New York City, Hour 1 (2015)

From New York City, it's the season premiere of Antiques Roadshow.

I'm stunned that you, based on this tag, decided, "I need to have this."

My wife says the same thing.

APPRAISER: This Jurassic Park-like bird leg was also impressed on the top of the table.

Are you serious?

Coming up, we've got the biggest find of the season.

Stay tuned.

It's the season premiere of Antiques Roadshow.

Hi, I'm Mark Walberg, in New York City.

Wherever Roadshow goes, we see thousands of objects brought in by real people with real stories.

And there are so many different kinds of objects that come into our event, we're not only a reality show, but we're kind of a variety show too.

And we can't wait to show you a variety of our top picks from our Season 19 tour, starting here in New York right now.

MAN: The artist that I bought it from lived in New York City, I believe.

I went to an art show where other artists were showing their wares.

I looked at this painting and I liked it, and the artist came over to me and he explained that these people who are playing cards were really talking about politics, but they couldn't say anything because of the political situation around World War II.

And it looked like these people were intent on something, and many people were looking at their cards.

So I liked it.

My wife said, "Why don't we buy it?"

It's my wife who's responsible, who likes art, and she got me involved in it.

That's nice for you to give her credit.

She deserves all of it.

The artist's name is Harry Gottlieb, and this is oil on canvas.

Gottlieb is an interesting fellow because he is kind of emblematic of the social realist school of painting in New York in the mid-20th century.

Uh-huh.

He came to America as a child with an immigrant family from Romania in the early part of the century, settled in Minnesota, and as a young man, came to New York and studied art.

And he was kind of a renaissance man because he was both a painter and a very capable printmaker as well as an art educator.

And he was very politically attuned.

He was involved in the pro-labor movements.

I believe that he became a communist.

The social realists were really very worried about the common man and felt there should be more government programs for people and so on, and they were at odds with a lot of other folks.

I think the picture is very beautiful.

It's typical of these paintings that have a kind of a gritty, dark feeling about them.

They're not really cheerful pictures, and yet this big, bright blot of color up here draws your eye right into the picture, I think, even though the overall tonality is kind of the blacks and the grays.

And then when you look at it more closely, you see all the pinks and the yellows and the blues, and I think his skill and his background as a printmaker shows through this painting.

He's probably known a bit more today as a printmaker, so his paintings are quite rare.

You bought it from the artist.

Yeah.

And that would have been about when, do you think?

About 1984.

Okay, how much did you pay for it when you bought it?

My wife told me to pay $500 for it, and if it's worth more than $500, I get all the credit, if it's worth less, I blame her.

(laughs) Well, I think you'll get some credit.

I think if this picture were to appear at auction today here in New York in a major sale, it would carry an estimate of between $15,000 and $20,000.

Oh... (laughs) Wow.

Had I known that, I would have bought more paintings from him.

I wish you had!

Oh, my.

So you have a surprise for your wife.

I do.

After my father died, I was cleaning out his house, and it was in this rather sad box in a closet.

And I opened the box and I saw the top of this clock, and I pulled it out and said, "Thanks, Dad, this is really pretty."

Well, let's talk about it a little bit.

As you know, it's a carriage clock.

It dates to the last quarter of the 19th century, probably around 1880.

It's a little larger than most, so the collectors like that.

The condition of the gilding is very nice, and the collectors like that.

It has these very nice rope twist columns with Corinthian capitals.

That's very popular.

This style of case is called Anglaise Riche.

It's a popular style.

Elaborate case, very attractive.

It's got a porcelain dial with this filigree work in the dial mat.

Nice detail, very nice detail.

And down below here, we have the dial to set the alarm.

So this clock has time, strike, and alarm, and it also has the hour repeat, so when you press the button, it tells you the previous hour that was struck, and that's very popular with collectors as well.

When this clock was made, most clocks had a pendulum, and if a clock has a pendulum, it has to be very stable in order to run.

You can't tip it, it has to stay on a table or on a mantle.

These carriage clocks were meant for traveling, so I can actually tip the clock over, stand it up again, and we can see that it's still running because the balance wheel escapement is still turning.

So that made these clocks perfect for travel, and they came with the protection.

It actually has the remnants of a name on the dial, but we can't read it.

We don't know who made it.

But most of these carriage clocks are not signed, or many of them are not signed, so we often don't know.

What we know is that they're French.

So the punch line: how much is it worth?

How much do you think it's worth?

I have no idea, that's why I brought it today.

Come on, give me a guess.

Over $1,000.

That's a good guess.

Because of the condition and the size, the style of this clock, I would say a retail price, a conservative retail price would be $4,000.

Okay, good.

In a fancy gallery, you might see it even higher than that.

Okay, that's very nice.

I love the clock, it's not getting sold.

My kids love the clock, they're gonna have to fight over it.

WOMAN: My dad gave it to me.

