Billings, Hour 1

MARK WALBERG: Welcome to "Antiques Roadshow."

This week we're in Billings, Montana.

My mother had played with it when she was little, and they called her the cowgirl.

I think your grandfather did some good shopping.

I think he did, too.

When we took the piece apart, we found this advertisement.

More surprises from the star of Big Sky Country coming up in this hour of "Antiques Roadshow."

♪ ♪ (fireworks exploding) ♪ ♪ Welcome to "Antiques Roadshow."

Hi, I'm Mark Walberg.

This week we're in Billings, Montana.

Billings was named after Frederick Billings, president of the Northern Pacific Railway.

After it was founded in 1882, over 2,000 people moved to the new town within six months' time.

Over 5,000 people are expected to arrive at Roadshow today.

Will there be any treasures with a link to Billings' past?

Well, let's take a look.

WOMAN: The man on the horse is my grandfather.

He was a neighbor of J.K. Ralston on the Missouri Breaks.

Culbertson is across the river from there.

And he was also a neighbor of Charlie Russell.

When my grandfather died at a fairly early age, my grandmother requested that Kenny, as they called him, would paint a picture of my grandfather, which he did.

And that was in 1953.

My grandfather died in 1924.

The artist we're dealing with is John Kenneth Ralston.

And your grandfather must have known him when he was a much younger man.

Ralston was born in 1896.

Oh, yes.

But lived a long time, until 1987.

So he's recalling some of his youth.

It's a Western painting, and it's a painting that has a lot of associations here in Billings.

Yes.

You mentioned he's a neighbor of Charles Russell, who was a very famous Western artist.

Yes, right.

And he has a lot of things in common, I think, with Russell.

He's a younger generation.

But one of the things is the closeness to the land.

Ralston's family were ranchers.

His first love, his first vocation, was cattle ranching Right.

before he became a painter.

Mm-hmm, right.

We see your grandfather here on horseback.

Right.

I guess he had a distinctive handlebar mustache.

Yes.

And is this the brand for the family?

Uh-huh.

Now, it looks like he has horses.

Did they have horses or cattle?

He had horses.

Horses.

Billings is important because Ralston has his studio here in Billings.

Right.

There's a log cabin studio.

That's a very common thing to have out here, out west.

You had the studio of Charles Russell here in Montana, Remington down in Wyoming.

The frame is a Western frame.

It's fairly plain, but I don't think I would change it or anything.

It's a family painting.

It's not something I think you would ever part with.

Mm-hmm, right.

He's a lesser light in the firmament, but he's still a good, competent painter.

And I would think if you were to insure this I'd probably insure it for about $15,000 these days.

$15,000?

Yeah.

Great, yeah.

That's wonderful.

This has been in my family as long as I can remember.

It belonged to my mother's father's side of the family.

The piece is marked in the drawer, and also more clearly on the back, "Goodwin & Co." Yes.

Goodwin & Company was a very enduring company and furniture dealer in San Francisco, California.

It was founded in 1850 and ran until about 1879.

Okay.

James Porter Goodwin was the founder of it.

He was an Irish immigrant, and he was very prolific.

At his peak he was selling more than a million dollars worth of furniture on an annual basis, and employed up to 350 people, Right, yeah.

so a very extensive operation for such a rural company.

It's part of a bedroom suite.

This part would be a commode, so they would have... Commode, okay.

...a pitcher and wash bowl on top of it.

Okay.

An auction value for the commode would be $600 to $800.

Really?

But I think what was most fascinating was when we took the piece apart looking for maker's marks.

And if we could take this top off real quick, we found this metal piece that was nailed down, which we undid, and I've got the wound to prove it.

Yes.

To discover this advertisement.

Yes.

Made by Tuchfarber in Cincinnati.

It's a shoe advertisement.

It's lithograph on tin.

Lithograph.

And they were one of the earliest, and today the most desirable, lithographers of advertising in the marketplace.

Oh.

Tin lithography was one of the earliest forms of lithography, and it would date roughly about 1880 to 1890.

It does have some condition problems.

We're losing some of the paint.

It's blistering.

But it can be restored.

Okay.

An auction value, $2,000 to $3,000.

Really?

In this condition.

Oh, wow.

Oh, that's great.

So Deborah, you came to the Roadshow today and it's your birthday.

How exciting you got on.

I know.

And you brought such great things.

Can you tell us how you got them?

They were my maternal grandmother's.

And my grandfather worked on Wall Street in the 1950s and early 1960s.

And occasionally he would, on his lunch break, go down to Fifth Avenue or Park Avenue and go window shopping and get my grandmother a lovely gift.

Well, they're all from different periods.

Do you know anything about them?

I know that that is very old, and I would imagine that my grandfather got that at an estate sale.

The others I know nothing about.

Well, you're right.

This is actually the oldest of the pieces.

It's Art Deco, it's from the '20s, probably American made.

