maybe $2,500.

Very good present, then.

GIRL: My mom's grandmother, her husband got it

from a woman selling on the streets

where his office building was during the Depression.

We're not sure how much it costs or anything.

Well, that's one of the reasons why you're here.

Yeah.

We can tell you about it.

You know what these big white stones are?

I think they're diamonds, but I'm really not too sure.

Well, you're correct, they are diamonds.

And they weigh about 1.25, or one and a quarter carats each.

Oh.

Now let's talk about the little stones around them.

Do you know what they are?

No, I have no clue.

A very inexpensive stone, but it's a black onyx.

And when they're cut like that, we call it calibrated.

That black-and-white effect is a very popular item,

and you don't see it quite as often as we'd like to.

Yeah?

So this is an extra-special piece.

Now, let's just borrow your wrist here a minute.

We'll show everybody how it looks.

You see this mesh?

Yeah.

It just lays on your wrist.

It makes the whole piece kind of disappear

and it feels like silk.

And then we turn it, and when we counted all the diamonds,

we have about six carats of the smaller diamonds,

and then in the two larger diamonds,

we have two and a half carats.

So you got about eight and a half carats total weight.

Oh, wow.

So that's a lot, right?

Yeah.

Okay, so what it translates to price, you ready?

Yeah.

I figure at auction,

you're looking at $10,000 to $15,000.

Whoa, that's a lot.

I've brought an old boudoir chair.

I call it that; I'm not sure that's the right term.

It's a potty chair.

It's been in my mother-in-law's family for quite a few years.

She inherited it from her father or grandfather.

And it came originally from England.

And you were telling an interesting story

about the grandfather and the chair.

Well, in England, only the first son could inherit.

Her relative was a second son,

and this chair is his only inheritance.

Well, if I were that son, I'd be a happy camper,

because this is a pretty rare chair.

Do you have any idea of how old it is?

I really don't.

I know it's well over a hundred years.

Would it surprise you if I told you it was about 350 years old?

This is what we describe as a William and Mary great chair.

A great chair?

And it was made in England about 1640 to 1660.

It's a wonderful elmwood great chair.

And what's really unique about this chair

is that it was created by a turner,

rather than a cabinetmaker.

So all these parts

were turned on a hand lathe.

You'll see all these lines.

These are scribe lines and layout marks.

You also notice

that there are no nails or screws on this chair.

Right.

We knew that.

Right here we see a wonderful crescent-shaped metal device

that goes through this arm and screws in the back.

What we're looking at here is a late-19th-century repair.

We can date it based on the square nut that we see here.

It's a part of its history.

It's fantastic.

And what's really special, too, about this chair is its form.

It's one of the early predecessors of a wing chair,

so if you think of these kind of Queen Anne upholstered chairs,

this is what you're looking at, these wings.

You mentioned early on that this was a potty chair.

And if you don't mind, I'll pop the seat up.

So you've got a circle in the bottom here,

and there would have been a...

Chamber pot.

A chamber pot-- exactly.

And sometimes you'll find

that these are often called "invalid chairs,"

and they were moved to the back bedrooms.

And very utilitarian object.

This slip seat is a later addition, but you know,

it certainly has some age.

This is actually a black horsehair upholstery on here.

Is it?

Yes, which would have been early 19th century upholstery.

So it's been on there for quite some time.

Another thing I should point out is it's a fantastic surface.

Wonderful patina.

And if you look at the top part here,

you'll see it's a little more worn.

Mm-hmm.

From the head.

Gradually come down to the back,

where the back probably didn't touch.

It's a little darker in color.

And if you continue to the arms, you'll see the same thing,

where the arms rested here.

It's nice, soft patina, and as you get to the ends,

it gets a little darker.

Now, there are some condition issues.

You've got a little piece of wood missing here.

You've got these repairs.

This side, some of the...

Pegs are loose.

Pegs are loose, but that's okay.

Any idea of value?

None.

At auction, we'd say $4,000 to $8,000.

No way.

Absolutely.

Now, I don't want to ruin your day,

but because this is such a rare chair,

if it was American,

we'd probably say $150,000 to $250,000.