After he retired, he started to go to flea markets, and that's what he occupied his time with.

He was a collector of sorts?

Yes.

I think it's a Tiffany lamp.

I love it, I use it, that's about it.

I don't know how much he paid for it.

Was he a big spender?

When the item was right, yes.

He was pretty close with his money too, so...

This lamp is actually a conundrum for us at the glass table.

The base is a Zodiac base that would have been with a Zodiac desk set, and this is a Linenfold shade.

Let me just take that off here.

Now, it certainly looks like it fit perfectly from the beginning, and of course, it is a real Tiffany lamp.

It would be from circa 1910.

And here, we have it marked on the shade.

The base is not marked.

Some issues with the shade are there's some cracks here in the lower panel and there's at least one crack in one of the larger panels.

But okay, let's see, we put this back, and as I say... Was this from two separate lamps that...?

Well, that's what we normally wouldn't see or expect to see, a Linenfold shade on a Zodiac base.

Now, however, it could have just been a variant.

As I say, it fits perfectly and everything about it looks fine, but it's just kind of an unusual lamp for us to see with this shade and this base.

Everything here is made by Tiffany Studios, perfectly legitimate early shade and early base, and a very good cap.

That cap may be worth quite a bit itself alone.

The cracks in the glass on the shade do hurt, but again, you've got a very good cap, you have a good shade and you have a good base, so even with the damage, I think probably retail, $4,500, right around there.

If it had no cracks in the shade, you're probably talking about $7,500 or so.

Okay.

Closer to $8,000.

Okay.

That cap alone could be worth $2,000.

Really?

Yeah.

MAN: My mother bought it here in New York City 55 years ago.

It was described to her as a leaping ibex sharpening stone from what is now northwestern Iran-- Luristan was the way it was described-- and that it was from the second millennium B.C.

And that is really all I know, except that we've all looked at it on my mother's mantelpiece for more than half a century and loved it, and I'm curious really about its age.

Okay, well the age is the second millennium is absolutely right.

The Luristan period is from about 1250 to about 500 B.C., and they were prolific manufacturers of bronze.

This is a wonderful object.

The regular soldiers and regular people of the day, all of whom would carry a knife for a weapon, would just carry the whetstone, and this is the whetstone, the stone part, to sharpen the knife with.

And the elite would probably have them with this special handle.

This is indeed an ibex on it.

Very unusual to find the two together.

Do you have any idea what it's worth?

I have no idea.

My mother paid $400 for it in 1959.

So a guess?

I assume, allowing for inflation, it's got to be worth at least $1,500 today, but I really don't know.

I think in today's market, a good retail price would be between $3,000 and $5,000, so I think that's quite good.

Well, probably fortunate I didn't know how to use it.

It's never been touched for a long, long time.

Right.

WOMAN: I was told it's Chinese and was brought over to Boston on a clipper ship.

APPRAISER: When did they say it came over?

I would think it was around the 1860s.

Okay.

And my mother bought it from the daughter of the ship captain.

The first most obvious aspect of this is the size.

Yes.

It's very large.

Yes.

And the other part of it that's really obvious is that it is made in sections, including the handles, which are removable.

You have scenes that often look back to nature.

So if you look up here at the top, you can see the waterfowl, grasses, and it's beneath a Greek key kind of border and this lower lappet border, which is what this is called, which is incorporating stylized cloud designs, but is also reminiscent of what we would call Gothic revival here in the West.

So there's a little bit of reference to Western design in addition to Asian design.

And then we've got this animal.

This is in Japan called a Kirin and in China it's called a Qilin, and it's this animal that incorporates other types of animals' body parts.

It's a mythological creature.

And as we go down, then we see here in flight a phoenix.

Mm-hmm.

Symbol of rebirth and longevity.

And here, we've got a little crab among sea creatures and a carp.

And then here at the bottom, this is one of the clues: a whole series of turtles, tortoises emerging from waves, and that's a particularly Japanese motif.

It's not Chinese, but it's incorporating Chinese elements, which is why people in your family thought it might be Chinese.

This actually was an incense burner.

It's a censer.

Now, all these motifs are emblematic one way or another of good luck, positive symbolism.

It was made purposely for sale here in the West, usually made in pairs.

My guess is that it would have been made in the 1870s, and in Japan, we have the Meiji period beginning in 1868 and ending in 1912, which is a period of industrial revolution in Japan.

What did your mother pay for this?

I would guess, because my mother didn't spend a lot of money on things, that it was not much more than $100.

Now, we're talking about the early 1940s was when she bought it.

In an auction sale, this today, because it's a single item and the Japanese market's a little depressed, today, I would say that it would be expected to make between $10,000 and $15,000.

That's at auction.

Okay, and insurance?

Probably more in the $20,000 range would be appropriate.

Okay, that sounds good to me.