And these are all old European cut diamonds.

It's a bow form, which was very classic and very wearable, and that form translated over the years.

People adore bows.

Now, this ring, this is an emerald.

And again, I think it's American made.

Do you know anything about it?

Only that my grandmother wore it every day when she was dishwashing and cleaning her kitchen.

And I know that emeralds are soft, and I'm amazed that it survived.

Well, you know, it's very interesting, what's unusual about this emerald is that it is a clean emerald.

Because usually emeralds have many inclusions.

Uh-huh.

And I don't think it's clean because your grandmother washed it.

I think that it's clean because it probably comes from a mine in South America that produces a cleaner stone, like the Chivor mine from Colombia.

And it's not a great big size.

It's probably around two, two and a half carats.

But I love the cutting of it, and I love the cleanliness of it.

It's surrounded by diamonds, as you know.

And I would date it from the late '30s, early '40s.

I see.

Now, the next ring, what do you know about that?

When I was a little girl, my grandmother would take me to Montclair, New Jersey, to Hahne's Department Store.

It was a special trip.

And then we'd go to lunch.

And she would always wear that ring.

And I loved that ring.

You liked that ring.

Well, I'm going to tell you about the diamond.

It is a diamond.

It's about three carats, Uh-huh.

and it's a very unusual long shape.

It's very pointed.

Uh-huh.

And these shapes come in and out of fashion.

It was very popular in the '30s and '40s and in the '50s.

I see.

Now, what I like about it is I like the way they sort of juxtapose those long, long, tapered baguettes.

They're unusually long.

And they're quite expensive.

If you lost one, Uh-huh.

it would cost a lot of money to cut one that long.

Of course, the diamond is mined probably in South Africa, but was probably made here, in New York, is what I would say.

And there's no maker's names on them?

There's no mark.

What's interesting about this diamond is it has a brownish, pinkish tone.

Really?

Wow.

It's very unusual, and it's a very clean stone internally.

Uh-huh.

So I'm going to give you the value of the bow brooch first.

At wholesale or auction price, we would range it between $3,000 to $4,000.

All right.

The emerald in the same range, between $3,000 to $4,000.

Okay.

But of course the diamond, I'm going to say $8,000 to $12,000.

Okay.

So I think your grandfather did some good shopping.

I think he did, too.

My grandmother would be thrilled if she knew.

Thanks for coming to the show.

Thank you so much.

You're welcome.

MAN: I'm a book collector.

I look at books every day for the last 50 years.

I think this is a book.

Okay.

And it came to me from a friend as a gift.

It has prints in it, and I understand that they're Rowlandson prints or lithographs, but there's no identification in it as a book.

And I've researched it and researched it and researched it.

I can't figure out a thing about it.

Okay, well, as you say, it contains prints by Rowlandson.

And here's his name on the cover.

The cover was added by a collector, okay?

It's not something that was issued with the prints.

And let's open up to just a nice example of a Rowlandson print.

There are lots of prints in here.

There are 56 prints in here, if I remember right.

And here is a very nice example of Rowlandson print.

Thomas Rowlandson was one of the most famous British caricaturists.

He lived in the late 18th, early 19th century.

He started as a young man as an artist doing portraits and things like that, and he inherited a pretty large sum from an aunt.

When he did that he became a gambler, and he lost the entire fortune from his aunt.

It was something like £7,000, which back then was a lot of money, and he kept gambling.

I mean, he got hooked on it.

And in order to pay off his debts, he discovered that if he made drawings he could give them to the people he owed money to, and he would get off the hook.

Then he started selling them, and then people started liking his stuff, and he started making prints.

So he became a print maker, and he did etchings.

These are all etchings.

He did them for a number of different publishers.

He did prints for magazines, he did prints for books, but he also sold them as separate prints.

Now, back then people actually had portfolios of them.

The reason I pulled out this print is down here it says that there is a folio of caricatures that they would lend you for an evening.

So you could go into a print seller and borrow the portfolio, take it home, show it to your friends.

Maybe you'd like them and you'd want to own some of the prints themselves.

So that's what people did.

Collectors started collecting them and putting them into bindings like this.

So what this is is it's not a book, it is a portfolio of prints by a collector.

Rowlandson is very, very well known for different styles.

This is a very good collection of early Rowlandsons.

A lot of them are quite rare, and early states.

And here is one of my favorites.

This is showing a print sale.

Of course, as a print seller, that's what I like.

This is one of the most valuable ones in here, because it's a very scarce print.

And you can see down here, the collector who had it actually wrote on it that it was scarce.

These are put together in date order, and they are, I think, from 1786 to about 1816.

But really what Rowlandson is best known for, I think, are his just gentle social satires.

There are just some wonderful images in here.

And here is one that is a great example of his social satire-- "The Bassoon with the French Horn Accompaniment."

And it's a couple lying in bed snoring away.

It's wonderful.

