Austin, Hour 1 (2015)

Antiques Roadshow is thrilled to be back in Austin, Texas.

What was your first memory of this?

Running around with it on my head in the living room.

You played with it as a kid?

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Wow, that's amazing.

And if I'd left it there it would just have been thrown away.

Stay tuned for some of the best antiques, art and collectibles we found in Austin, coming right up.

Welcome to Antiques Roadshow.

Hi, I'm Mark Walberg in Austin, Texas.

Austin is known worldwide for its vibrant music scene.

With many annual festivals and countless concerts daily across the city, it's easy to see why it's called the live music capital of the world.

At Antiques Roadshow, old treasures and fine art are the rock stars that draw crowds to our sold-out event.

Let's see what antiques struck a chord here in Austin today.

Local antique dealers had both passed away, and these were estate sales, the last day of it.

And I was kind of scavenging, so I'd pulled a pile together of a few rugs and some other textiles, and this item, which was hanging on the wall.

And I thought it was odd that it was still there.

And it had an older look to it, and I figured these guys were antique dealers, so for them to put it on the wall in their house, it must have been something of importance.

But it was great looking, anyway.

And so what did you pay for the whole bunch?

I paid $225 for the pile of things I'd put together.

It looked to me like the handle wasn't as old as the sword part in the painting, but I really couldn't tell.

It's made from a swordfish bill.

Mm-hmm.

We're not positive if it was a group of carvers or if it was one person, but probably in a port somewhere up in New England, these were done after the sailors came back.

I doubt they would have had the tools or the paint with them to do the paint decoration.

Whoever did these did them in varying degrees of complexity, but all of them have these wonderful patriotic motifs.

That fish closest to you shows up...

I found two of these that had sold, and they had the fish and the flag at the end of them, both of them.

Of course, this one has a lighthouse, and I love the way the handle is carved and the way they integrated all those eagles in there.

I think this was made during the time of the centennial, in the 1870s up until the turn of the century.

I know your thought was that this handle might be a little bit later, but this is carved out of wood, absolutely original.

If you compare the paint colors throughout, like the blue in this with the blue here... and the wear pattern is perfect.

There's nothing that anybody has done to that to distress that surface.

It's what I would call honest wear.

And you notice when you put it on the table, I put it under a really strong light.

Right.

Now, one of the other things that I did was I looked inside of some of the cracks.

In that crack right there, there's no paint.

And that's a good sign that somebody didn't take something old and put paint over top of it.

Sometimes when you have something old, they'll paint it, and then they'll put stain over it and they'll actually make it look worn.

But this...

I think this is a straight-ahead, honest thing.

And it's a really great example.

I would call it a swordfish bill sword.

Okay.

And I would call it a folk art sword.

Mm-hmm.

I would say a retail value in today's world for this would be $2,000 or $3,000.

Oh, nice.

Very good.

Man, you are a lucky duck.

MAN: My father used to travel on business in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.

And he was a very good amateur artist.

So after he'd do his business, he'd go down to Greenwich Village, and he'd hang out with the artists in those days-- de Kooning, Kline, Resnick, who did this painting, and many others.

And he did this for years, and he'd go up to their studios, look at what they were doing... Wow.

...often buy one or two paintings from them, usually for not much more than the cost of the canvas.

Uh-huh.

He ended up with quite a collection.

We inherited a few of the items, including this one.

This particular one, when the members of the family were looking at it with us, some of them said, "Oh, that's not worth anything.

"Why don't we give it away to a home for the elderly or Goodwill or something?"

(laughs) We said, "No, we think we'll take that."

And we did, and we've had it ever since.

Now, did you ever travel with your father to New York?

Yeah, sure.

I was with him.

Now, at that time, he was in his 60s, I was in my late 20s.

After a day of business and calling on customers, we'd go do that, and we'd run till midnight.

And the next day we'd be up at 7:00 in the morning.

And after two or three days, I could barely keep up with him, and he was still doing it.

Yep.

Oh, that's great.

Well, this is a terrific picture that you brought.

Milton Resnick is an interesting artist in that he has two important periods.

He was part of the abstract expressionist movement.

He had come over to America from Russia when he was five years old.

And he enjoyed fine art, but his father was very much against him pursuing an art career.

So they let him do a commercial art career through the Pratt Institute.

And the teachers there immediately said, "No, you're a fine artist.

You need to study more."

His father forbid it.

So he left home at 17, moved out.

In the '50s he was doing abstract expressionist works, and that was sort of his first period.

Then in the '70s and '80s his style changed a lot.

It became very muted in terms of the palette, and created sort of a mottled, subtle sort of texture, very different from this sort of piece.

Now, each of the two periods has very different appeal in the current market.

Now, the question is, is this the good period or the less desirable period?

Do you happen to know?

No, I don't.

It's the good period.

Oh, that's good.

It's the period you want to see.

He was part of that first generation of abstract expressionists, and he was the last one to survive.

He actually didn't pass away until 2004.

So this is a great example of his work-- very colorful, very animated in terms of the brushstroke.