MAN: After my mother died about 20 years ago, we found this envelope in her amazingly cluttered apartment, and we opened it up, and inside were some materials connected to Art Spiegelman, the cartoonist, and of course he was really famous then for Maus.

We didn't know what to make of it, but we realized what we were looking at seemed to be a book proposal that had been done maybe 20 years earlier when he was not so well known.

In the envelope was a copy of a book he had done a little earlier.

It's 1973.

A book of quotations called Whole Grains.

And this was going to be a sequel, and it was going to be an opinionated, irreverent collection of quotations, very pithy, some of them very raunchy.

The proposal explained that Whole Grains had been a quotation book for the '60s, the era of anti-war protests and free love and such things, and this was going to be a quotation book for the '70s, and it was much darker, very cynical in many places, and really full of wonderful quotes.

And there were some examples in the proposal, of course, and chapter titles, some of which I couldn't repeat on the air.

Right.

And there were two cover treatments.

We don't know how my mother got hold of it, but our best guess is that maybe after Maus started to become a big hit, Spiegelman perhaps didn't need to pursue this other project, so he maybe donated the package to the local library or something, and we pictured my mother maybe getting it at a library sale because she was a very big supporter of the local public library.

Art Spiegelman and Bob Schneider were friends and colleagues that worked on the Whole Grains book as co-editors.

Spiegelman is the famous creator of Maus, his graphic novel that became the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel, the first graphic novel ever to win such an honor.

Maus was originally published serially in little magazine parts in the centerfold of the leading counterculture magazine that Spiegelman created at the beginning of his fame.

He wasn't quite famous yet.

That magazine was called Raw, and each issue of Raw, for several issues, contained the graphic novel Maus in it.

It was later, of course, published in book form, and by the time his run with Raw was over, he was an internationally famed graphic novelist and went on to the fame that he has today.

These are original paintings for the book that you talked about, The Wit and the Wisdom, and he also, to the right, has an alternative cover called Quotation Alley.

These would appear to be pen and ink, with colored markers for the brilliant colors that we're seeing, the effects.

And as we look through the manuscript here that we won't open now, this is his original proposal to publishers for the book and then a bunch of the suggested quotations.

And what's really fascinating about this little archive, it shows a major important American artist in his infancy, before he was famous, and what he was trying to do to get by to make money.

The original artwork I think is stunning.

They're both quite beautiful.

I would value your package, the manuscript and painting archive, at retail at $8,000 to $12,000.

Really?

That's very gratifying.

Thanks, Mom.

(laughing) MAN: I was in Los Angeles in the mid-'80s, and I went to an auction where Francis Coppola sold off his Zoetrope Studios.

I saw this and it had that tag on it saying "Breakaway Headboard," and I bought it.

And I was the only person who bid on it, and I took it home and rented all his movies, and it's in Godfather II.

APPRAISER: So you found it.

I did.

You found it in the movie.

I'm actually really stunned that you, based on this tag-- all it says is "Breakaway Headboard"-- decided, "I need to have this."

Well, my wife says the same thing.

I was just going to say, if I were your wife, I would have said, "What did you bring home?"

Right.

Clearly, there's a lot going on here, and you were able to identify it from Godfather II because of the fact that the squibs have gone off, and this is from the scene when they try to shoot Michael Corleone.

That's obviously what drew your attention when you were watching the film.

You said, "Oh, that's my headboard!"

That's right.

So you paid what for it in the auction?

I think $25.

I was the only person who bid on it.

I actually have two... two of them came because the shot was the bullet and then the bullet, so there's two of these.

So the $25 you paid was for two.

Yes, so $12.50 each.

Well, it's funny.

People who saw this, I overheard them here in the room saying, "Did an animal get to it?"

Nobody could understand why it was we were talking about this.

But the reason we're talking about it is because it's Godfather II.

And normally, someone might say, "Doesn't condition play a role with props and things like that?"

Obviously, this was intentionally shot up, it's intentionally distressed.

It's super light, it's made of balsa wood so that these squibs would go off, which are the little explosives they used for special effects, so it'd make it look really dramatic with the wood flying all over the room, and it worked.

There is virtually nothing from this film or the first film out there.

There's only the things that probably Francis Ford Coppola and maybe some of the people who worked on the film have.

Uh-huh.

Very few items have come up for auction.

We have a few costumes, hats.

Costumes are easier, they seem to survive more, mainly because at the studios, they would put them back into the wardrobe rotation to be reused.

With a prop like this, they blew it apart, you couldn't reuse this, so it probably would have been trash in any of the studios, but he kept it and then you bought it.

So now we talk about value.

Because there are so few things and because Godfather II was the first sequel to ever win Best Picture in addition to the first film-- it actually won six Oscars, and Godfather I only won three.

I didn't know that.

Over time, we often talk about, with collectibles, what's the enduring legacy of a film or what's the enduring legacy of a star.