It shows all the elements of Rowlandson that made him popular.

It shows a lot of the accoutrements of the day-- the candles, the plates, the gun.

And this just wonderful humor to them that's soft but still making fun.

These prints are quite rare.

The ones that survive often come in a collection like this.

That's what protected them, was the binding.

Individually they have quite a good value.

They range anywhere from maybe $400 for a small one to... something like this is probably around $2,000.

Mm-hmm.

"The Print Sale" is probably the most valuable in the group.

That one sold for around $3,000 at auction a couple years ago.

Now, there are 56 in here, so taking them individual prices, which is really where the value is, this portfolio is worth about $35,000.

Pretty expensive.

Thank you very much.

That's very interesting.

Absolutely.

I learned a lot.

This doll belonged to my husband's grandmother, who lived in Nebraska when she was born.

And she was given this doll at about six or eight years old by a soldier who was leaving after cleaning up at the Bighorn battlefield.

Well, you kept it very well.

Thank you.

I consider the condition to be wonderful.

Good.

The beads are of an early period.

I would date the doll to the 1870s.

Right.

That's quite early.

That is.

The hide on the yoke is buffalo hide.

That's an early hide.

At a later date, deer hide would be used.

Wow.

The buffalo would have been gone.

The beads are what we call a bar design.

It's an early design of the Cheyenne people.

On the head you'll notice the eyes have very large beads.

They're called pony beads.

Yes.

Much bigger than the beads on the yoke.

Okay.

That's an early bead, a very, very desirable bead for collectors.

It does indicate age.

I think a retail value for this doll would be about $6,500.

Wow.

It's a beautiful, beautiful example, quite rare.

What you see here is a collection of items from Roald Amundsen's ship, the Gjoa.

It was Norwegian, and he was the first person to transverse the Northwest Passage, and landed in Nome, Alaska, in 1906.

Then he somehow hooked up with my great-grandfather, who was also Norwegian, and my great-grandfather ended up with these items.

Well, you've got a photograph here Yes.

that shows the souvenirs of Amundsen on display when he was there in Nome.

Right.

And this shelf and this brandy bottle or liquor bottle are illustrated in the photograph, along with the flag.

In addition, you've got, I think, the captain of the ship, an autographed photograph of him, and then here's Amundsen himself, and he's autographed this.

Yes.

This photograph is signed "B.B.

Dobbs."

Right.

Beverly Dobbs.

Dobbs was the premier photographer in Nome.

My favorite piece, though, is this.

Yeah.

This is a menu for the banquet that the city of Nome threw for Roald Amundsen in 1906 when he traversed the Northwest Passage.

The first guy to go from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the polar ice pack.

That's right.

And it took him three years to do this Yes, it did.

in a very, very small seal vessel.

So, an amazing accomplishment.

Amundsen, of course, was one of the giants of the Heroic Age of Arctic exploration.

Yes.

And he disappeared in 1928 flying in an airplane over the Arctic, looking for a comrade who had been trying to be the first person to fly over the Arctic.

And so Amundsen was gone in 1928.

I talked to a couple people here, and the feeling we all have is this is really exceptional.

The menu is really rare.

I would guess this may be the only one that exists.

You're kidding.

In the right auction, this group of material, I think that you could expect this to bring $5,000 to $7,000 easy.

Mm-hmm.

And there's a great chance, a great possibility, because of what it is, it could go for more than $10,000.

But I think just to be conservative, Right.

say $5,000 to $7,000.

It's just a remarkable group of material.

Take it back home and hang it on the wall.

Absolutely.

I think that's a great thing to do.

It's been in my husband's family since it was awarded to his great-grandfather in 1874.

On the bottom is "W" and "H", which is Wood and Hughes, and that's an American silver company located in New York City.

Also on the bottom is "900 over 1,000."

Sterling silver is 925 over 1,000 for American silver.

Okay.

So this would be a coin silver content in all of the silver pieces on here.

The bottles are continental.

Hard to say exactly, but probably Bohemian.

If you've noticed, the most wonderful thing about the silver holder are the masks.

In each one of the corners you have masks over here, masks here, all the way around the piece.

Mm-hmm.

It's highly decorated.

Yes.

Now, the fun part of this decanter set... and I have to bring my notes out and read this because I don't want to tip it upside down to read it.

It says, "Special premium from the Kentucky Railroad for the best herd of cattle owned by one person."

And it was awarded by the Bourbon County Agricultural Society, September 1874.

And I understand that the man that had the best herd of cattle was Edwin Bedford.

That's right.

Can you tell me who he was?

He was my husband's great-grandfather.

He was a cattleman all of his life.

He sold a magnificent bull to a gentleman for a huge sum of money.

I think at that time it was $35,000.

The gentleman kept the bull for five years and brought it back and said it wasn't any good.

Well, in the cattle business, you always return the animal immediately.

They were typical men, they were real hardheads.

