Antiques Roadshow is visiting Biloxi, Mississippi.
Well, actually, what happened was the neighborhood kids broke in and punched a broom handle through it several times.
Any particular reason?
Just meanness.
It's got elements of high art and heavy-handedness at the same time.
Yours just happens to be in drop-dead gorgeous condition.
Who found good fortune in Biloxi?
Stay tuned.
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Welcome to Antiques Roadshow.
Hi, I'm Mark Walberg, in Biloxi.
Mississippi's famous native sons and daughters include guitarist Bo Diddley, author William Faulkner and former Miss America 1959, Mary Ann Mobley.
What antique American beauties will catch our experts' attention in Biloxi?
Stay tuned.
WOMAN: My mother's father's mother's sister was the wearer, bearer of the jewel.
And her husband had it made for her as a custom gift, possibly in New York, sometime in the '20s or '30s, we're not sure.
Okay.
Now, you had an appraisal on it.
Right.
The appraisal was done for insurance purposes.
Yes.
And how much was that for?
A little over $9,000, I believe.
That's a lot of money.
Oh, yeah.
For sure.
First of all, it's not just a beautiful bracelet.
It's also what?
A watch.
A watch, right.
So if we turn it around, we can see the watch is right over here.
It says "Banner."
Yes, sir.
Now, Banner Watch Company was one of many mom-and-pop watch companies.
A lot of these types of watch bracelets, it wasn't about the watch.
It was about the piece as a piece of jewelry.
Yes.
So a lot of people get hung up on who made the movement.
It's not always that important.
Banner was kind of a generic watch that was used in a lot of different types of jewelry.
And to set it-- we can show everybody... Yeah.
...you would pull this section out.
Yes, and wind the watch.
And wind the watch,correct.
And then you would snap it back in.
I find it very unusual, this form to be set in platinum.
Because typically, this time period, you saw a lot of jewelry in yellow gold or in rose gold.
Ah.
This is 57 pennyweights of platinum.
That's almost three ounces.
Wow, yeah.
That's a lot.
That's a lot of metal.
In the piece we have all these full-cut diamonds, about a carat total weight.
I love the square cut and rectangular cut faceted sapphires.
Me, too.
You like them.
I love the sapphires.
So we have another carat in sapphires.
Now, I just want to take it off and show everybody, because there's a design element here that's very Deco.
And you see this beautiful swirl?
It almost reminds me of a nautilus.
Yes.
Usually a clasp like this will lift up or down.
This one has a built-in spring, and you pull it back, and it releases.
And there it goes.
And you can see an automatic safety.
When you let it go, it goes right back over.
Wow, pretty creative.
Pretty creative.
So they built a very solid clasp.
Actually today, to replace this... because if you went out to look for one of these, you're not going to find one.
Which means you would have to find a jeweler to sit down and make another one.
Ah.
So if you had to replace it today, we think it's somewhere around $25,000.
Wow.
And really not a penny less.
Wow.
The desk came off of a boat called the Honey Fitz, which was one of the presidential yachts for John F. Kennedy, and it was named after his grandfather.
Doing some research on it, the yacht really goes back from FDR all the way through Nixon.
And it was in the master stateroom.
A group of us from Biloxi went over to Mobile, where the boat was being refurbished.
And I saw the desk, and I made him an offer.
I got it in 2002, and I offered the guy $500 for it.
And this came with it?
And this came with it, yes, the sign.
The boat that we're referring to as the Honey Fitz started out as the Lenore.
That's correct.
It was built in 1931.
And the guy that built it is fascinating.
He was a man named Sewell Avery, and he was chairman of Montgomery Ward.
And he hated Roosevelt.
And Roosevelt, they claimed, in retaliation seized his boat during the war.
Now, they used it for troop tender and things of that sort.
But after the war, Truman, they think, might have used it a little, Eisenhower a little more.
But its real fame is Kennedy.
Right.
And there are some really iconic pictures of Kennedy taken on the yacht.
There are wonderful stories, some of which may or may not be true, (laughing) about what happened on the yacht.
And just as interestingly, Jacqueline Kennedy is reputed to have redecorated the yacht.
Its moment in the Kennedy administration is its moment of fame.
Richard Nixon changed the boat's name to Patricia.
Right.
And he then sells the boat as surplus in 1970.
And that's now 40 years ago, okay?
So those intervening 40 years are what we're interested in in trying to understand this as a collectible.
Now, in 1998 it sells for $5.9 and change... Six million, somewhere around there.
So, close to $6 million.
Then its history gets really sketchy, I have to say.
When you try and research it, it's moving around.
It's supposed to be in a dockyard in Louisiana, it's supposed to be in Mobile, it's now down in Florida.
West Palm Beach, yeah.
So I'm going to start with the bad news, okay?
Okay.
I think it's highly unlikely that this board is from 1963.
No, I agree with you on that.
And I think this was put on when one of the refurbishings... to make it more Kennedy-esque.
Right.
I think this one is just a few hundred dollars as a nice keepsake, okay?
But this is a more interesting piece.
And I know you've got a photograph of it.
Yeah.
You see the photograph here.