The enduring legacy of the Godfather movies are to the moon.

Because of that, at auction, conservatively, I would put an estimate of probably $6,000 to $8,000 on it.

Oh, cool!

All right, well, thank you.

WALBERG: The Statue of Liberty has looked out over New York Harbor since 1886.

The statue's creator, Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, called her "Liberty Enlightening the World."

Roadshow appraiser Eric Silver enlightened us on our visit to the New York Historical Society, where we saw a number of antique Statue of Liberty souvenirs and works of art.

Eric, so many people have stories about the Statue of Liberty, either as tourists visiting New York and it's an icon they've hoped to see, or as immigrants coming here to America.

It all was the brainchild of Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, a famous sculptor in France who thought this would be a great symbol of French and American unity, and the hope was that this would be up and erected and standing tall for the centennial of the United States in 1876, but it didn't go like that, did it?

ERIC SILVER: No, they had to raise a substantial amount of money: $250,000 for the statue itself, and for the pedestal, which was designed by the American architect Richard Morris Hunt, they had to raise $100,000.

They did exhibit the full-size arm and torch at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, and after the centennial, it was in Madison Park in New York City for six years.

WALBERG: It wasn't until 1886 that we actually got the statue here.

SILVER: That's right.

She's 305 feet tall, making her the tallest free-standing sculpture in the country.

But we have some smaller versions here, so tell me about these.

As part of the fundraising effort, Bartholdi made these reductions.

He made them in four-foot, three-foot, two-foot and one-foot.

And they were produced in France by a company called Avoiron, and the examples we have here are the three-foot and the two-foot versions.

These are made out of a material we call spelter.

It's also referred to as white metal or pot metal.

It's primarily the metal zinc.

Very soft, workable material.

They are quite rare.

The three-foot version came up in 1985, just before the centennial of the unveiling of the Statue of Liberty, and it brought $121,000 at auction.

In 2013, one of the same size brought $37,500.

That's a significant drop.

I would imagine there was a boom during the centennial.

Exactly, a lot of collectors vying for these things.

The one-foot version, the last one brought $3,000, so this two-foot version would bring somewhere between $3,000 and $37,500.

Well, it's really wonderful to learn about the Statue of Liberty and the history and see these wonderful, wonderful replicas here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

WOMAN: This watch belonged to my great-grandfather, who had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

He had come up from Baltimore, and I believe the watch was connected to... as a gift or purchased at that time.

APPRAISER: This is the story of a lot of watches.

There's a wonderful presentation inscription inside the watch and the date "1868."

Now, what's interesting about this watch really is that it's a state-of-the-art 1868 watch.

We've heard of a lot of the watch companies that are still around such as Patek Philippe, who made wonderful watches in the 19th century, and this is a watchmaker who was very highly regarded in the 19th century and is nearly forgotten today.

His name is Jules Jurgensen.

Now, he was Danish, but the watch was made in Switzerland.

Oh!

I thought it was New York.

Now, when you bought a watch like this, it was fairly expensive, so you got a lot of accessories with it.

Now, in this case, it's come with its original box, it's got a spare main spring inside it here, a spare crystal, and a guarantee certificate.

And if we looked at the other side of the guarantee certificate, we'd see that it was rated for keeping time.

These are sort of underappreciated, but that doesn't mean that they're not very, very special in their own way.

If we take the watch off the hook and hold it here... You're familiar with setting a watch by turning the crown.

Jules Jurgensen invented what was known as bow setting.

To set this watch, you push the bow down very carefully and then turn the crown.

And if we then move the bow back up, the watch winds.

This is characteristic of Jurgensen watches.

But what's really special about this is that you can tell the time without even looking at the watch.

This is what's known as a minute repeating watch.

So if we activate it with the slide on the side of the watch, and I will hold it up here... (watch chiming) You can hear it chime the hours.

"Ting-tang" is for the quarters.

(laughing) And then a few "tings" for the minutes.

Inside the front cover, there's a very interesting inscription.

It's inscribed to William Lemmon, who was my great-grandfather.

These watches were highly desirable in the 19th century, still are today.

A few years ago, it was not such a valuable watch, but recently, when these have been selling at auction, they've been bringing prices between $12,000 and $18,000.

That's great!

(laughing) Really nice.

(chiming) WOMAN: I got these from my father, and he got them from his parents' estate.

One great-grandfather was in the American Navy from 1881 to 1911, and in the years 1881 to 1886, he was in China, so maybe it was a souvenir he brought home.

APPRAISER: Well, I'm glad you brought them.

The China theory is one that has been floated in the marketplace for many years, but truthfully, I think they were made in Japan.

Yeah.

There was actually a company in Yokohama, Japan, that was called the George Washington Company.

Can't make that up.

Right.

Right around 1907, 1908.