This is an oil executed on canvas.

And although it's a relatively small picture for him, it has a fair amount of value.

At auction, you could expect this to fetch between $15,000 and $25,000.

Well, that's great.

I got it from my father, who got it from my grandfather, who got it from a friend of my great-grandfather's.

What was your first memory of this?

Running around with it on my head in the living room.

You played with it as a kid?

Oh, yeah.

What do you think it is?

Well, I know it's from Rwanda and that it's a fertility mask.

And that's about it.

And so you were wondering... the fertility thing kind of surprised you, didn't it?

Yeah, I don't see how that's conducive, but... Why this would get somebody in the mood?

(both laughing) First of all, it's not from Rwanda.

It's from the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

And the piece is from the Kuba tribe.

That's K-U-B-A.

And it's located sort of in the south central part of the country.

This is one of three masks, major masks, that the Kuba use to sort of reenact ceremonies.

And they do these sections about controlling power.

And this represents the common man.

So this is the mask that speaks for the little guy.

The other two masks are buried with the owners.

This mask is passed on.

We find that these sometimes are a bit older.

And I want you to look at the surface.

We have a wonderful patine here on the lips, on the edges of the nose.

The inside has a really nice surface on it.

So when we look for indications of use, this certainly has it.

So we have great collection history, we know the function of it, we have a great surface.

So this is definitely an old and fine mask.

I think it's clearly a late 19th century... at the very latest, 1900.

But I think it's a late 19th century mask.

I was also wondering, what kind of, like, hide is this?

And is this human hair?

Yeah, this is... None of these parts on this are problematic.

This is monkey, this is probably monkey.

These are seeds down here, and these are trade beads.

We have a carved wooden structure, a carved wooden helmet mask, and over that we have applied copper.

We have this sort of natural fabric and cowry shells, and then this sort of natural fiber and cowry shells down here.

What do you think it's worth?

My dad told me once that he was offered $1,200 for it, and he turned them down for whatever reasons.

I believe that this mask, at a good auction today, would bring $4,000-$6,000.

Wow, he was smart to hang on to it, then.

I think he did the right thing.

And I brought him here in a grocery bag, and now I feel like it's a little bit undignified.

(laughter) How big is your house?

(chuckles) Well, it's too big for the house.

How did you end up with a 1964 World Champion St. Louis Cardinals banner?

Well, I worked for the Cardinals in 1970, before I went into the military.

And we were cleaning out an area for the new football field to come in.

So we were cleaning out underneath the stadium, and there were some boxes sitting there, and we asked them what to do with them.

They said, "We don't care what you do with them-- just get rid of them."

So when we opened them up, the flag was in there.

So I asked, "Well, can I have this?"

And they said, "Yeah, take it."

What were your memories?

I can remember the first day walking out.

You don't realize the crowd when you're sitting in the stands.

But when you walk on the field and you see this immense amount of people, it's unbelievable.

What I think about when I think about the '64 World Series, it's really an end of an era and the beginning of an era.

Because Stan Musical, of course, the great Cardinals player, had only retired a couple of years, a few years prior to '64.

And in 1964 it was the last World Series to feature Mickey Mantle.

The Yankee dynasty, since 1949, they had been in 14 World Series.

The Yankees in 1964 lost in seven games to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Two years later the Yankees were in the basement, which was unthinkable.

And yet St. Louis, now is this beginning of this fabulous dynasty, because the players they had in the World Series were Bob Gibson, phenomenal pitcher who had a 2-1 record.

They had Curt Flood, and they also had Lou Brock.

So this is a phenomenally exciting and really historically important World Series.

If I were going to put an auction estimate on this, I'd probably be conservative and put $5,000-$7,000 on it.

But if I was going to insure it, I would say probably $12,000 for insurance value.

Really?

That's great.

So that was a pretty good box lot.

(chuckling): Yes, it was.

WOMAN: They belonged to my mother's mother.

And I remember them hanging in her kitchen when I was just a little, bitty girl.

And I'm knocking on 80 right now.

And they've been hanging in my kitchen for about 25 years.

And you have all kept them pristine.

Now, your grandmother's house was where?

Well, it was in San Antonio.

And that's where these were made.

Oh, really?

These were made by the San Jose Mission, which was really a group of different workshops and potteries that were headed by Ethel Harris.

It started around 1934, and it went on until 1977.

These particular tiles here would have been done 1934-1945.

Because often they're not marked, it's easy to not know who made them.

It's also easy to believe that these were done in Mexico, because the style is very Mexican.

Ethel Harris' main designer, Fernando Ramos, was the one who would probably have helped doing these.

And I have never seen the one with the lady at the oven there.

These are quite collectible.

These days a retail value on each of them is probably in the $700 range.

You're kidding.

Whoa!

Each one?

Each one.

Oh, that's amazing.

That just takes my breath away.

WOMAN: I brought you a spinning wheel, which was presented to my mother by Mahatma Gandhi.

My grandfather was a great proponent of Indian independence, trying to drum up support here in the United States for the cause of Indian independence.