Now, it took me, I'd say, at least four or five years researching on the Internet to find this one picture here.
And there it is, the interior of the stateroom.
And there's the desk right there.
And one of the things I noticed was this marking here is the same marking that's right there.
So that was a good indication of being authentic.
Let me tell you, that's very important, documenting it in situ during the Kennedy administration.
Because what's really important about this is this is a built-in.
Right.
That means it's not freestanding.
It was screwed to the wall.
In the rear, there's no back.
It's open.
So I think you're absolutely right.
This is from the Kennedy administration.
The desk, which is made of mahogany, which is perfect for marine work, has got what appear to be the original brasses, with the exception of this one here, which may be a replacement.
If you look at this drawer and this drawer, they don't quite match up, so it has led the hard life, which gives us some sense of use.
Right.
Which is what we like to see.
Now, here's the hard part.
(chuckling) Provenance in presidents is everything.
You have the right provenance in that you have the photograph, you've got the piece.
Do you have the paper?
No.
The paper is what really counts.
Right.
The photo's good.
It seals the deal in the sense of there's no question it comes from the yacht.
Right.
Okay?
But the paper gives you the provenance to say, "I got this from the owner, and the owner said I could, and here's my bill of sale," and this can be tracked.
I really think you need to go back and get somebody to write you a nice little note saying... A little bill of sale?
Right, a nice bill of sale.
Because I think it's a risky proposition.
Having said that, Kennedy memorabilia, like everything else, has gone up and down and up and down.
And right now, it isn't in a real strong moment.
I think this piece, just as is, $5,000 at auction.
If everybody signs off and we have all the correct paperwork, I would not be... think it crazy to go double, maybe even triple that estimate.
Well, that's nice.
It's a lot more than I expected for it.
But anyway it's a nice piece, and I'm going to keep it in the family.
Good.
Along with the sign.
And the sign.
WOMAN: I've got some portraits that are gold leaf on the back of glass.
And they're 18th, early 19th century.
They've come down in the family.
They've been given to me by my father-in-law.
And we know who two of them are.
Okay.
But we're not quite sure who the third one is.
Okay.
They were in a house that was 90% destroyed by Ivan, but they were in the attic.
And the attic actually stood while most of the walls were torn down by the hurricane and the flood.
And they actually survived the storm.
So we can say these have survived a long time in a lot of peril.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
When you look at the artist's name here, it says "C.P.
Polk."
It's Charles Peale Polk.
Now, the Peale family is the royal family of American portrait painting in the 18th and 19th century.
And a lot of their children were artists, they were entrepreneurs and inventors.
Now, Charles Peale Polk made his living doing portraits of Washington that he sold to interested people who were Washington fans.
Now, the provenance came through, you had said, the Bowie family.
Okay, so now, this is where it begins to layer, which is really interesting.
We have C.P.
Polk, we have the Bowie family, Prince George County in Maryland, huge family, important people in Maryland.
And then an obscure reference that talks about the inventiveness of Charles Peale Polk doing verre églomisé portraits and scratching through the gold leaf.
Now, verre églomisé is really just decoration on the reverse of glass, so it can be either painted, or it can be done in gold leaf.
But this is a really interesting technique.
Gold leaf is laid on the surface of the glass, and then Polk went in with a very fine stylus and scratched away that gold and made essentially almost a negative.
And then after that you go in and you paint the background black.
So now the black shows through where the gold has been scratched away, so it gives the whole portrait depth.
And that's a very innovative technique.
They're all encased in these nice, ebonized early-19th-century frames.
So the frames are original.
The frames appear to be original.
Now, you had said you'd been looking for these sorts of things for a while.
Yeah, nothing.
Nothing-- nowhere did I find a gilt verre églomisé portrait of anybody.
We have the Peale name, we have the Bowie name, we have the reference from the National Gallery to his verre églomisé gilt technique.
And we have ourselves set up for one word-- unpredictable.
We depend a lot on precedent.
We know what things have sold for, so we have something to point to.
But with this, we don't have that.
Now, I looked at the top two.
At auction, I think they're worth around $10,000 to $15,000 for the pair.
We identified the sitters.
The sitters are period, early 19th century.
We know where they're from.
Now, the guy on the bottom not only has the indignity of not knowing who he is, but also the fact that he's cracked.
So while it can be restored, it will only ever really be about a quarter of the value of the other two.
So that one I think would be worth around $2,500.
So I am absolutely thrilled you brought these in today, because I think they're a really interesting story.
WOMAN: I go around to different antique stores and salvage places.
And I ran upon this lady in Georgetown, and she had this for sale.
And I fell in love.
She wanted more money than I had on me.
How much did she want for it?
Two hundred and fifty dollars.
All right.
And I asked her, would she consider letting me put it on layaway?
I paid $125 down, and $125 a month later.
You know, there's a mark on the bottom.
I do.
And I'm sure you looked up the mark.
I tried.
All right.
The mark says "Rosenthal."
The Rosenthal factory is located in Selb, in Bavaria, Southern Germany.
And it's a well-known Bavarian porcelain and pottery-making company.