What's happening in the American Navy then is Teddy Roosevelt is taking the Great White Fleet around the world, and your great-grandfather might have served on one of those ships in the Great White Fleet and went on shore and bought these as souvenirs.

Records indicate that they were not necessarily inexpensive, that back in 1907, 1908, they might have cost a Navy man five to ten dollars each.

That's a lot of money.

Silk, back then, was not sold by the yard.

Silk was sold by weight.

And the people that made the silk washed the silk in lead, in a lead rinse.

It made it very heavy, thus they got more money by the weight.

They're stitched to this heavy paper and they're secure, and then they were folded to protect them.

They lie flat, they're easy to transport, put back on the ship and take back home.

And the colors are vibrant.

This is all silk embroidery.

Over here, what we have is a gouache.

So in a way, although formulaic, they're individual pieces of art.

The one close to you is George Washington crossing the Delaware, and over here is Farragut in a good Navy battle that would appeal to any Navy man.

Yeah.

So putting a value on them, I would feel comfortable saying around $1,200 to $1,500 insurance value each.

Okay.

It's a great story that I think our viewers can learn from.

Oh, thank you.

I have never seen anything like them.

WOMAN: My mom found it in an attic back in the '70s, of a neighbor, and she took it because she liked the frame because she was doing pressed flowers at the time.

She just took it for the frame.

Ended up in our kitchen, then I started liking daisies and she gave it to me for my new house, so now I have it in my bedroom.

APPRAISER: Good, so this made it from the kitchen to the bedroom.

That's always progress.

Exactly, yes.

Do you know who painted this piece?

George C. Ault.

George Copeland Ault, that's quite right.

And have you done any research on him, do you know anything about the artist?

All I know is that he retired in Woodstock, New York.

And I'm from Kingston, New York.

So you're nearby.

Which is nearby, yes.

Well, yes, he was from Cleveland, Ohio, originally.

And he came from a fairly wealthy background there.

His father was in the printing business and, in fact, took the whole family over to London when he was quite young.

But he always encouraged his son's artistic pursuits.

In fact, George Ault ended up studying in London for a while at the famous Slade School of Art and also the St. John's Wood School of Art as well.

So quite an interesting background.

Not typical of many of the American artists working in that time.

Eventually came back to the United States about 1911, I believe, and he took all those influences from British Impressionism, from the Surrealists, the Cubists, put them all together, added a bit of a dash of American folk art as well.

Was sometimes linked with the Precisionist movement, too, which is characterized often by urban imagery, and there's a lot of geometry in there as well, so you see that.

Yes, yup.

But this is a little different from those paintings.

Mm-hmm, yes.

You know, he did these very interesting urban landscapes and these sort of rural landscapes of deserted barns, very haunting images.

That's all I could find, yeah.

A lot of people know him for that, but here we have a nice little flower piece.

And in this particular instance, the medium that George Ault has used is watercolor and gouache paint.

This is the backboard that we took out earlier.

So we see, "To Jenny, from George and Louise," who is his wife, and that's in 1942.

Well, I wonder whether Jenny might have been... Could it have been the neighbor?

It might have been, I do not know.

I don't know.

Then about six years later he was dead.

Oh, okay.

He had a very tragic... (chuckles) life, I have to say.

I shouldn't laugh, it really was tragic.

His mother suffered from mental illness and died in an asylum.

All three of his brothers took their lives by their own hand in a couple of cases because of the stock market crash, and the whole family fortune was wiped out.

He struggled with drinking, his eyesight started to fail, and to cap it all, when he was living in the Woodstock area, and of course that was the site of an important artist colony... Yup.

He was coming home one night, and the bridge he was expecting to find there had blown away or washed away and he ended up falling straight into the river and drowned.

Some people actually thought that was a suicide as well.

So pretty tragic circumstances.

Yeah, I had no idea.

His widow, as was, then set about creating his reputation as an artist and did so very successfully.

I think at auction, a fair estimate would be $8,000 to $12,000.

(chuckling): Okay.

And to think my mom just wanted the frame.

There you are.

(chuckles) Pretty glad she hung onto the painting, too.

Wow, that's crazy.

It's a small, but beautifully formed little painting.

Wow, okay, I had no idea.

MAN: The first time I saw it, I thought it was perhaps from Nepal.

I collect tribal art.

I was attracted to it the moment I saw it, and the art dealer who had this piece said, "Do you know who Louise Nevelson is?"

And I said, "It doesn't ring a bell, at first."

He said, "She's only the most famous female American sculptor that there is."

I said, "I believe you," I said, "but I'm more interested in the piece."

He owed me a little money, I consigned tribal art to him from time to time, and we came to an agreement with a little cash and what he owed me, and I since have researched Louise Nevelson and now I know who she is.

And he thought that this piece dated from the late '40s.

It was a gift to her friend Flora Morrell, who lived down in Greenwich Village.

And when she died, some of these pieces that were in her collection came out.