He dispatched my mother to London-- Gandhi was at the Second Round Table Conference-- and with the idea that she should try to persuade him to make a tour of the United States.

Now, my mother was seven years old at the time.

This is a picture.

This is my grandmother, her mom, and this is her sister.

So that is your grandmother.

Right.

That is your mother, seven years old?

Yes.

And that's her little sister.

Right.

And of course, there's Mahatma Gandhi.

There's Mahatma.

Did you grow up with stories of Mahatma Gandhi?

Oh, yes, because my family was so involved in the whole independence movement.

I mean, they also met Nehru, they met Indira Gandhi, even though she was a little girl at the time.

And how did your mother actually receive the spinning wheel?

When she went, she made her appeal.

She had a petition signed by many important statesmen, including the mayors of five cities, which were the ones who were going to sponsor the tour.

But Gandhi said that he didn't think that America was ready for him yet.

She made a grand effort, and so he said he would give her a gift.

And he asked, what did she want?

And she said she wanted a spinning wheel.

For the Indian independence movement, it represented economic freedom from colonial oppression.

If you spun your own clothes and then wove them with cotton, then you boycotted British goods.

The spinning wheel was a very strong symbol.

And if you look at the Indian flag, it's on the Indian flag today.

It was a very turbulent time in world affairs.

Oh, yes.

The Second Round Table Conference took place in London.

I believe it started in September of 1931.

Mahatma Gandhi was the only Indian national actually invited...

Right.

...to go and talk about the cause of Indian nationalism.

Gandhi's own goals at this conference was expansion of woman rights, ending the caste system, but most importantly, self-rule of India.

Because at the time, India was a colony of the British crown.

That's right.

And he had spent his entire adult life fighting for the cause of India.

Right.

And this was at a very pivotal moment.

So it's just a tremendous moment in history, where he not only, you know, met your grandmother...

Yes.

...met your mother, and presented her with this tremendous, tremendous symbol of the Indian people.

This is a typical style of Indian portable spinning wheel.

Right.

Because of the scarcity of items related to Mahatma Gandhi, if this would come up to auction, we would give a reasonable auction estimate at $50,000-$75,000.

Wow.

Wait until I tell my kids that.

It might make them appreciate it a little bit more, right?

WOMAN: My grandfather gave them to me about 20 years ago.

He had had them in his family a long time.

His parents bought them.

I remember them being in my grandparents' house when I was growing up, and now they're in my house.

And you know that they're Tiffany.

Yes, I was always told they were Tiffany.

What we have here today are two vases that represent the beginning and the end.

Okay.

The beginning of Tiffany glassmaking, and the end of Tiffany glassmaking.

Okay.

Tiffany opened his furnaces for glass blowing in 1893.

Almost six months into that there was a terrible fire in October of 1893, destroying the factory.

Oh, wow.

But he was able to rebuild it in six months, and they were going full steam ahead in 1894.

This piece dates probably from 1895.

Really?

And this piece dates from the 1920s, when they were moving towards closing down.

And it's a more commercial piece.

Okay.

And what's interesting about both of these pieces is that they both have something wrong with them.

Okay.

Now, this piece, the way it's signed on the bottom, it has a number without a prefix letter and without a suffix letter.

That's okay, because that just indicates that this was probably made around 1895.

Below that, though, is the signature, which says, "L.C.

Tiffany Favrile."

And if you look really closely, part of that signature is an original signature.

The other part is not.

It's the "LCT" that's original.

So someone decided they had to gild the lily on this.

Oh.

Now, what is wrong with this?

Someone cleaned it way too much.

Okay.

You didn't do that?

No, I did not.

This is the way you got it.

Yes.

Okay.

I always wondered what this engraving was.

Well, that's an original monogram, so this was made for whomever bought it.

But the color on this, we're down to the copper that you can see through here.

Okay.

And then also it's still a little gold through here.

But I believe that the original color was more of the brown or a statuary bronze color.

So that does affect the value.

But the good news is, it didn't affect the value on this.

I don't like to make a big deal about signatures, because when I look at the piece I always say the piece is the signature.

But after I've done that, I always turn the piece over to look.

I would put a retail price of $3,000 to $4,000 on it.

And then this one, were it in good shape, I would have said maybe $1,500-$2,000.

But because of the condition, I would say more $500-$800.

WOMAN: It's a Roy Lichtenstein pin.

It was given to me in the 1970s by a very dear aunt and uncle who were collectors of California contemporary art in Los Angeles.

I wear it on occasion, but most of the time it's in a case on my nightstand, so I can see it every day.

So you enjoy it.

I love it.

Even when you're not wearing it, you enjoy it.

Absolutely.

I'm sure a lot of people out there know Roy Lichtenstein was a 20th century pop artist-- big prints with all great sayings in them.

There was an outfit called Multiples, Inc, and they still exist today, and their mission is to bring to the masses works by great artists.

Even... they're working on things today, like Banksy and whatnot.

But at an affordable price.