And there was a huge lawsuit that went on for many, many years.

Broke both of them.

Oh, well, he ended up with this, didn't he?

I would put a value on this, because it is so unusual, and then to have that nice history to it, I would say $5,000 to $7,000 for retail value.

Mmm, I'm surprised.

Thank you very much.

Well, thank you very much for bringing it.

This was part of a collection my aunt had.

She collected ice skating figures.

She got this in New York City.

She and my uncle were walking down the street and saw it in the window of a pawn shop, and they went in and purchased it.

For what amount I don't know.

And when was that?

I would say in the 1960s.

Well, what you've brought in is a wonderful Art Deco sculpture.

It was probably made in France, probably in the 1920s or the early 1930s.

It's cast bronze, and then the faces are carved out of elephant ivory.

And it's been put on this base that's made out of onyx.

And I think what's nice about the base is that it looks like it's ice.

It's not signed, which is unfortunate.

There were a number of important artists at this time who did these bronze and ivory groups.

There was Demétre Chiparus and Ferdinand Preiss.

And some research might be able to reveal specifically who this artist is.

It appears like it's gilt bronze, but at one time this was actually painted.

Oh.

We call it cold painted.

There are some traces here of paint.

And I have a feeling that all of this dress was painted, and the costumes of the man were painted also.

And there are also some traces of paint on the underside.

So that leads to some condition issues, and it affects the value.

Because at one time this was really a very different piece.

I think it's very attractive now.

It looks wonderful.

There's a great movement.

There's this great interchange of expressions between the two figures.

But it does have this condition issue.

Bronze really is never left in this sort of raw state.

It always has some kind of a patina put on it.

If it was meant to be this color, the artist probably would have had it gilded.

Can it be restored?

I mean, can these little places... probably not?

I don't think so.

You'd have to really find out what it should look like.

And I think that might be very difficult.

And once you start painting it or putting a patina on it, it never really looks as good as it should.

But I think the piece looks very nice this way, and I would think at a gallery specializing in Art Deco works, this would probably be in the $6,000 to $7,000 price range.

Now, if it had the original paint and decoration on it, it would probably be worth twice that amount.

And if it turned out to be by somebody like Chiparus, it could be worth four or five times that amount.

WOMAN: I brought my great-grandfather's little diary of going through Yellowstone Park.

APPRAISER: What year was that?

1883.

They took a wagon and took their children.

These children were...

He's here in this picture?

...teenagers.

This was my... That's your grandfather.

...grandfather and grandmother.

And... Johnny had to stay home and take care of the...

So he was home.

...home.

But the rest of them were teenagers, these three.

At the time.

And they went with them.

Well, that was only 11 years after it had become a national park.

So that was an early days in Yellowstone Yes, it was run by the Army.

Yeah, it was a very early time.

Yes.

Because tourism hadn't yet established.

No.

And to go then would have meant a real effort.

It was.

It wasn't what it is today, with all the means of...

He hired an extra team to go, to pull up over one of the mountains, because it was such tough... Yeah.

It's fascinating reading.

There's a couple particular passages that I found very interesting and very telling.

And it also gives a nice picture of what it was like to take on such an expedition then, because it really was more than a vacation, as it would be today.

He said it was the trip of a lifetime.

What is the relevance of this photo?

This is the water right they bought.

And this cabin was there.

And they moved in... the year before he brought his family, It's their home.

that they went up to Yellowstone.

And is that... that's your...

This is my grandfather.

Right there on the horse.

Yes, on the horse.

Beautiful home, it looks lovely.

And he was 15 when they came out.

They came to Corinne, Utah.

It was daring to do.

There's one quote from August 11 that... from the journal I wanted to read.

I think it's very relevant and telling.

It says, "August 11.

"Hitched up and drove to the Upper Basin to where the grand land and wonders of the world.

"We have been walking all around "and seen Old Faithful go off twice.

"Stood within ten feet of it boiling.

"Water went straight up, 200 feet high.

"Saw the Giant, Lion Geyser, Lioness and two Cubs; "the Castle, Sawmill, Grotto, and the Devil's Well.

"The whole country around here seems to be hot, boiling pools, "basins, and the river is warm.

And, oh, how I want a drink of cold water."

(laughs) So he's really in the thick of things with the geyser country there.

But it's just a very interesting description of what was going on and how those geysers were such a draw, even then.

It was, and he says they camped all around.

They saw the lights of the... the campers all around Old Faithful.

Yellowstone's the first national park.

Yes.

So it was really a new concept.

And there's another excerpt in there that was very, very interesting about an Indian encounter.

On August 12, he writes, "I met a man by the name of Cowan, "a lawyer at Radersburg, "that was in here with his wife several years ago.

"The Indians attacked him, shot him in several places, "and left him for dead.

"It was Chief Joseph's band.

"The next day, they turned his wife loose with her brother, "and they went home.