In fact, they specialize in porcelain, although this is made of pottery.
It's made of earthenware.
And when this was made, they made very high quality sculptural and artistic ware.
It's a centerpiece, really.
It's designed to be filled with flowers in the flower frog.
I see.
There's a second signature on the piece.
Did you see that?
No.
Just here is another signature.
I've owned it ten years, and I have never noticed that.
Well, it's kind of faint.
The sculptural modeling ware of Rosenthal and other European porcelain manufacturers of this time is often signed, because they would hire modelers, some of whom worked exclusively for one factory.
But most of them, like this guy, whose name was Ferdinand Liebermann, worked for other companies as well.
But he's most closely associated with Rosenthal.
And Liebermann was a great modeler who started at Rosenthal about 100 years ago, and worked through the teens and the '20s.
I see.
This particular piece was probably made in the 1920s, I think.
And we can tell that by the coloration, the glaze colors, and the modeling in general, and to a certain extent, the mark.
It has a very unusual, and I think very appealing glaze to it, this sort of muted coloration.
It's two pieces, by the way.
I'm going to pick this up and show it.
There's the mark.
I would call him a faun, and a goose.
Now, I showed it to a couple of my colleagues, all of whom loved it, by the way.
Good.
We'd never seen anything quite like it before.
I think today in a good antique shop, it's a $2,000 item.
The quality is beautiful, and the condition is excellent.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Well, it was my Great-Great- Great Aunt Libby's doll.
And I know that she was from New York.
Right.
They moved to Ridgeland, Mississippi, right around the turn of the 20th century.
Okay.
And my great-grandmother always treasured this doll, and she entered her in the Mississippi State Fair in 1938 and won Oldest Doll Award.
And that's about all I know.
Very good.
You have a very interesting doll.
It's an early papier-mâché.
She dates from anywhere from about 1820 to 1860.
This particular one is very nice because of her coloring in particular.
A lot of times the dolls are very faded, and you can see what nice high color she has on her cheeks.
She also has a wonderful outfit on.
And while it probably isn't original to the doll, the underwear is original.
The dress was probably sewn a little bit later, but all hand stitch, and totally appropriate.
Wooden legs, wooden arms, papier-mâché head, and a kid body.
And given her condition and the fact that she has nice high color, she would be between about $750 and $1,000 at a retail antique doll show today.
Oh, wow.
I can't believe it.
MAN: It was my grandfather's, and supposedly in the early 1900s he found it on the beach in Galveston, Texas.
Did you ever find any information out about it?
You know, I've never found a sword like it.
I did take it to a local library, where a gentleman appraised it and said he thought it was from the Texas-Spanish War in the 1850s.
And he offered me $1,200, or said it was worth $1,200 at that time.
That was about six years ago.
All right.
This is in fact a Civil War sword, so it's going to be after the Mexican War, but before the Spanish-American War.
So this is going to be right in the heart of the 1860s.
They make an artillery sword like this that has a fish-scale grip.
They make a naval cutlass like this with a bigger basket that has a fish-scale grip.
Normally when you see a sword for the artillery, the blade is just a spear point.
But on this it's made much more like... almost like a Bowie knife.
Right.
And it's got a clip point out at the end.
Then we've got this kind of S-shaped crossguard, which is unlike really an artillery sword, unlike a cutlass, again a little bit more like a knife.
But I think in the end, one of the reasons that we're going to call this as an artillery sword is because of the little letters that we have marked right up here at the top.
We feel like this is for the Jeff Davis Artillery.
Okay.
Jeff Davis Artillery is from the city of Selma, Alabama.
These knives show up in Alabama, they show up in Mississippi.
Right.
They can show up in Texas, but they're normally more in the Deep South, depending on where the migration went.
Maybe 12, 13, 14 of these have turned up.
I've never seen one with a scabbard.
The Jeff Davis Artillery, they're a very interesting group.
They don't spend any time in the Deep South.
They're immediately sent to Virginia.
And they fight in all the major engagements, which is kind of what you want when you're buying and selling a relic.
They're at the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in our history, they're at the Battle of Gettysburg, the highwater mark of the Confederacy.
They're in and amongst it.
And if you notice here on your guard, see where we can see the casting mark?
Yes.
These are made in such a hurry, they don't even try to really finish them out.
And that's why it's just left there for you to see, because it's not expedient for real combat to fix this.
Whereas if you were trying to sell something to the United States government, this would never pass muster.
I got you.
It's crude for what it is, but people who like Confederate things would just find this really nice.
When the war starts, you see all these very famous pictures of Confederate soldiers with these huge knives, and there are placards that say, "Jeff Davis," in the South.
This is that idea.
I think in a retail situation, you might expect this to bring around $6,000.
Oh, great.
It's in good shape.
I think you had mentioned playing with it a little bit when you were a kid.
Oh, yeah.
I played a pirate, cutting bamboo with it out in the woods.
Are you the one that did just a little bit of sharpening on the blade?
More than likely.
That's okay.
It's not in there deep enough.
That was 50 years ago.
Right, and it's not really going to harm it.
Okay.
This painting looks like it's gone through a couple of hurricanes.