My mother-in-law used to say

that she was punished as a child.

She was made to sit in the chair like a time out.

I wouldn't mind getting put in this "time out" chair.

(laughs)

MAN: I brought an English bracket clock.

We found it in a local antique show

about nine to ten years ago.

It has eight bells.

Every quarter it makes a little nice music on the quarters.

And on the full hour, it strikes the hour on a gong.

It is signed by a maker in Brighton, England.

I tried to find out some information on the maker.

Nor in the library, nor on the Internet

I was able to find out a lot.

I found his name, but basically that's it.

Have you been able to determine its age at all?

Yeah, in my opinion, it is from 1770 to 1780.

Okay.

And what is the finish here, do you think?

In my opinion, it is tortoiseshell.

And why did you buy a clock like this?

I fell in love.

The price was right, in my opinion.

And what did you pay for it?

I paid $1,800.

Well, it's a beautiful clock and it's very attractive.

It's an English bracket clock, and you're correct about that.

You're not correct about the age.

It was made by a gentleman named Boxell in Brighton, England.

He worked around 1851 to 1878.

This is not tortoiseshell.

This is actually celluloid.

You wouldn't find a clock of this time period

with the tortoiseshell on it.

The sections are very big on it.

Usually they're smaller than that.

It's made to imitate tortoiseshell.

If we look at some of the features on this clock,

it has a silent strike mechanism up here,

so you can turn off the nest of eight bells when it's striking,

so it won't keep you up at night.

It has a beautiful applied silver chapter ring right here.

It has these beautiful ormolu mounts and these nicely scrolled feet

that have remnants of its original gilding on it,

which is very nice.

If I turn the clock around, what's really nice

is that it's also signed on the back,

and it's also numbered, which is kind of neat.

It has this fusee movement that's incredible--

really thick plates, the quality is fantastic.

But another indication of its age being later than you think

is this gong here that it has in the back.

You wouldn't find a gong like this on an 18th-century clock.

The good thing is, you paid $1,800 for this clock,

and that was a very good price for it,

even though this is imitation or faux tortoiseshell.

In a retail setting, I would suspect

that this clock would sell for around $4,500.

Okay.

I know he had a son later, in a later period.

Right.

And you're not confusing with his son?

I am not confusing with the son.

I'm very confident that it is late Victorian.

It's a wonderful clock, and thank you for bringing it in.

Thank you for the information.

WOMAN: It's by Peter Voulkos,

and I think it's one of his early pieces.

I inherited it from my parents.

My father was a collector.

My father was the director

of the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles

and hired Peter Voulkos as a teacher of ceramics.

And do you know when, about?

It was about 1956.

And he worked in several places as a studio potter

and as a teacher also,

at Archie Bray and other schools, other foundations.

He's known for his works in stoneware,

sometimes wood-fired, sometimes gas-fired.

Uh-huh.

And this is an atypical piece of his,

as far as I'm concerned.

What we often see are

heavy and aggressively produced pieces.

Yes.

Did you know him?

Yes, I met him.

I don't really remember him very well, but I did meet him.

He was kind of a bigger-than-life personality.

He was a tall fellow, right?

And very strong.

And he started making these platters

and these kiln shaped stackpots, they're called,

and he would punch them and he would cut them

and gut them.

I mean, he was extremely physical

in the making of his pieces.

And something like this is so delicate.

It is very Asian in feel.

Mm-hmm.

And it has this beautiful kind of floral decoration.

And you could see how finely thrown it is.

Mr. Voulkos won all sorts of awards from all over the world.

Really?

It's glazed inside.

It's very, very nice.

It has a little bit of chipping here on the edge,

so that will affect the value.

And it has a small firing line inside here.

But these are quite minor.

I'm going to show a signature here on the bottom.

There is no date.

He ended up dating many pieces, but this one is not.

This is early on.

It's probably from the '50s.

He died in 2002; he was almost 80 years old.

And so something like this, I would put at auction

a very reasonable value of $2,500 to $3,500.