"Cowan came to, crawled around for eight days, "and General Miles's scouts found him "but could not take him with them, "but left him some provisions to eat "until the soldiers would find him.

He showed me a bullet taken out of his head."

So, I mean, it's amazing that also he would come back to that area as well.

(laughs) I mean, after that, something like that had happened, you wouldn't think he'd be rushing back into Yellowstone.

But it was an amazing, an amazing account.

For us, we really look for that kind of an interesting thing to come along and only hope to find such a thing.

But, really, when it comes to Yellowstone and the meaning of it, it's just telling of what people in those days would go through for a vacation.

Well, it's a wonderful journal, And as I was mentioning, the history of it is very telling about tourism at that period.

And, like I said, it was new into the idea of a, Why yes.

of a park like that.

It's a glimpse into early tourism before the boom of tourism.

We would put an insurance value of about $2,000 on it for insurance, for this collection of items.

But, really, it's something that is family history and something that...

It's just, yeah.

You should know, though, and take good care of it, as you've been.

And it's something that you treasure.

That I will, for my family.

My dad was a career military officer, and he was stationed in either Goose Bay, Labrador, or Newfoundland.

I think it was Goose Bay, though.

And my mother bought this piece from the Eskimos north of that location.

And so it's been in our family for about 70 years.

And I loved it so much over the years, my mother gave it to me, and I was always enchanted with this piece.

My mother mentioned to me one time, she thought that they used stockings to make this.

But I don't know how true that is.

It was just a comment.

All right.

This is called a Grenfell missionary rug.

Oh.

There was a guy named Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, G-R-E-N-F-E-L-L, who was a British physician that came there on a mission to Newfoundland in the late 19th century.

The main reason he came at that point was because the natives were having horrible health problems, especially in the wintertime, and he was trying to help with that.

But also a lot of them were in abject poverty.

They had no way to make money, especially in the wintertime.

And he looked in their houses, and he saw these real finely woven rugs.

Now, the ones they had there were more traditional designs.

These were English and Scottish settlers.

And he came up with the idea that they could weave these really fine rugs like this.

But he came up with the idea to use designs, like that depicted what was going on in their villages.

Their life.

And this one has everything-- ships, the compass, it's got a house, got a couple of native figures.

And as they went along, progressing with the production of these, they would actually have kits they would give the villagers so they could put them together.

Oh.

And the stocking idea comes from the fact that they didn't have that many scraps of fabric lying around.

And supposedly a lot of people sent their stockings there, and that's what they used for the white.

So it is stockings.

Yeah, well, part of it.

They had a saying that "If your stocking runs, let it run to Labrador."

Oh!

(laughs) Because that way they could use them to produce these rugs.

They made lots of different designs, different sizes.

In 1930 a rug like this would have sold for about maybe four dollars to as much as eight dollars.

Wow.

I did some research online, and I checked with a couple of my colleagues at the table, and this is one of the more desirable patterns, because it has so much going on in it.

Yeah.

And we felt like the value on this probably would be in the neighborhood of $4,000 to $6,000.

Mm-hmm.

The high end of that would be, like, an insurance value.

Okay.

And there have been others that have sold at auction for as much as $4,000.

So that kind of gives you a range.

Okay, wow.

Well, that is amazing.

I'll treasure it even more now.

(laughs) WOMAN: My grandmother collected Asian art, and she especially loved jade.

And this is a piece from her collection.

I've had it in my possession for maybe five to six years.

She told me that she understood that when she purchased it that it was given to General MacArthur from Chiang Kai-shek.

Now, I don't have any documentation, but that kind of told me that maybe it was a special piece of jade.

Right.

I suppose it's a possibility, but without a letter or something like that, we don't know for sure.

But in this case, it's a very beautiful object and it doesn't really matter that much.

Right.

Provenance is always important, but the object stands on its own.

And what it is, functionally, is a Chinese brush washer.

Really?

And the water would sit inside that lotus leaf, and you could rinse out your brush.

Chinese scholars like to have all their tools be little art objects, so the brush washer is an art object, the brush pot is an art object, the brushes, the brush stand.

And this is a rather large one, which is nice.

What is also nice about it is that it is what we call celadon nephrite jade.

This piece was probably produced in mid to late 19th century.

You also have a really nice stand here.

And it continues the motif of lotus pods and lotus blossoms.

The lotus blossom is a symbol of purity, because a lotus grows out of the mud in the pond up along the stem, and then the blossom blooms pure white.

Oh, I see.

And so that's a Buddhist concept of purity and cleanliness.

The function of the stand is to sort of lift the object up and give it an airiness and a lightness that it doesn't have if it's plunked right straight down on a tabletop.

The type of wood is a very dark Chinese wood called zitan wood, which is highly prized.

It's very dense and heavy.

What makes this piece very interesting is that someone has added a date to the Qianlong dynasty.

And that is 1736 to 1795.