Is that what happened here, these damages?
Well, no, actually what happened was the neighborhood kids broke in and punched a broom handle through it several times.
Any particular reason?
Just meanness.
Did you chase them down?
No, I found out later who did it.
But, you know, the damage was done, so...
The first thing you see about this are these gashes here.
I know to a lot of people that seems like a really bad thing.
And it's not all that bad, because you haven't lost that much.
When you put this back together, you have all the pieces there.
It can be gently teased together and overpainted.
This will come back together.
You have all the pieces here.
Even here you have what's left inside.
I can show you.
You can put that back up right here.
Right.
So the damage looks significant, but it's not that bad.
Another thing about it, though, is the fact that it's awfully dirty.
Yeah.
I don't think it's ever been cleaned.
You'll see that up here in the sky.
You see this yellowed varnish and the dirt, and probably tobacco smoke.
You see it mostly with the moon right here.
That's supposed to be white.
Now, where'd you get it?
My wife's grandfather.
He was an art collector, and it's been passed down.
And then when she passed away she left it to me and the kids.
It's a very typical type of painting you would find in a late-19th-century, early-20th-century collection.
This is by an artist by the name of Louis Aston Knight.
He was born in 1873 to a painter by the name of Daniel Ridgway Knight.
And he spent most of his life in Europe.
He was an American expatriate painter.
So that's why he signs "Paris" down there.
Do you have any kind of idea of maybe when he would have painted this?
I know he was out of the country, I believe, during World War I.
So it could be the first decade or so of the 20th century.
This is north of Paris, towards Normandy, in that area.
He specialized in painting these mills and cottages.
He's a master of painting water.
Yeah.
In fact, so much so that he was known to put on waders like a fly fisherman and actually get into the water with his easel.
Oh, my.
And actually this painting is so large, you feel like you could almost walk into this one, too.
That's true, that's true.
Now, I was joking with my colleagues that this might be one of the largest ones in captivity.
It's a very, very large painting for him.
It's over six feet tall.
I know it takes a big wall.
If I were to insure this, I'd probably insure it for about $45,000 to $50,000 these days.
Okay.
WOMAN: It was my grandmother's, and about ten years ago my mother gave it to me.
All I know is my grandmother came from Italy on the boat and landed in the United States sometime in the 1800s.
And my mother was born in 1917, so I don't know whether it came from Italy, or if she purchased it after she was in New Orleans and got married.
This piece falls into the category of...
I think I know what you've got, I'm pretty sure I know what this is, I'm not 100% certain.
We'll have to get back to you on the final answer with this.
Okay.
But I think what this is is a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery.
Now, New Orleans Art Pottery was a very short-lived operation.
Its roots were in 1885.
Sometime around '88, '89, they were already out of business.
And teacher Ellsworth Woodward went to New Orleans to teach the ladies how to do decorative arts, and started the Ladies Decorative Arts League in 1885.
In '86 on Baronne Street opened up a pottery, and brought in two potters-- Joseph Meyer and the famous George Ohr.
George Ohr actually left his own pottery here in Biloxi to go to New Orleans to throw pots for a couple years with Woodward and with Meyer on Baronne Street.
So I think this is one of those pieces.
Now, how do we know this without a mark on it?
This work is so obscure, there may be 20 pieces known of the New Orleans Art Pottery.
Utilitarian forms such as jardinières predominated, and they were used and they were broken.
So what do we look for?
Several things.
Number one, this cross-hatching on both sides is typical of work I've seen on New Orleans Art Pottery.
It's somewhat of a fingerprint.
I think more importantly, this piece has a sophisticated crudeness.
You look at the way the handles are formed on the top, the lumpiness of the decoration.
On the other hand, it's really well done.
It's an oxymoron, because it's got elements of high art and heavy-handedness at the same time.
The other thing I look for, and I'm going to bring this up here, if we look inside at the clay.
That is the clay I've seen on pieces made from the New Orleans Art Pottery.
It looks like mud from the New Orleans streets.
In addition to that, there are very fine lines going around this pot, as though someone used a sponge or a finishing tool while it was still on the wheel to even out the inside.
Several of the pieces I've seen of New Orleans Art Pottery had these concentric circles going through the inside of the pot.
So again, there are many elements of this.
They made predominantly jardinières, not that many vases.
I doubt very much that your grandmother brought a jardinière over from Italy with her on the boat.
I mean, it's much more likely she would have found it here, arriving in New Orleans, which is where this pot would have been made.
Okay.
So I think the odds are about ten to one that this is a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery.
There is some minor damage on the piece.
On the edge of the artichokes and on some of the leaf points you can see some white clay showing through.
But the truth of the matter is again, utilitarian piece, it got used.
This is in amazing condition considering what it must have been through for 130 years.
If this was just another Victorian cast pot in a majolica style, which this glaze is, it's worth $100, okay?
Because it's a hand-thrown one rather than cast, I'm thinking perhaps at auction a piece like this would bring somewhere between $400 and $600.
Okay.
If it's a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery-- and we're pretty sure about that-- at auction the value is somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000.