Now, do you know where this possibly might have been purchased by them back in the day?

It was in New York, on one of their buying trips, but I don't know where.

This pin usually was acquired back then when they went to a day at the museum.

(chuckling): Oh, really?

This was the kind of thing, you went to the museum shop, and you just saw an exhibit, and you said, "Hey, there's a Roy Lichtenstein pin."

And the museum would gladly sell it to you for $25.

We don't know how many are out there.

What we call it is an abstract of a modern head, all right, in this polychrome enamel with Ben-Day dots.

Ben-Day dots, yes.

Okay?

Which was a process of printing developed by Benjamin Day.

And he used it a lot, Lichtenstein, and it's still used by other people today.

In the back, in what we call an incised manner, you have, "Roy Lichtenstein," in kind of a facsimile of his signature.

And then beneath it, it's a copyright date, 1968.

That's the year they produced them.

So '68, '69, '70 fits with your story, at least.

Yes.

And then below it it says, "Multiples, Inc." If you put it in an auction today, it would have an auction estimate of $4,000-$6,000.

Wow.

That's pretty amazing.

He did make this in other versions, with different colors.

Now, the black and white one, there were fewer of them produced.

That one, when it comes up, which is rare, regularly brings around $10,000.

This is just a great, great pin.

I'm just so happy you brought it in.

Thank you.

To me its priceless, but I'm thrilled to know that it is valuable.

WALBERG: When Willie Nelson appeared on the first episode of Austin City Limits in 1974, he was at the beginning of a new chapter in his career.

♪ Whiskey River take my mind... ♪ One that would eventually make him a country music legend.

Nelson had been a successful songwriter, but Austin, the live music capital of the world, embraced his laid-back outlaw style, and helped grow his reputation as a performer.

Roadshow appraiser Laura Woolley met us at the University of Texas out of Austin to look at a few items from the country star's amazing life and music.

Laura, the Briscoe Center has an extensive collection, and you've selected a few prime items to take a look at.

And before we do that, let's talk about Willie Nelson.

Well, Willie Nelson is Texas' son.

He was born in Abbott, Texas, on April 30, 1933, and went on to become obviously one of the greatest country singers I think the world's even known.

And we'll start with these boots that are from another country western icon.

These were Gene Autry's boots.

Yes.

Gene Autry was actually one of Willie's heroes when he was a child.

Willie had his first guitar at six, but he says it wasn't until he was about eight years old and used to travel to Hillsborough every weekend to watch Gene Autry and Roy Rogers on the big screen, the singing cowboys, that he knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he wanted to ride his horse, play his guitar, and shoot his gun, and become a singing cowboy, and that's exactly what he did.

Gene Autry's widow gifted these boots to Willie Nelson after Gene Autry passed away in 1998.

We also have the archives here of the Lucchese Company, another Texas institution, who made these boots.

And in their files they have the paperwork showing a letter from 1954 from Gene Autry's wife writing to Lucchese, specifically ordering these boots and a couple of other pairs.

Today at auction I would expect a pair of boots with this kind of provenance and this kind of story to sell anywhere between $7,000 and $10,000.

They're incredible.

And then we have this poster here, a concert poster.

Tell me about this.

He was writing songs in Nashville.

He moved there in 1960, and he had great success as a songwriter.

But his phrasings were a little offbeat and artsy.

He had very complex melodies that didn't fit in with some of the two and three-chord country songs of the time.

So he actually found himself playing a lot of the Texas beer joints and commuting back and forth.

In 1971, he decided it was time to pack it in, and leave Nashville, and head for home.

It's called the Hello Walls poster, 1972.

It's at the Armadillo World Headquarters, which is another institution in Austin.

He's a little bit unrecognizable here.

He doesn't have the braids and the beard that we're used to in this poster, but it's a great poster, and it's a wonderful moment in his career.

This is a developing market.

In the auction market and that kind of world it's quite young.

Right now the market for posters like this is probably in the $100-$150 range.

Tell me about this platinum record.

This is a platinum record award for one million copies sold of the album Always On My Mind.

It actually eventually went triple platinum.

The thing to look for when you see these is that they're from the RIAA, which is the Recording Industry Association of America, which is the official certification body in the United States.

Anyone who was involved with the album might receive this as a thank you for their hard work in creating the success.

So to have the one that's actually presented to the artist themselves is really the most important one.

Because this one is his personal copy, at auction I would expect this anywhere between $3,000 and $5,000.

Really great to see these examples here.

And also incredible that he's given this collection to the Briscoe Center that we can enjoy.

And thanks for sharing.

Thank you.

WOMAN: I brought in a collection of Civil War memorabilia that belonged to my great-great-grandfather.

This I don't know much about.

To me it appears like some sort of pouch that he might have used during his service in the Civil War.

I know he fought at the Battle of Shiloh and the Battle of Vicksburg.

So to me it seems like something you would keep your materials in, maybe your field notes, something like that.

Did he serve after 1863, the Battle of Vicksburg?

He was captured by the Union, and then released and paroled to go home.