So they've added a date to make it look a little older than it is.

Normally that would be a problem-- makes it seem like it's sort of a copy.

Yeah.

But in the current market, this added date makes it a little bit more interesting.

How can you tell it's 19th century?

A lot of times it's the quality of the carving and how crisp the detail is around the edge here.

I see.

And a Qianlong piece would be much tighter and much crisper.

Okay.

I would say this piece would bring about $5,000 to $7,000 at auction.

Really?

Great.

If it was really 18th century, it would bring probably $30,000 to $40,000.

Wow.

WOMAN: These cups were in my family from my great-grandfather.

He was the mayor of Ogden, Utah, when it became a state.

And he was on a committee when Utah formed the holiday for the pioneers.

And these cups were in commemoration of the pioneer holiday.

That was called Pioneer Day?

Yes.

And that's still celebrated today.

Yes, on the 24th of July.

And you also got this pin.

He was one of 15 members of the committee that formed the pioneer holiday.

And because he was on this committee, they gave him this pin.

I guess everybody that was on the committee got one of the pins.

So this semicentennial celebrated 50 years since Utah was settled.

It was first settled in 1847, and then in 1897 was the 50th anniversary of the settlement of Utah.

The cups are interesting because they celebrate that semicentennial.

And the pin as well.

Let's keep in mind that we're going back to 1897.

Now, there was nobody to make these cups or this pin to celebrate that occasion.

These cups had to come all the way from Europe.

These were not made in the United States.

The order went to either Russia, France, or England.

They're enameled over metal.

And these were either given away or sold in celebration at the time of the semicentennial.

We had the experts from glass and pottery look at them, and they were familiar with these.

The retail value of the four cups in the collectors market would be about $500 to $1,000 for the set for local interest.

But coming over here to the pin, that comes in a fitted box with the inscription on the outside of the front of the box.

But when we open the box, it says, "Tiffany and Company."

Uh-huh.

Tiffany had offices at that time in New York, London, and Paris.

So they were the biggest and most important of the American jewelers.

But they would take commissions.

And it's a wonderful rendition of Western art.

It has a yoke, and it has the steer head.

And inscribed on the steer head, it's a quote from Brigham Young's journal as he traveled to settle in Salt Lake City.

And it says, "The pioneers camped here "on June 13 and 14, making 15 miles today.

"All well.

Brigham Young."

We know it's Tiffany.

Not just the fitted box and the inscription, but it's marked Tiffany on the other side.

It's gold and carved ivory, and quite collectible.

The value today in the collectors market at retail would be between $3,000 and $5,000.

Wow, that's nice.

MAN: It came down to me from my grandfather.

He was in politics in Wyoming.

And it was a gift to him, I think back in about the '30s.

It was given to him by a man from Lander, Wyoming.

I think you know it's painted on elk hide, is what it appears to be.

It's brain tanned, or it's native tanned hide.

It's not a commercial tanned hide.

It is Shoshone.

This has all the earmarks of a father and his sons who painted hides in the 19th century, Washakie.

The father was the chief of the Shoshone.

He was an important chief.

He was one of the longest lived chiefs.

He lived to be in his late 80s or 90s.

He was born in the early 1800s.

He was a friend of Jim Bridgers, the fur trapper.

And late in his life he started painting hides.

His sons took it up also.

One of the sons had the same name, Washakie, but died in the 1890s before his father passed in 1900.

This would date to that time period, possibly a little earlier.

One of the things we know about Washakie and his family is they used stencils or they used cutouts so they could do them with some accuracy.

It's a narrative painting of a buffalo hunt.

If you look up here, there's a buffalo being butchered.

He's cut open, the head's cut off, the legs are cut off to use.

You look down here, there's a lady carrying a buffalo hide that's already been pulled off.

This really tells the story.

And then you look in the center, and there's this big forked pole, like a sundance pole, with the front quarter of a buffalo in it, and it's topped by an eagle, and these are dancers.

And the dancers that are going around the pole, they really have the look of Washakie dancers, of his dancers.

The paint is probably a combination of some natural colors and commercial.

The blue and maybe this green, I think they may be commercial paints.

It's in good condition.

You need to keep it out of the light.

Some of the black's fading a little bit.

It's hard to tell whether it's the father's or the son's.

If it's the son's, I would say $12,000 to $18,000 at an auction sale.

If it's the father's, probably bump it up, $16,000 to $20,000.

MAN: We found this in a used furniture store in Boise, Idaho.

What was the price?

One seventy-five.

Did you ask for a better price?

Yeah, we did, and they said it had just come in.

So that was it, that was it.

You paid it.

How long ago was that?

December 2009.

It's probably the best birdcage that we've seen on "Antiques Roadshow."

And it's, like, got so much pizzazz.

Okay, overall, the paint's great, the blue glass over here and the red glass up here.

We don't have to ask when it was made, right?

1882.

Yeah.