And I did find a record of Flora Murrell selling two paintings from Louise Nevelson at auction some years ago.

And in the auction records she states that it came directly to her from the artist.

Okay, and so Louise Nevelson is considered one of the most important American female sculptors of the 20th century.

And she was born in 1899.

She was actually a Russian immigrant.

And in the 1930s she was taking classes at the Art Students League of New York.

And she had her first solo show in 1941.

She's most widely known for these monumental cubist monochromatic pieces, generally made from found objects mounted onto boards.

And you see huge ones in institutions and museums.

There's a very large sculpture, which was then cast into bronze at Princeton University, and she's in many, many important museums around the world.

I think there's a piece of hers on Park Avenue, if I remember correctly.

That's correct.

I knew her art, I didn't know her name.

She's incredibly important.

When pieces come up by her, people pay attention.

In her early career she experimented with lots of different things.

She experimented with painting and printmaking.

We see those works come up for auction.

And she also experimented with these smaller, almost tribal wood carvings.

But then there's also this sort of cubist artwork being drawn into it as well.

It doesn't quite look tribal.

So it's really her experimenting with different forms.

We know her first exhibition was in 1941.

So I suspect this is a piece dating from the early 1940s, possibly as early as '41, but somewhere between 1940 and 1945.

It's most likely carved out of pine, or another soft wood that has been ebonized or stained to give it this dark treatment.

And that actually lends itself towards her later monochromatic pieces in black and white.

It's not signed.

No.

But based upon the provenance and the information that you have of where it came from, I think anyone could strongly attribute this piece to her.

That's great.

How much did you pay for it?

The total would have been $1,400.

If this piece were to come up to auction today, I think a very reasonable estimate would be $12,000 to $18,000.

Really?

Yes.

That I wasn't expecting.

That's... that makes me happy, but I'm happy to have the piece.

WOMAN: It was my mother's.

I believe she bought it from an antique dealer when she was first married.

APPRAISER: Well, the vase was designed and made by René Lalique.

Yes.

It's called Sirènes et Cabochons.

Sirènes are sirens-- mermaids, if you like.

And the cabochons are these sort of lumps in between them.

René Lalique began his career as a jeweler in the 1880s.

And he became the most successful jeweler in the world.

But he wasn't really satisfied with that.

In 1912, he's 52 years old, he officially becomes a glassmaker.

But this vase, to me, which was designed by the way in 1913 and released in 1914, very early in René Lalique's glassmaking career, ideally represents those two careers in transition.

It's really a glass vase wrapped in a necklace.

The sirènes et cabochons are taken directly from René Lalique's jewelry designs, and he's put it around the neck of a glass vase.

Wow.

Now, I hope you didn't chip this on the way here today.

No, that's been chipped for my whole life.

Your whole life.

My whole life.

With damage, if you lose the integrity of the object, if you lose the original intent, the original form, you're going to lose the value.

If you like, the genie escapes from the bottle.

Okay.

But in this case, I believe that this can be successfully and professionally restored to the point where the integrity will still be there.

I cannot say that the damage does not make a difference because it does.

But nevertheless, I would have to say this one, at auction, in this condition, would be worth at least $4,000 and maybe as much as $6,000.

Very nice.

Very nice.

Thank you very much.

WOMAN: This is a chess set that I've had for a number of years.

I think it was Sixth Avenue, Paul Lobel had a shop.

This was in the window.

I could never afford anything in his shop, not even the earrings.

And at some point, my husband bought me the chess set.

Well, you've mentioned who it's by, and it is by Paul Lobel, Yes.

the famous American modernist designer.

His first big hit was really in 1934 when he was selected to participate in an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on contemporary American industrial design.

And in that exhibit, he had a prototype of a tea set.

So that's really his first claim to fame.

But during the war, he switched to using silver and designing more jewelry and smaller sculptures and figures.

It was at this time in 1944 that he opened his store in Greenwich Village.

And what's interesting about that is that the same year, in 1944, there was an exhibition at a gallery here in New York called the Julien Levy Gallery called "The Imagery of Chess."

Several very important Surrealist artists exhibited chess sets, chess pieces, chess tables, or images relating to chess.

Wow.

And some of those artists include Calder, Gorky, Duchamp, Ernst.

Wonderful.

It's a who's who of all the important Surrealists at that time.

Incredible.

Lobel was not participating in it as an artist, but I think he looked at that and did his own chess set.

So we have here on the top the chess pieces made out of sterling silver...

Right.

copper...

Right.

And then they're placed on this piece of glass, which rests above a teak and brass checkerboard pattern.

And I think what's the most interesting is that he's used this negative space where there isn't any teak or brass as the darker squares on the chess board.

That's right.

And if we take a piece off here, we're going to see that he marked it on the underside with his name and "sterling," since it is sterling silver.

Right.

So he's done these great interpretations of all the pieces on a chessboard.