If we find a picture of this piece in our research, I think we have a piece of New Orleans Art Pottery worth between $20,000 and $30,000.
Oh, my word.
It just gets better.
So I think you're looking at a piece probably that's going to be worth, estimated, at auction, somewhere between $10,000 and $15,000.
But we're going to get back to you, okay?
Okay.
All right.
Wow.
Where should I keep it?
Not on the floor, where you had it sitting a little earlier.
I'd definitely keep it off the floor.
Okay.
And I wouldn't use it, even though it's meant to have flowers put in it.
I'd definitely keep it protected.
(tearfully): Thank you.
You're welcome, my pleasure.
For Mississippi artist Walter Anderson, art and nature were constant, consuming passions.
He painted pots for his brother at Shearwater Pottery in Ocean Springs, but also created sculptures, prints, watercolors, and murals, like this one, painted for the Ocean Springs Community Center.
Beth Szescila joined us at the Walter Anderson Museum of Art to look at more works from this prolific artist.
SZESCILA: This is a linoleum block print, one of many that Walter Anderson did in the 1940s.
This one is called Man of War, and it depicts frigatebirds and ocean waves, and it's done in a real Art Deco style.
WALBERG: It's really beautiful, and now that you mention it's called frigatebirds, I can see them.
I don't know that I would have caught them right off the bat.
But it's pretty large print.
Walter actually used battleship linoleum, which is a much heavier grade linoleum than normal.
And he would chisel the blocks out in high relief.
And because he wanted to keep the price of these down, and because he was also interested in doing larger works, he would go out and buy discontinued or faded wallpaper, and he would print these large block prints on the back of them.
WALBERG: Is this actually wallpaper?
On the back side we might see some hideous print that should have been in a bathroom somewhere?
More than likely.
And then he's actually gone back on top of the block print.
The colors that you see here were added by hand.
He usually sold his prints for about a dollar a foot, so this would have been somewhere between four and five dollars.
WALBERG: Interesting to hear an artist sell by the foot.
A work that's very similar to this one, is actually from the same block, sold at auction in 2006 for $8,400.
Oh, my.
Better to buy it by the foot earlier, I think.
You've got a couple more examples here.
These are watercolors.
Let's talk about this first one, the smaller one.
This is actually done on typing paper.
He wasn't doing these to sell, unlike the block prints.
These were his own personal studies, and he rarely ever signed them.
Many of these weren't found until he had passed away.
Walter Anderson was a very talented man, but he was very reclusive, and he spent a lot of time by himself out on Horn Island, which is a barrier island here in the Gulf coast.
But he would row out in a small skiff on the open seas, and he would put his food and his art supplies in trash cans.
So very often when you find his work it has some water damage, or maybe some light soiling.
Similar eight and a half by 11 paintings usually sell at auction for somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000.
WALBERG: Well, we know that he loved the flora and fauna of the Gulf Coast, but that wasn't the only thing that inspired him.
Tell me about this larger painting.
It's called Magic Carpet, and it probably depicts the adventures of Aladdin in 1001 Arabian Nights.
And this particular watercolor was actually in the vault of the family when the tidal surge submerged the whole vault during Hurricane Katrina.
And if you look at it closely, you can see that it does have some wrinkling of the paper, but actually, it's pretty amazing that it's survived this well.
I think collectors of Walter's work are much more forgiving because of Hurricane Katrina.
Lots of artwork was lost down here during that time, so it hasn't affected it as negatively at it would probably anybody else.
These large pieces rarely ever come up for auction.
But when they do, they generally sell for somewhere between $40,000 and $60,000.
WALBERG: Well, they're just beautiful.
Thanks for showing them to us.
Thank you.
MAN: It was passed down.
My grandmother gave it to me last year after my grandfather passed away.
It sat on his desk for as long as I can remember.
Do you remember where he got it?
Any... did you ever talk to him about it, or... No, I wasn't old enough to really probably understand it at the time.
The only thing I remember is the color of it, that green.
I've remembered it since I could... you know, since I could walk, when we visited their house.
It is really dramatic looking.
The inkwell is by Tiffany Studios.
It's actually stamped on the bottom, "Tiffany Studios, New York."
And as you know, they were a very famous maker of bronze and metalwork, and Tiffany lamps, Tiffany glass.
They were founded in New York City.
It was run by Louis Comfort Tiffany, who was the son of the man who started Tiffany & Company, the jewelry company.
And one of the things they produced were desk set items, very popular from the turn of the century until the 1920s.
They made, oh, maybe 20, 30 different patterns.
You have an inkwell.
Other pieces in the set could be a letter rack, a blotter, pen tray, boxes, lamps, calendar, letter scales, thermometers, anything that would be on a gentleman's desk.
It was probably made between 1900 and 1910.
What's unusual about this is the glass.
It's Tiffany glass.
And we call this blown out.
Okay.
So you have this latticework that's cut out, and they actually blow the glass through this so the glass protrudes.
Inside you have the inkwell.
This is not Tiffany glass.
This is a standard replacement.
But it's really interesting, and it's quite rare.
It has some condition issues here in this green discoloration.
And you see these little white dots?