So he walked home from Mississippi back to Texas, and then I think he reenlisted back into the army.

And I think he fought until the end, but he stayed in Texas.

What part of Texas?

He's from Houston, Texas, yes.

Houston.

Mm-hmm.

Well, have you ever been on Travis Street in Houston?

Downtown, yeah.

Well, during the Civil War, there were two buildings on Travis Street that were leased to the ordinance department.

Okay.

And they produced leather goods.

Okay.

They're one of the rarest of all Confederate leather goods.

Okay.

This is actually for holding cartridges.

This one is what is referred to by collectors as a Houston depot.

It is a copy of the Union cartridge boxes of the day.

There are several things that we look for that let us know it's Confederate rather than Union.

If you don't have this big bold "CS" on the outside cover.

If we open up the flap, we notice on the bottom of the box we have a finial.

And the finial's made of lead.

Okay.

Almost all of the Union finials are made of brass instead of lead.

And most of the time that little leather tab that goes over it is broken off, so it's wonderful that we do have that.

Now for the elephant in the room.

We have the huge "CS" lettering.

Right.

It's the most vividly clear and beautiful stamping that they ever used.

This one's a little hazy, but that just happens because every strike isn't perfect.

Right.

In the middle, it would have said, "Texas, 1864."

Okay.

Which is why I asked you when he went home.

So that lets us know that this is the one that he used when he got released and sent back home.

Okay.

It's a fantastic box.

When I opened it up to show one of our producers, I saw a piece of paper.

And we pulled it out, and it was this piece of paper.

It's actually a label for Enfield rifle cartridges.

And that one little bit of paper lets us know what he was using with his musket, which is interesting, because the Enfield is an English-made gun.

The musket would have been a .577 caliber.

And it's just a wonderful little addition, an unexpected surprise when we opened that up.

Okay.

If this was a standard Union cartridge box, its counterpart, it would probably be worth between $300 and $500.

Okay.

This one is a whole different critter.

Okay.

This one today would retail for about $25,000.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

Wow, that's amazing.

I don't think the family had any idea.

I mean, amongst all the things that we had, I don't think we understood the value of this item.

Wow.

Before today, the collectors market knew of four of these.

Oh, my gosh.

You've got the fifth.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

Whew!

That is... yeah, that's amazing.

That's great.

(chuckling): Holy cow!

MAN: We acquired them in November of 1986.

My mother had seen them, and she was accompanying my sister, who was having her baby in the hospital.

And so my mother asked my wife and I to go buy these paintings at an auction that was being held in Austin.

And so I remember the date-- November of 1986.

And we went and bought them.

Do you remember how much you paid for them at the time?

I do not remember the exact figure.

I want to say for both of them it was around $7,000 or $7,500, but I can't swear to that.

He's Edgar Paxson and he was a very important American Western artist.

Like so many young men in the East in the 1870s, he was captivated by the novels of James Fenimore Cooper and the romance of the frontier.

And then the Battle of Little Bighorn took place and he was compelled to go west.

He was from Upstate New York and he left his wife and his kids and went west.

Ended up in Montana, where he supported himself doing farm, ranch work, working as a military scout, and just kind of keeping himself going out there.

His arrival in the West slightly predated Remington and Russell, who are his two arguably more well-known contemporaries in the world of Western painting.

But he developed a very close friendship with Russell and the two of them worked side-by-side a good deal of the time in Montana.

He became a very adept mural painter.

He had no training at all.

Not a shred of academic, artistic training, although his father had been a sign painter, so there was the possibility that he had some experience with design and that kind of thing.

But he really is a self-taught artist.

While some of his major work revolves around murals he painted for municipal buildings in Montana, what he also excelled at and what people who collect this kind of work now really love are these smaller, more detailed watercolors.

And you've got two really interesting examples here.

And diverse examples.

This example of the Indian on horseback is dated 1907 and is a highly finished picture for him.

It has really articulated detail.

The figure has jewelry and beads and many aspects of the costume that is vital for people today to understand the history of these people.

And Paxson was not just a romantic, sentimental painter.

He was acutely aware of the changes that were happening so rapidly in the West and that this way of life was really disappearing.

The picture nearer to you is perhaps a little more appealing to a lot of collectors because it is so lively and action-packed and shows the romantic vision of the activities in the West of these figures.

It's smaller than this one, it's sketchier, but its appear is equal because of the subject matter.

Okay.

And I would say that each of these works, in an appropriate specialty auction-- which would probably be in the West-- would carry an auction estimate of between $15,000 and $20,000.

Oh, that's nice to hear.

WOMAN: My husband's father was an antique dealer and he inherited it when he died.

And so I have a lot of stuff, and I brought that along spur of the moment, because I don't know anything about it and I'm curious about it.

Was he an antiques dealer here in Austin or was he...?

In Galveston.

In Galveston, okay.

I'm going to start by taking the lid off.

All right.

And we can see underneath the lid, there's a mark here, and it says, "E. Gallé Fayencerie," and then it says "Nancy" underneath it.