It's not what we normally expect.

No.

Do you remember at the time it was purchased for you what your husband paid for it?

Yes.

I thought it was exorbitant because he spent $1,000, which in those days was an awful lot of money, but he knew I loved it, and he bought it.

And that was in 1954?

'54.

I think today, a very reasonable auction estimate-- and I think this is conservative-- would be $25,000 to $35,000.

That would be very nice.

That would be lovely.

They're like little mini sculptures.

WOMAN: This is, I'm told, a Portland vase.

And I think it's Wedgwood, but there's no mark on it, so I want to find out about that.

That's about all I know.

I want to find out how old it is.

APPRAISER: Tell me how you acquired it.

I come from Cleveland, Ohio, and back in the '40s they used to have a huge white elephant sale, which raised money for the Cleveland Garden Center.

And my mother was a volunteer there.

It was mainly a sale, but the best things they got they put into an auction.

And she was leaving one day after volunteering there and she heard the auctioneer just pleading with the audience, "Somebody please bid on this vase," and nobody was.

So she thought, "Well, I'll help them out."

And so she raised her hand and bid $12, thinking it would just get it started.

And still, nobody bid, so she got it for $12.

Wow, and when did you acquire it from her?

When she died in '75, and I acquired it then.

Well, even to think back to the '40s, $12 was a tidy sum of money back then.

Well, yes, yeah.

It is in fact a Portland vase.

The Portland vase goes back to a Roman glass vase that was given to the Duchess of Portland.

That's why the name.

Thus the name Portland eventually was given to the British Museum in London, and Wedgwood got its concept from the original Roman glass.

So basically, what we do have is a piece of black jasper, a solid piece of black jasper.

And why I say solid, there's two versions of black jasper.

There's what's called a black jasper dip, which would be taking a white body, dipping it in black, and then applying the white relief.

Or in this case, a solid black, and then with the white applied relief.

It actually saved a step in the process by doing it this way.

Portland vases were made in a number of different sizes and a number of different colors.

The black and white tends to be one of the most popular.

Oh.

And certainly this is the full size.

This is a ten-and-a-half-inch size.

On the bottom, there's always a gentleman...

Yes.

...wearing what's called a Phrygian cap.

Yes, I love that on the bottom.

And that's what should be on the bottom of a full-size one.

It was on the bottom of the Roman glass one, but they do think that that wasn't original to the vase, that that was put on to cover up a repair.

Subsequently, Wedgwood still used it in his design, and so the full-size one should always have this.

Yeah.

It's beautifully modeled and a nice example.

This particular one, dating to about 1880 to 1900.

Hmm, okay.

It does have one little chip right down there on the foot, which hurts the value a little bit, but not a lot.

Oh, good.

You said that it was not marked.

No, I can't find any mark on it.

I think it's not a case that it's not marked, it's just a case of you didn't know where to look.

Oh, and where is it?

And if we look down, right at the bottom of the tree trunk, right there is an impressed mark: Wedgwood.

Oh, I never saw that.

And that's traditionally where they would mark it, right along the foot rim.

So though that might be the last place you would look, it's the first place that I looked for it.

Yeah.

Very, very, very popular today.

In some of their designs they used a Portland vase as the symbol of Wedgwood.

Oh.

So the Portland vase is sort of one of those items that everybody that's a collector would like to have one full-size example in it.

On a good day, at a good auction, it will realize somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000.

Oh, my goodness.

Oh, I had no idea.

It's an excellent example.

Oh, that's wonderful.

I was so pleased that you brought it today.

Thank you very much.

Oh, thank you for telling me that.

You're welcome.

I'm just thrilled, I really am.

WOMAN: This table belonged to my uncle, who was an architect.

I have a number of his papers, so I saw that this table he purchased at Palazzetti in New York, but I didn't see any bill.

It was just in the list of his things.

He had a really whimsical sense of humor, so this piece fit right in.

And when did you acquire it?

He died about six or seven years ago, and I inherited his furniture.

And I sold some things, but this one I loved, and I said, "I'm keeping this one."

Well, it's interesting that you used the words "whimsical" and that he had a sense of humor.

Because one of the things that I love about this table is that both of those things are infused into the design.

So it's not really all about materials, it's also about imagination and humorous ideas.

And those are hallmarks of the Surrealist movement.

Yes.

And this was designed by Meret Oppenheim, one of the female Surrealists.

In a movement that was dominated by male figures, she brought a distinct feminine appeal to the movement.

And this is not only tall and elegant, but it's also humorous in that this wonderful, sort of oversized, almost Jurassic Park-like bird leg is impressed on the top of the table.

If you could imagine a bird walking across a soft stream bed, and the impressions that the bird's feet would make, she has taken the impressions of these feet and placed them on the top of the table.

And she's covered it in gold leaf.

I think this is kind of the epitome of the Surrealist movement.