Yeah.
You know what that's from?
I have no idea.
These little white dots is when this piece was on the desk and they were painting the wall behind it with a roller.
Really?
Really?
Right.
And the little specks of white paint come off.
You see it there?
See, I thought it was just another type of corrosion or...
Right, no, no, they're little white specks of paint.
But it's really in nice shape.
We see lots of desk set pieces on the Roadshow, but we really never see these blown out pieces.
This is nice in this really rich green.
They also made it in a red, sort of a coral-y red color.
Really?
I wouldn't be concerned about this, and I wouldn't really be concerned about these little flecks of paint.
The glass is in excellent shape; sometimes the glass can be cracked.
In a retail setting, at a gallery or a shop specializing in Tiffany works, this would be about $5,000.
Really?
Wow.
Wow, that's...
I had no idea.
That's great.
That's amazing.
WOMAN: I brought some prints that I've had for about 20 years.
They're from the Associated American Artists.
They've been in the family for a long time.
My great... a great-aunt had them.
What do you know about Associated American Artists?
Well, when I first got them, you know, I didn't have a personal computer, didn't really have any way of finding out anything.
I was watching your show a few years back, and a girl had something similar, and she had hers appraised, and I was like, "I have got to see what... a little bit more about these."
Well, Associated American Artists was a gallery that was formed in 1935 by a man named Reeves Lewenthal.
And Reeves Lewenthal decided that art should be for the middle class, not just the super-wealthy.
So he, with his populist approach, came upon the idea of commissioning artists to do a series of prints that he would sell by subscription.
He only commissioned about four artists a year.
And the ones that you have came out of 1939, 1940, 1941.
Okay.
Reeves Lewenthal, with Sylvan Cole and Estelle Yanco, would choose a variety of artists, all American artists, and one of the most famous was Thomas Hart Benton.
Right.
And the print that we have here is Thomas Hart Benton's Slow Train to Arkansas, which is a rather important work.
Is it really?
The painting itself is important.
Oh, okay.
And the print is very well known.
This work, when it comes on the auction market individually, sells for $4,500.
That's good.
Then here we have Reginald Marsh, and this work, when it comes individually on the auction market, sells for approximately $1,500.
Good.
The... Luigi Luccione is a Vermont painter, and he did these beautiful prints.
And this etching sells for approximately $100.
Ernest Feeney, if this were to come on the market, this would only make about $50 at auction.
So you have 40 works here.
40, yeah.
Mostly they're in excellent condition.
Together, we're talking about a value for the group of 40 of approximately $48,000... Wow.
...at auction.
That's great.
That's unbelievable.
I cannot believe that.
I had no idea.
I mean, I really had no idea.
It's exciting.
That is so exciting.
I mean, who'd have ever thought?
WOMAN: This airplane was given to my great-grandfather in 1929 after the first flight of this ship, which was called the Dornier Do X.
It's a flying airship, a luftship.
It was made in Switzerland to circumvent the Treaty of Versailles.
Did he work on this plane?
Yes, he worked on, I believe, the design.
And this is his name down here on it?
His name was Harvey Brewton.
There are many toy versions of this plane.
When you do the history of this airplane, it was made in 1929, there were only two others made.
It was a total failure economically.
But at the time it was the heaviest, biggest flying boat ever made.
For that reason it has a lot of mystique.
And what I think's amazing about this, too, is that this ship went to the German Museum of History, and was destroyed in an air raid by the Royal Air Force.
Yes.
So it's no longer in existence.
And what's interesting to me as a toy person is that it existed for such a short period of time, it really must have captured a lot of attention.
Because there are at least a half a dozen American cast iron toy planes based on this.
I did not know that.
I didn't know there was a toy market.
So what's exciting is to see this incredible scale model.
It's made out of a cast metal alloy.
There's not many times you can say something's unique, and this apparently is unique.
There might be a few other models that were made as presentation pieces.
My research has not turned up any.
I saw a carved wooden... not the flying boat, but another Dornier seaplane, and it was a rather crude rendition, and it sold for over $4,000.
Wow.
So I would say it's worth, at auction, at least $6,000 to $8,000.
Awesome.
And who knows?
It could double that.
Because it is a magic, magic piece of aviation history.
It's a wonderful piece of history.
This guitar belonged to my husband's father, and in about 1944, it was about the time he and his wife married, she gave it to him as a gift.
The story that's been passed down is she paid $65 for it at a department store, is what we were told.
We're talking about the late war years.
Mm-hmm.
And that's really what makes this instrument very special.
During that time, materials were very scarce.
Manpower was scarce.
This guitar was made by Gibson Incorporated, of Kalamazoo, Michigan, which had already established itself as a major manufacturer of very high quality guitars.
One thing that the wartime instruments are known for is what we call the banner logo, Right.
or the banner peghead that says "Only a Gibson is good enough."
And that flew for a couple years before other people started to make fun of it, and they went on to something else.
Oh, okay.
But another marketing scheme that they had was... in the early '40s was to recognize the need for a big bodied guitar that they could say was sort of specialized for country western music.
Oh, okay.