Fayencerie is another word for a particular type of pottery.

And this is Émile Gallé, that's his mark.

There's actually another mark here.

It didn't take very well, but that's an impressed mark, also of Émile Gallé.

Émile Gallé is best known as a glass maker working from the town of Nancy in eastern France.

But in his early career, he also made ceramics.

Other things, too-- he made furniture and such.

His father was a potter and to a certain extent, he learned the ceramics business from him.

And this is the kind of thing that Émile Gallé made through the 1880s and into the 1890s.

And it's a beautiful object.

It's what we call a dressing table box, designed to hold little pins and bits of jewelry and that sort of thing.

It's more of a decorative object than anything else.

And what I like about it is the shape of it.

What would you call the shape?

I call it butterfly, but I don't know.

Well, it's actually a moth.

And Gallé and his compatriots in Nancy and in general the French Art Nouveau designers, they loved moths and they loved ordinary things.

And to me the moth is to the butterfly as the weed is to a flower, if you like.

But they celebrated that.

All of the design on the box, as is typical of Gallé, is local flora and fauna, including the moth that unquestionably he saw at night in Nancy.

He painted these exquisite little insects here.

There's a grasshopper.

And these are really inspired by insects as depicted by Japanese artists that had a good deal of influence on Gallé at this point in his career.

It's survived beautifully over the years.

Is it glass or is it porcelain?

It's not glass and it's not porcelain.

It's made of fayence.

And fayence is pottery with a tin glaze, this bluish-white glaze all over the top, a bit like icing on a cake.

Okay.

We've never seen one quite like it at auction, but I think if it came to auction, the low estimate would be $1,000 and the high estimate would be perhaps $1,500.

Very good.

You brought in a number of things from Frank Lloyd Wright and you tell me that you worked at Frank Lloyd Wright?

I joined his fellowship as an apprentice in 1953 and he died six years later, in 1959.

And then all of us older senior guys there got together and finished his work.

It took us ten years to finish the drawings he had on the table.

That's the picture.

I helped supervise the Guggenheim Museum in New York City and this is taken on the monitor building of the Guggenheim museum-- Central Park in the background.

And this is...?

That's me when I was 23, 24 years old.

And obviously, Frank Lloyd Wright.

What was he like to work with?

Mr. Wright, he said, "I don't know if you're aware of it, but your drawings have sparkle."

That's the word he used.

He meant the line weights were such that it snapped out.

And he said, "That's a gift."

And he said, "You should be pleased because a lot of people don't have any gift at all."

I thought, "Wow."

(laughing) But this folio is a kind of a modern reprint in 1961 of a folio he had that he worked on and designed in 1910.

Whenever Horizon Press published Mr. Wright's books after he died, they always set aside 50 or so to give to us senior apprentices at Taliesin, and that's how I got it.

I've had this for 60 years.

I mean, it's a long time.

This is one of the illustrations that's in the book.

Yeah, this is the Winslow House in Oak Park.

The drawings cover the work he did until 1910.

And what is this?

Well, in Arizona on the drafting tables, we had this craft brown paper cover.

Mr. Wright had an idea for this farmhouse.

I was cleaning up the drafting room after he had already gone and I saw this, so I thought, "Well, my God."

They take them off and throw them away, so I thought, "What the heck?"

So I took a razor and cut that out and kept it.

That's all Mr. Wright's own, all of his own work.

And that's sort of what he used to present to us.

He'd do a sketch like that and then give it to us, and we'd use our techniques that he taught us and we'd make the drawings.

As far as the value, it's a good book.

They printed a fair number of them.

The fact that it was given to the apprentices, yourself, retail value, it's about a $1,000 to $2,000 book.

So that's very nice.

This little drawing that you just razored off, that is an original Frank Lloyd Wright.

Oh, yeah.

That is probably worth $8,000 to $10,000.

Oh, my God.

Come on.

If I'd left it there, it would have just been thrown away.

And I think that's even being conservative.

Thank you.

WOMAN: It's been in my family since as long as I can remember.

Mostly sat on top of our refrigerator at home when I was a child.

My great-grandparents-- great-great-grandparents-- also traveled the world back at the turn of the century and I'm assuming it came into the family line somewhere along there.

We've got quite a few artifacts from that time period.

You said this was collecting dust on top of the refrigerator?

Yes, it was.

And in our household with seven kids and dogs and various animals, it was probably the best place for it.

And it was collecting dust a lot longer than that.

Oh, yes, really?

This is from the Ming period.

Between 1368 and 1644.

So I think a little modern dust didn't hurt it too much.

Not at all.

And actually, it's probably from the early part of the period.

Wow.

Probably 1400, 1450 or so.

There were a lot of fakes around in Chinese ceramics, and when you look at this one, you can see this wear and abrasion, and you look at the bottom of the piece, and that foot rim is absolutely worn off, and it's worn off with age.

And it was made principally for export to Islamic countries.

They believed that this color of ware here prevented you from being poisoned.

I've probably seen 1,000 of these.

Really?