The background of the design of this table is that it was designed in 1939 at the height of the Surrealist movement.

But it wasn't put into serial production until the early '70s.

And there was a company called Simon Gavina that acquired the rights to produce this.

And in fact, technically, they reproduced it.

So what you have here is a reproduction.

But the interesting thing about reproductions is that you tend to hear that word and you think, "It can't be very valuable because it's a reproduction."

Have you ever had any idea what it might be worth?

Actually, I do because I saw it went on auction three times.

The lowest was $2,500.

I saw it at auction, I think it was 2007, and it went for over $13,000.

And then more recently it was about $7,000.

So I guess it depends on the what the market is at that time, I'm not sure.

But so it could be anywhere in there, but I'm not selling it.

With this particular table, because it's a reproduction, the market actually wants items that were produced closer to the original reproduction date.

They were originally produced in 1971.

And in fact, you can still buy them today.

You can buy one for under $3,000 that's still an authorized reproduction.

Now one thing your table does not have is a label.

The labels originally would give us a little bit more insight.

Because the label changed over the years.

And you can tell a little bit more about the production from the label.

The one that you saw that sold for $13,000 actually had one of the original labels from the early '70s, and that gives buyers a confidence about when it was produced.

I think he purchased it in 1979.

So that puts it in the early period.

One of the ways that I can tell that it was a '70s production is by looking at these screws underneath.

This is exactly how they were produced in the'70s and it's slightly different today.

In this condition, as an example from the 1970s, I would say that at auction this table would probably bring about $7,000.

That's excellent news.

Excellent.

And I really...

I love it.

Well, back in 1871, my great-great-grandmother had a boardinghouse in Boston, and she housed the Boston baseball team.

Most of them had come from the Cincinnati Red Stockings and were among the first to be paid to play baseball.

Do you know what they were paid in those days, the first professional teams?

Well, I know the Cincinnati Reds, the first... $9,300 I read was the entire payroll for the baseball team at that time.

Now, all these cards went to your great-grandfather?

That's how he got them and they got handed down to you?

Yeah, apparently he collected them, and he unfortunately cut them down to fit this little album, so they're all slightly askew.

And the thing that's special, in addition to the cards, is this letter, and they all wrote a little sentence and signed it.

They must have really loved her.

I'm sure she did the cooking, the cleaning for them.

Because if you read some of these lines here: "I am just going upstairs to supper and feel awful hungry, "but do not expect much, poor meals here, too hungry to say anymore, Harry Wright."

Here we have, "Would that we were home again, "my sentiments have been expressed "in the above paragraphs; big meals.

A.G.

Spaulding."

Well, what you have here are some of the earliest known 1871 photographic baseball cards.

Harry Wright here and his brother George Wright is here.

You know, these were the original Wright brothers.

Also Albert Spaulding.

Now, Spaulding is a very familiar name, isn't it?

Right.

He was the first well-known player to use a fielding glove.

And what did he build from that?

A sporting goods empire.

We have never seen these cards before.

To have this letter with Harry Wright and Spaulding on it is tremendous.

To have anything with their signatures on it is phenomenal because again, you're talking about the precursor to the National and American leagues.

So, that all said, you're going to keep them in the family, right?

I want to, yes.

Okay, now I'm going to value this as an archive, everything here.

If you're going to insure it, I would insure it for at least $1 million.

Are you serious?!

Oh, my.

(chuckles) Holy smokes.

(choking up): It is the greatest archive I have ever had at the Roadshow.

Really?

Holy smokes.

Guess I better put it in a bank vault.

I have to say, you have hit a grand slam today.

time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.

This is an original drawing by Edwin Dickinson.

His paintings are worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Unfortunately, not this one.

And this is a Howdy Doody time teacher, and it was on the wall in my house for my entire life.

I don't really know who he is because it's a little bit before my time, but my mom knows who he is.

It's appraised at about $50 to $75.

♪ It's Howdy Doody time, it's Howdy Doody time ♪ ♪ I don't know any more words.

♪ These paintings, which are absolutely beautiful and we love, are not very valuable.

This is a fake and this is just an unknown artist.

And the appraiser said I'm the happiest person she's ever had to give bad news to.

I have that I found out is a Taoist carving of a maiden princess.

Value of $400 and glad to be here.

And this is my mother-in-law's grilled cheese maker that was valued at "cool."

(chuckling) I've had this doll for about 20 years, and I found out that it's only worth 20 bucks.

It's a dollar a year.

And we have a 1930s train conductor watch that we found out is only worth $150 because the mechanisms on the Italian watches used to accidentally spin forward in the conductors' pockets and cause train crashes.

Mille grazie, Antiques Roadshow.

I'm Mark Walberg, thanks for watching.

See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.

How you doing, you guys?

This is like Disneyland for adults.

It is.

I'm glad you're having fun.

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