And that's how they came up with the name Southern Jumbo.
Originally it was called the Southerner Jumbo.
And during the war, when materials became scarce, they used to substitute different woods.
But fortunately, this one was built towards the end of the war, so they were not experiencing so many of the shortages, especially in the area of metal parts.
And we see the truss rod cover up here.
There's actually a rod running through the neck that reinforces it.
And if the neck warps a little bit, you can actually tighten it and straighten out the neck.
So that's what that does, okay.
So that disappeared during the real lean war years.
But by 1944, 1945, it came back.
And the back is made of a very, very colorful piece of mahogany, which I think is a great acoustic wood.
The wartime instruments also have this characteristic skunk stripe.
And that's a black lamination.
So this neck is actually a lamination of one, two, three, four, five pieces of wood.
So we've got a piece that's in wonderful condition.
As we go down lower, we see the actual bridge here.
Right.
And this is a design called the belly bridge, for this belly that protrudes underneath.
Oh.
That actually makes it a little more of a desirable guitar.
Really?
All these things add up to a guitar that, in today's somewhat uncertain market, places it at the top of the list of desirability.
Okay.
Now, yours just happens to be in, shall we say, drop-dead gorgeous condition.
Really?
It's pretty much unplayed.
I think that in today's market I would place the retail value of this guitar at $9,000 to $10,000.
Wonderful.
Especially with a case in that wonderful condition.
That's great.
Thank you very much.
WOMAN: The suit is an Olivia de Havilland suit.
She wore it in the movie Princess O'Rourke.
And I acquired the suit from a friend of my husband's.
The friend of ours used to be an assistant of Debbie Reynolds.
And when the studios were having financial problems and everything back in the '60s, Debbie Reynolds and Jane Withers were able to salvage a lot of things, and this was one of them.
Debbie gave it to our friend, and then he asked me if I wanted to purchase it, and I said yes.
The dress and the lobby card and the photos that came with it, it just cost me $50.
It's really neat to have this type of outfit with provenance.
This photograph you have shows her in a scene from the movie wearing this identical suit.
Yes.
And if you open it up, and you look in the side panel back here, we have a label from Warner Brothers studios.
And it has the number 17313-404, which was attributed to that movie.
In this sleeve there was a tag.
Is this how they catalogued... That's from Warner Brothers.
And when they would do a deaccession or an auction of things, every garment would get a tag like that that would say the name of the actress and the movie that it was in.
Okay.
As you look at the suit, you notice that there is a little bit of moth damage here and there.
I did notice that.
Well, I would tell you not to do anything with it, because the value of this suit is not in the pristine garment, but it's for the historical value that this suit has.
I would just wrap it in acid-free tissue, roll it instead of fold it, and place it somewhere in your home where the temperature will remain consistent.
A beautiful 1940s suit like this, all hand-stitched, like the detail on the front and the back, generally would sell on the market for about $150 to $200 tops.
Okay.
Olivia's suit, because you have all the provenance, insurance value would be around $1,500 for the suit.
Oh, my gosh.
Oh, my gosh.
I can't believe it.
That's unreal.
Thank you for bringing it to the Roadshow.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much.
MAN: We've got a set of prints by Agustin Fernandez, who was a Cuban artist.
And I'm addicted to estate sales, and this is just one of my finds, actually.
It's a fantastic group of prints.
He's a very important 20th century Cuban artist.
He was born in Havana, and he moved to New York and attended the Art Students League in the late '40s.
And from there ended up in Paris for about a ten-year stint in the '60s.
And then eventually came back to New York in 1972, and ended up staying there until his death recently in 2006.
Wow.
He was a painter, a drawer, a sculptor.
Do you know the technique that's used here?
I thought they were etchings, but is that correct?
Yeah, you're right.
What really attracted me to these was just this sculptural quality.
These objects, they look three-dimensional.
And I think he also had a beautiful use of inks where these etchings, with a little bit of dry point, the intaglio techniques that he used, you almost see the radiance.
It's like he's used a metallic ink.
Right.
But it's just black and white.
And some of them are actually raised too, you know?
Exactly.
As you can see on this piece here and this one, up close from the side you see a real tendency.
It's called an embossing.
And it's when he's using the plates with the intaglio, when he's making the etching, they're raised areas.
They're all individually signed.
And the year is 1964.
And they're numbered.
It's a typical artist proof.
It says "ex," meaning example, "d'artist," one out of five.
So that was the small edition that was printed for his use.
And these were inscribed to someone as a gift.
They were a presentation, yes.
They were actually printed when he was in Paris at one of the master printers that Picasso used.
The print shop is called Frélaut and Baudier.
And so they were really some of the best print makers working in Europe.
How much did you pay for them at the time?
I paid $2,500 for them.
The beauty is that they're all hand-printed, they're all original.
He's had a more extensive auction history with his paintings and unique works.
Yes, right.
But for his prints, it was really hard to find many things.
One set of these came up recently at a French auction house and sold for about $2,000.
However, I really think if you were to sell them at auction in the states, being a little closer to Cuba, and there's a real interest in Latin American artists these days, and artwork, I think the estimate is more in the $4,000 to $6,000 range.