You start getting into the value and, again, common.

There's a chip there on it.

Yeah.

The Chinese market is very, very strong right now, but it's not the kind of thing you necessarily collect.

When evaluating pieces, the most important thing is craftsmanship.

The second is rarity.

The last category of the least importance is age.

At auction, this is probably worth between $1,500 and $2,000.

Wow.

That's a lot more than I thought.

I used to live in San Francisco for about five years back in the '80s and saw it at a fundraiser for a nonprofit arts organization.

It was in the silent auction, perhaps.

And I was very interested in it and I may have started to bid on it, but I didn't really have the money.

So I think I quit bidding on it at some point.

I didn't think about it again and then one day, I was given a gift by my employer.

She must have paid attention to what I liked at this fundraiser.

And this would have been in about the late 1980s...

Right, right.

...that you received this?

Yes, I started working for an art adviser-- fine arts, consulting-- because I had worked at the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C.

I started working with her in, like, February of 1986 and then we moved to Austin, Texas, in December of 1990.

And do you happen to remember about at what price you would have dropped out of the bidding in the silent auction?

I don't think I was willing to pay $200 because we were really strapped for cash.

Here on the back of the sculpture, we have the title "Angel," and then it's signed "Oropallo."

And this is for the artist Deborah Oropallo.

Okay.

And she is an active artist in the San Francisco Bay area.

Wow.

In 1981, as a student, Deborah Oropallo received an honorable mention at the California State Fair Art Exhibition.

Wow.

Then in 1983, she earns her master's of fine arts from the University of California, Berkeley.

Wow.

Then, you acquire this in the late 1980s, you think.

Right.

And you also mentioned earlier the National Endowment for the Arts.

Right.

And in 1991, this artist received an award... Oh, you're kidding.

...from the National Endowment of the Arts.

Wow!

That's amazing.

She is still a very active, widely exhibited artist, still in the San Francisco Bay area.

Wow, that is amazing, that's exciting, very exciting.

So if we talk about her market as a current, active artist still exhibiting, oftentimes we're looking at her retail market.

But I also want to talk about the fact that she is developing a secondary market.

Her works are popular at auctions of contemporary art.

We have to be really conservative on an early work in a medium that is not as common as the greater majority of the body of her work.

So this is a cast concrete sculpture and it's deliberately distressed to look like this.

Okay, okay.

So she most often works in oil paint.

So I think if we saw this at auction, we would see it at an estimate of $2,000 to $3,000.

Wow, that's very exciting, very exciting.

I'm thrilled.

WOMAN: This map has been hanging on the wall in my mother's house most of my life.

I spent hours looking at it as a child, and after she died, it started hanging on the wall in my house.

She bought it at some point when I was probably a young child.

Do you have any idea what your mother would have paid for this map?

I have absolutely no idea.

I don't even know where she bought it.

Can you tell me what you like about it?

Well, I know that one of the reasons my mother was interested in it is that it is a very old depiction of the part of Texas that I grew up in and that we lived in with very different river names, a completely different conception of what the part of the world looked like.

Also, it's an incredibly detailed map.

It's got all these names on it, and as a child I was fascinated by just the detail.

And the fact that it's wrong.

This is a map by a man named Nicholas Visscher and he was Dutch and the map is from the second half of the 17th century.

1670, 1690, in that kind of period.

And that's when the Dutch were making the most beautiful maps in the world.

And you can see, the decorative elements are wonderful on it.

It's got these wonderful merpeople down here, it's got some great cherubs, putti up here.

It's got some sailing ships.

It's got these great engravings of Indians in canoes along the East Coast, but in map collecting, a lot of times it's what's wrong about a map that makes it interesting.

And this map happens to be particularly good because it has three pretty big errors.

One of the most famous errors, amiss as they were about American geography, was Dorado-- El Dorado, the Golden City.

Well, the Golden City was a city the Spanish thought existed in the northern part of South America, and Sir Walter Raleigh's captain-- one of his captains-- captured a Spanish map that showed this, and that happens to be right down here.

It says "Manoa or El Dorado."

This huge lake here, that was part of the same myth.

They appeared on maps for awhile.

They finally realized there was no Golden City up there, so it disappeared, but the lake stayed.

And the lake actually stayed until the 19th century until finally von Humboldt went up into that area and he went looking around and said, "There's no lake here!"

and it finally disappeared from maps.

The El Dorado.

Actually, Sir Walter Raleigh lost his life.

He kept saying, "I've got this map of El Dorado.

I can go get you these riches."

And James wanted the riches, so what he said was, "Okay, you go down, but don't get in a fight with the Spanish."

He got in a battle with the Spanish and James said, "That's it, back in prison," and cut off his head.

Another interesting myth is up here in the southeastern part of the United States.

That is a lake from Florida.

It actually belongs down here.

And a cartographer, when he put a couple maps together, moved it up there.

And once it appeared on the map, it continued to appear on a map.

Also an interesting myth for this region.

You see this very big river system here.