And coming down to the door, the door is just wonderful.

I'm sure you love that, right?

Yeah.

The birds... the birds are there.

Absolutely.

And the chimney.

I mean, every birdie needs a fireplace, right, in their birdhouse.

I mean, keep warm, you have to have that.

So overall you've got this great piece of folk art.

The thing about these birdcages is that they're as comfortable in a country home as in New York in a flat, next to a modern painting.

This is great folk art.

It's... and I do feel it's American.

They made them on the other side of the Atlantic, but I think it's American.

I think you've got an auction value of $4,000 to $6,000 on this.

So a good investment.

(laughing): You did good, right?

Thank you, Leigh.

WOMAN: My mother handed it down to me probably 30 years ago, and it was her great-grandmother's.

And the story I've been told is it's from France and was made in 1880.

My mother had played with it when she was little, and the story says that they called her "the cowgirl."

It was supposedly a Western rendition of this doll from France, is all I was told, so...

If you notice, her boots are very unusual.

Mm-hmm.

If you look at the overall doll, it's the peak of German doll making.

You thought it was possibly French.

Oh, it was Germany.

It's called a French Wrestler, but it's actually made in Germany...

Cool.

...for the French market.

This doll was made between 1880 and 1910.

From head to toe the quality is superb-- the contrast between the flushness on the cheeks, the whiteness of the bisque.

Unfortunately, it's a little bit dirty.

It's got a few chips on the side.

Wonderful paperweight glass eyes.

Wonderful feathered eyebrows.

This is not strung, so the head comes off, and I can show the marking fairly easy.

If you notice, that is marked 102, which is just a mold number for this doll, not with a maker or anything.

They made it in several different sizes.

This is a very unusually large size for this doll.

Is it?

Yep.

And I would guess you would wonder why it was called the French Wrestler.

Because of the body.

It sort of looks like a wrestler, you know?

(laughing) If you look at it, it's sort of robust, the legs are very big.

Chubby.

And that's what makes it more desirable to collectors today.

The hair is all original.

It's a human hair wig.

It's sort of tattered, but it is the original wig.

It needs restringing.

If you would have a professional restring it, it should cost you anywhere between $20 and $35 to have it restrung.

That's all?

In today's market, even with the chips, because of the size and the quality, at auction this would probably bring between $4,000 and $5,000.

Awesome.

Cool.

Very nice example of this doll.

Cool, cool.

WOMAN: This is a piece that my mother bought when she was doing service during World War II in Cairo, Egypt.

Have you any idea what it is?

I really don't.

I just assumed it was a trinket from a gift shop.

Well, it's a funerary piece.

And it's commonly called a ushabti figure.

And they were placed in the tomb with grave goods as a substitute for the deceased, and intended to be called upon should the deceased be asked to perform manual labor.

It's made out of faience, which is a non-clay ceramic.

It's sometimes called the first high-tech ceramic.

The color is very typical, blue-green.

They started using these funerary figures in the Middle Kingdom, which was about 1900 BC.

And they continued using them until the Ptolemaic period, which was about 2,000 years later.

Okay.

This is from the 26th dynasty, which is about 646 to 525 BC.

It's on the later part of that.

It's quite typical.

They're usually on this rectangular base.

Mm-hmm.

And they also have a tripartite wig, which is striated.

It has a pick and a hoe either side, all very typical, very common.

And here we have nine rows of hieroglyphs.

And these are taken from the sixth chapter of the Book of the Dead.

And that again is quite common.

This one doesn't have a name, which would usually be on the back column.

It's made in a mold.

There are some condition problems.

Okay.

We have a bit of nose damage here.

That might have been done in the making of it.

And so that will detract slightly.

The discoloration that you see in the surface here, it's not uncommon.

I think some people might find it a distraction.

Sometimes it comes in the firing, and sometimes it's occurred in the burial over the years.

Oh.

There's nothing you can really do about it.

Okay.

It is already stable, so you can leave it as it is.

Your mother brought this out in the Second World War, correct?

Yes.

Which means that it's legal for you to sell it.

Oh, okay.

I never thought about that.

And there is a sort of a cut-off point, I think, of about 1970.

Okay.

And so this falls well within that.

Why was my mother able to purchase this?

I mean, did somebody have a little stand on the side of the road, or...?

There are lots of antique shops in Cairo.

Okay.

And then you could still buy the real things.

Unfortunately, they're quite often fakes.

Oh, okay.

I think a conservative retail price for this would be between $6,000 and $8,000.

Okay.

That's nice, that's nice.

That's very nice.

MAN: This was presented to one of my relatives in 1844.

My parents went to England in the '70s, and this was given to them to bring back to the States.

And apparently it's a silver tankard that was presented to my great-great-great-grandfather.

He was a judge and a secretary of a coursing club just outside of London.

And this was a token of the club's appreciation for his work as a judge and for the duties that he had with them.