And I really think it could sell for a bit more than that.
Fantastic.
MAN: Well, it was passed down through the family.
It was my great-grandfather's.
I was told he moved over here from France, turn of the century.
He was a clock and jewelry maker.
Well, it's a very unusual clock, and it's of the type that we call a French industrial clock.
The clock was made in France about 1885 to '95.
And this particular one in the form of a locomotive has animation.
The wheels actually turn when the clock is running.
And the way you get those to work is you wind it right here.
It's a separate mechanism that runs the automation.
And then here we have the time and strike mechanism for the clock itself.
Now, these French industrial clocks were very popular in the last quarter of the 19th century.
They made them in several different forms-- locomotives, windmills, where the windmill would rotate.
They even made automobiles where the wheels would turn.
They were very, very popular.
And they're still popular with collectors.
This particular example has some condition issues, though.
This right here was a barometer, which is now broken, and the dial is missing.
But that could be repaired.
A good clock repairman could probably substitute an antique barometer of the same type.
They're pretty much interchangeable.
It has a thermometer here, which is missing.
Again, that's something that can be restored.
And the words are written in English, which is another thing that tells us that it was made for the American market.
Right.
Another condition issue is that these rods here that drive the wheels are replaced.
The clock is made primarily of brass, and it has a wonderful patina.
The clock runs for eight days on a winding.
In terms of value, I would say at auction, a realistic price, I would expect it to bring about $10,000 in its current condition.
Now, had this been a perfect clock, an example almost identical to this sold last year at auction for $31,600.
Wow.
If this clock were restored, and it's definitely worth restoring, it would bring $20,000 to $25,000 at auction.
That's great.
Well, I appreciate that, Gary.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for bringing it in.
WOMAN: They're my ancestor portraits.
They were done in Guilford County, North Carolina, in 1827.
And these are my great-great- great-grandparents, and that's my great-great- grandmother, and that's her sister.
And you have all the genealogical information.
I do.
And they lived in Guilford Country, North Carolina, and then I guess eventually they came down this way.
They ended up in Benton County, Mississippi.
There's some artists from up in New England and Pennsylvania that had a certain way of doing things.
One of the things I think that they did that was always wonderful, and this guy's doing the same thing, is really nicely articulated faces.
The interior is interesting.
And they're all sitting in what I refer to as a fancy Baltimore chair.
And two of the ladies are posed with flowers in the background.
And two of them are holding books.
Yes.
Which I think is unusual.
Believe it or not, this is an artist whose work has been studied a lot.
Really?
They're still trying to figure out his name.
Okay.
They call him the Guilford Limner, which is just a painter.
And they have found over 40 of his portraits.
And most of them were painted within five miles of Greensboro, North Carolina.
That's wonderful.
The dates are the last year that there's a record of him being in Guilford County.
Really?
One of the characteristics of his portraits are not only the real good detail on the interior, but he also did oversized eyes, with the irises being just a little bit larger than what you normally see.
These were all watercolors painted on laid down paper.
They're fantastic from an aesthetic point of view.
They're beautiful.
I think they're charming.
Normally people out there are not interested in having pictures of other people's dead relatives.
Yes.
As a general rule, unless the way they're rendered is, like, out of sight.
Okay.
Which these are.
Moses Gibson and Elizabeth both are very attractive.
And the real jackpot comes that we have their daughters here also.
A family of four by somebody who there's only 40 works known by, pretty rare.
Wow.
And I'm being conservative when I say that the value of these four for retail purposes, insurance, would be $60,000.
Oh, my gosh.
Well, I don't know what to say.
I'm very pleased, but I'm very surprised.
the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
And my Mexican straw art I brought is worth a whole lot-- to me.
My grandfather gave this to me.
He brought it over from Germany.
I thought it was worth a whole lot of money, but it ain't worth a whole lot of money.
My friends said they want to see me on the Feedback Booth, so here I am.
And I came from Memphis to bring an item that was given to me, and it was appraised for $100.
Thank you.
I had fun.
And this is my mom's vase.
I always said it was the ugly vase, and she said it was valuable.
And we were both right, because it used to be valuable, but he said it's so ugly nobody buys them anymore, so now it's only worth a couple hundred bucks.
And I brought Willie Mays' jersey, which is signed and autographed by Willie.
And I hit a home run with Willie, because it's worth $600.
And I have my grammy's bear.
She was born in 1912.
And he said that it probably would have been a little bit more if Dodo the dog hadn't bitten off the hand.
Bad dog, Dodo.
Bad, bad dog.
And we got about $1,000 worth of items today we learned, but the best thing we learned was this painting has a naked person on the back that we're looking at right now.
Yeah.
We had these things laying around the house for a long time.
Found out they're really worth something.
You've been laying around the house for a long time.
I wonder if you're worth anything.
Thanks a lot.
But we had a good time.
We had a great time.
I'm Mark Walberg.
Thank you for watching.
We'll see you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
Well, let's see.
This is important to know as a fisherman.
I'm glad you have this.
Let's see-- Saltwater Game Fish of North America.
Are you a fisherman?