That's where the Mississippi should be, but when de Soto in the 1540s was going along in the southern part of the United States, he started down here and kind of went up and then down, and then up and down, he kept running into hills along here.

So you can see, there's this huge mountain range that goes right across, which doesn't exist.

There are mountains in there, but not like that.

Well, with that mountain range, there's no room for the Mississippi.

They drew in a whole bunch of smaller rivers so that you come out with the big gulf of the Mississippi.

This map in this kind of condition in a retail shop would sell for about $1,800.

The thing that would really enhance the value-- and I hate to say this-- is if you actually added color.

Although that may be original color, it's so faded that it's kind of almost not there.

If it was fixed up, had a little brighter color, it would probably sell for a little more than that.

But that's a pretty good, strong price for a fascinating map of America.

So interesting, just fascinating.

MAN: I was at a flea market and found it sitting on a table.

It was so wacky that I had to buy it.

APPRAISER: Well, it's certainly a wacky chair, no doubt about it.

Do you know anything about the history of it?

Mulhauser designed it, but that's all I know about it.

It was designed by George Mulhauser.

George Mulhauser is one of those people in the whole 20th century design movement that is really kind of moving up with popularity amongst collectors, and this chair is really an iconic example of what he did.

He actually designed one of George Nelson's most iconic chairs, the coconut chair.

He's largely credited with the design of that chair.

George Mulhauser designed this chair for Plycraft.

Plycraft did a lot of work for Herman Miller.

When you look at it, it definitely combines several things.

I love these arms.

They remind me sort of of a nautilus, or ram's horns, which is interesting and sort of rare in 1960s furniture.

This chair was designed in 1965.

Oh, wow.

It's also made out of bent plywood, and I love the way the plywood's bent and rolled.

Plycraft did almost exclusively bent plywood, and they did such a good job with this one.

It screams 1965 to me.

It was also part of a patio set, because it's a very short chair, or part of a small dining set.

Usually when you see this chair, it comes with a table.

The table has all these great almost like Thonet legs coming down.

So how long ago did you buy this chair and what did you pay for it?

I bought it maybe two years ago, and I think I paid $250 for it.

Generally, they're sold in sets.

Sets are generally the table and two chairs that bring $6,000, $7,000, $8,000.

So a single chair is probably worth, at auction, $1,500 to $2,500.

Cool.

WOMAN: My father-in-law bought this in 1960 for my mother-in-law.

They lived in Abilene, Texas, and they loved to go to New York, and one of their trips up there, they went into Van Cleef & Arpels and my father-in-law, I believe, sort of sketched out what sort of necklace he was interested in and so they made the necklace and mailed it to them.

Great.

Well, it's fabulous that you have the original receipt from September, 9, 1960, as it's dated on the bottom.

The pendant, diamond itself, weighs 3.91, clearly stated here, and then it's flanked by some smaller stones, some marquise on the top and a small round diamond, as well.

I will also note that you have the old certificate in the photograph and then the New York stock number to verify.

That's really good provenance.

You also have the receipt, so that's a really good point, as well.

Is that the original chain or was it replaced?

No, the original chain was platinum and my mother-in-law was a very small woman and the chain was not really long enough for me, so we replaced it with the white gold chain.

Okay, do you still have the chain?

Yes, we do.

Okay, that's good, because original pieces altogether are worth more.

There's the original receipt for $5,700 back in 1960 with a well-known document from GIA, which is the Gemological Institute of America.

They would have to state the color and clarity officially, and then we could price it accurately.

But I would say, just grading it today, that it would be an H VVS1, meaning very, very slightly Included.

I would say that there would be a retail replacement value, or in a high-end retail store, at $125,000 today.

Wow.

That has appreciated quite a bit, hasn't it?

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We brought in these family heirlooms.

This is my mom's Jumeau doll, which we've had in the family forever.

And is creepy-- it comes alive at night!

And you don't get it.

Oh, well.

We brought our Andy Warhol book to the Antiques Roadshow.

We met him in 1974 and we were fortunate enough that he actually signed the book for us and drew a picture of a Campbell's peach soup can.

We paid $7.95 for the book and found out it's now worth up to $2,500.

I'm thinking I should probably read the book now.

And I will never doubt you guys again when people say, "Oh, I just thought of it at the last minute."

Because the thing I really brought ended up being worth nothing, and my aunt handed this to me as I walked out the door, and I said, "Sure, I can bring two items."

And it's worth a lot, so, Aunt Roberta, if you've got any more, I'll take that, too.

I brought a couple of art prints from my collection and I thought that they were worth a lot of money.

But it turns out this junk I buy is worth a lot more.

Today we brought my antique embalming kit from the late 1910s, early 1920s, and it was my Mother's Day gift for my very first Mother's Day, and it appraised for about $500.

Which is a lot more than what I paid for it for.

According to my 1882 pocket watch, we're out of time on the Antiques Roadshow.

I'm Mark Walberg.

Thanks for watching.

See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.

Hey, there.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org WALBERG: Where'd you get it?

MAN: My dad gave it to my mom and she gave it to me.