Now, you said a coursing club?

It's a... basically the chasing of game, of small game, foxes and hares, with a pack of two dogs.

It was a sport that was started way back and still going on today, but not with live game.

There's been some changes, apparently, so...

Yes, there was a law passed, wasn't there, in England that they couldn't use live game anymore?

Yeah, I believe it was in 2005 they passed a law.

English silver was always considered very valuable.

And when somebody's estate was listed, they would give the number of ounces of plate they would call a solid silver plate.

And it was often sold and traded.

So this piece was actually made in London in 1752 by John Smith.

And you can see his set of hallmarks on the bottom.

It has the leopard's head for London, the lion, meaning that it's solid silver, and the date letter for the year 1752.

So this piece of silver would have been very plain.

It was probably engraved with a family coat of arms.

And when it was sold, probably secondhand, in the 1840s, it then went to a silversmith from that period, who took the piece and embellished it, chased and engraved it with the various hunting scenes.

And then the inscription was engraved on it to be presented to your ancestor.

The inscription is quite interesting.

You said it is 1844.

Yes, March of 1844 it was presented to William Atwood.

Now, did he participate in the game?

I was told by my father that he was a sportsman, and he actually trained dogs.

Yes, he was active in the sport himself.

I feel that a retail price on this piece would be between $3,000 and $5,000.

Wow.

Is it safe to drink beer out of it?

Absolutely.

(laughing): Okay.

WOMAN: I, um, about 18 years ago was traveling in Paris with my husband, and he was uninterested in going out to the flea market area outside of Paris.

And I went out there, and as I was going down the street, I saw this in the storefront of an antique store.

And I took a double take, because it looked like Old Faithful to me.

And went in, and wound up buying it and sent it home and it's been in my dining room ever since, and I don't know a darn thing about it, although it says it's from 1883.

Well, it's a wonderful example of the work of a British artist named Arthur Brown.

Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the world, and it was incorporated in 1872.

Brown came over from England in 1883 and did about 20 watercolors of Yellowstone Park.

And what his scheme was was to take them back to England, along with rocks and wood and all different pieces of Yellowstoniana... Yeah, right.

...and present them in sort of a tableau vivant situation on stages in England.

Really?

He had the paintings, and he would lecture, and they were beautifully lit.

Huh.

And he called them sun paintings.

He came back to the United States in 1885.

And the record there is that he sold them to the Northern Pacific Railroad.

Really?

However, the Northern Pacific Railroad has absolutely no reference for the purchase of these 20 paintings.

Wow, wow.

So out of the 20 watercolors, we have one from Paris.

And it's a terrific example of a wonderful watercolor style, late 19th century, a European artist painting the wilds of Yellowstone.

And it's in great condition, too.

The frame that you have here would be the liner to a much, much larger frame.

Really?

And so I just thought it was a cool frame, but it's not even a frame.

Well, it's a cool frame, but it's a cool liner.

What did you pay for the painting?

You know, I can't really remember the details, but I bet it was no more than $500, $600.

It's very hard to value something like this, because it's a... where are the others?

Yeah, right.

They disappeared.

There are 19 more.

Given that, in a retail situation, because of the location and the quality and the history and the mystery, I would evaluate it at between $75,000 and $125,000.

No.

Yes.

I am just...

I can't believe it.

Wow.

Yes.

Oh, it's so special.

My family's going to be so surprised.

It's a rediscovered masterwork of Western art.

Thank you so much.

Oh, I'm just surprised.

Thank you so much.

It's terrific.

You're watching "Antiques Roadshow" WALBERG: And now, it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.

And I have an ugly bug that looks like the cat threw it up, and it's a little folk art brownie that's probably from the turn of the century.

And he's worth $50.

This is a bronze statuette, a copy of a Buddhist statue from the eighth century that my wicked stepmother used as a doorstop.

The joke's on her, because it's worth $300 to $400.

I brought this Centennial flag.

It's been passed down my family... my husband's family.

And I found out today that it is worth between $1,500 and $2,000.

We're very happy with that.

Well, our items weren't worth a lot, but the four-hour trip up here with my daughter in the car was priceless.

Yeah, right.

You buying?

I brought a statue that has been in my garage, or my dad's garage, since I was a baby, and it's worth between $800 and $1,200.

And I've got a book from 1891 from my dad's library.

Unfortunately, there's millions of them out there.

And we brought a couple of bears along with us, bronze bears.

We got this one at a garage sale for $100, and find out he's worth almost $900.

This one we bought at a school auction, and we learned we made a generous donation to that school auction.

We've had a great time here at Antiques Roadshow.

None of it has been un-bear-able.

I'm Mark Walberg.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time on "Antiques Roadshow."

Well, who doesn't love an angel painting, huh?

Who doesn't love an angel painting?

Where did you get it?

We got it in a Dumpster in North Dakota, not in Montana.

We traveled all the way from North Dakota here.