And that is a low auction estimate,

which is how we do well with auctions now,

is to price things very conservatively.

Wonderful.

He got fired by my father.

My father came in and saw a big four-letter word

written across one of his pieces.

My father gave me this painting

that I remember it so well when I was

a little child in Yorkshire, England.

And this lady is my grandmother.

She lived in a wonderful house called "The Gleddings"

in Halifax, Yorkshire.

And the painting was painted by Robert Henri.

Yes.

And he was a friend of the family.

She considered herself a Bostonian.

She was born outside Boston in West Dedham, Massachusetts.

Well.

Never worked.

I don't think she ever boiled a pot of water for tea.

Look at that hand.

Yeah, a lovely hand.

Well, it's a wonderful portrait.

It's unusual to find something of this kind at this time.

I don't know whether you know much about Robert Henri,

but he studied with Thomas Anshutz

at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts,

with William Merritt Chase.

And he founded the Ashcan Society in 1908,

when this painting was painted.

And he goes off to Holland for the summer,

and then in August we have records

that he was then commissioned to do a portrait

and went to England to paint a portrait.

Ah, this is it.

And this is it.

This painting combines a number of styles.

It speaks to me of William Merritt Chase

in the way it's done.

The ruddy complexion

was probably quite surprising at this time.

It's sort of like Francis Bacon in the face here.

I mean, this is really bright.

Yeah.

And the dry brushstroke is very Ashcan

in the way he is rendering this portrait,

yet he paints her in a very elegant Chase way.

So to me, it's a combination of the Ashcan style

and the William Merritt Chase portraiture style.

And I love down here you have

the three-stone ruby ring on her,

and this jewelry is a decorative element.

The mayoral jewels of Halifax.

She borrowed them for the painting.

And I like down here this wonderful fan.

Being painted in August,

she probably needed the feather fan.

Yeah.

Have you had this appraised?

My dad gave it to me

in the late '60s when he moved back to England.

Right.

And I sent a photograph of this back to Boston,

to the repository of Henri's works.

Yeah.

And they said it was not worth

much more than Grandpa paid for it, and Grandpa paid $4,500.

And the reason it's not worth much more

is because it's a family portrait,

and museums wouldn't want it and no one else would want it.

But I can tell you, we treasure it.

For us, it's a treasure.

Well, I think there'd be many people who'd want it.

I believe you should probably insure this

somewhere in the area of $250,000 to $300,000.

Oh, no!

Oh, my God.

Because it's early,

it's at the time of the founding of the Ashcan school,

and you've been a very good caretaker of it.

Well, I'm floored.

Are you sure about that?

I am sure about that.

It's wonderful.

I'm kind of flabbergasted here.

I'm a little breathless.

Now I don't know what to do.

WALBERG: And now,

it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.

And I brought this cat that belonged to my grandfather.

The bad news is on the way in,

my husband tripped and fell and broke the ear off.

The good news is it isn't worth anything after all,

so I guess I'll stay married to him for another 30 years.

I came here with my 800-year-old pre-Columbian artifact.

Found out that it's worth two to five dollars.

Nice.

Awesome.

This is our Nauga toy

that was given away for selling furniture.

It's worth about, uh, $150,

but we didn't have our Antiques Roadshow moment,

you know, where... bling!

And then I'd be, like, "Oh, dear."

(snickering)

We came to the Antiques Roadshow

with our Mettlach antique beer steins that we used to keep

in the refrigerator and chill

so that we can drink beer out of them,

and the verdict is they're worth about a hundred dollars apiece

and we should keep them in the refrigerator

and drink beer out of them.

We had a great time at the Antiques Roadshow.

And we found out with these antiques and another five bucks,

we can go get some coffee at the coffee shop.

Well, we found this "antique" towel hanger

in the house that my parents purchased in the '60s.

The house was built in the '20s.

It looks antique, it weighs antique,

but if it's plastic, it ain't antique.

We had a great day at the show.

That was our prize.

I'm Mark Walberg.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time on Antiques Roadshow.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org

Just the one car.

Well, it's a trolley-- sure.