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00:04Antiques Roadshow is sowing the seeds of knowledge for treasure hunters at the
00:08Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. He's scared of his children. This is the stuff of nightmares.
00:14No way! Holy cow!
00:35Antiques Roadshow has set up at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Booth Bay. Celebrating
00:42the biodiversity of the region is the name of the game here, and part of the garden's
00:48mission involves the research of native plants. Have an interest in botany? The Herbarium,
00:55a collection of dried and pressed plants used for research, contains plant specimens from the 1840s,
01:02right up to the present day. Roadshow will leave the plant collection to the botanists,
01:07as we check out collections of valuable, and not so valuable, antiques. This little guy is a
01:14handcrafted little wooden boy by an artist named John Ellefson from Chicago. I got him for my
01:21boyfriend for his birthday and took him apart and sanded him down and conditioned him and re-put
01:27him together. He's poseable with a wrench, so at home we keep him upside down and he holds our plants.
01:33He needed a little work, but now he's super cute. I probably paid like maybe 70 bucks.
01:39So this is a Picasso print. As far as I know it came from my wife's great aunt who lived
01:47in California
01:48for a long time and she collected some art and I believe it is a numbered print. I think 20
01:55prints
01:55is what the paperwork says on the back, if that is authentic. They were a gift to me from my
02:03mother-in-law
02:04and her aunt. They were from a cottage, a seaside cottage in Maine outside of Portland that I think
02:12my great aunt-in-law got in the late 50s, maybe early 60s. Great. And when did you get them?
02:20Um, maybe six or seven years ago. What we have is a pair of cast iron, obviously lobster form,
02:26and irons or fire dogs as sometimes called, designed to stand permanently in a fireplace.
02:33They're so obviously related to the state of Maine. Lobsters are not unique to Maine, but come on.
02:39Right. This is cast iron, very crudely and simply made. They're made in the sand casting technique,
02:46whereby someone took a mold. I'm pretty confident they took a lobster. You make a mold, you press it
02:53into fine sand and then you have most of what you need to cast iron. I suspect they're very local,
02:59found in Portland and almost certainly made somewhere near in the state of Maine. It's hard
03:05to date them precisely. I think they were made in the second half of the 19th century, probably in the
03:11third quarter. You can see that both of them on the arms at the back have been repaired. This one
03:17with a
03:17kind of sleeve to hold the two elements together and this snapped in probably the same place and
03:24has been bolted together. Both rather crude and amateur repairs, but I love the fact that someone has
03:30loved them enough to repair them. In a good antique shop in Maine, I see them at least $2,000,
03:39possibly $2,500. Okay. Great. But I love them.
03:51This beautiful gal here is? My mother. Wow. Probably this picture was taken in the early 40s. Dad was gone
03:59for four years in the Second World War. Europe ended up as an aide to Eisenhower as part of the
04:08Corps of
04:08Engineers. And somewhere along the way, he had this commissioned. But I don't know exactly where he
04:16commissioned it. I assumed it was near Naples, Italy. And you can see that this is exactly her.
04:22Absolutely. And the detail is incredible. Incredible. So I think you're right about Naples.
04:27It's the home, Italy, the home of Cameo production. It's carved out of conch shell.
04:33Almost every Cameo I see, they're facing right. Really? It's very rare to see one facing left.
04:42The frame also is fabulous with the garland and the ribbon. With gold being at record high prices,
04:48there's $1,000 just in gold. Wow.
04:52I would say, at auction, probably $1,500 to $2,000. That's great.
04:59You're not selling it. No.
05:00For insurance, $3,000. Terrific. That's great to know.
05:05But I'm telling you, I just, all the years we're doing this, never did it match up like this.
05:12I own a school building in Waldenboro, Maine. And we've been renovating the building,
05:18turning it into a creative compound. And as the guys were doing demo in the ceiling,
05:23they found a whole bunch of alcohol bottles and these beer cans. They almost kind of threw them all
05:29away. I'm like, oh, these look so cool. They're super graphic.
05:31In the world of breweriana, these are actually very important cans. This is called a cone top can.
05:37And it was available as both a 12 ounce and a quart size. And the cone top just specifically relates
05:43to the form in which you would drink the beverage. The cone top can was first introduced in 1935,
05:48and it was phased out by 1960. When we look at the side of the can, we could see the
05:53full company mark
05:54here. The Croft Brewing Company, Boston, Massachusetts. The company first opened in 1934,
06:00and they were closed by 1952 when they were bought out by the Narragansett Company.
06:04They were part of that post-prohibition boom. Alcohol is now legal again, so money's flowing and
06:10people want to open breweries. And this is their stock ale. They had a cream ale. They had an all
06:15-malt
06:15red label. But for collectors today, the stock ale can graphically is very attractive as it hones into
06:22art deco design. When it comes to beer can collecting, one of the first major factors is, is it an
06:28indoor can
06:29or is it an outdoor can? Literally meaning, did you discover these beer cans in the ground covered in
06:34dirt or did you find them inside? You clearly found them inside. The lithography is vibrant. There's
06:39minimal oxidation to the tops of them. When we look at the can closest to me, it has the biggest
06:45apology
06:45out of them all. It has a large dent with a crease, also a scratch here with some paint loss.
06:50Otherwise,
06:51they all have little apologies, but they're 80-year-old plus cans, so you would have a scratch or a
06:56nick too
06:56along the way. To find cans in this condition is exceptionally rare. And with exceptional condition
07:04comes exceptional jumps in value. Conservatively at auction, for the group of four cans, it would easily be
07:12$10,000 to $15,000 for the collection. Amazing. That could help pay for the renovation. It's amazing.
07:20Oh, wow. Too bad there wasn't one that still had beer in it. Most recently at auction, one exceptional
07:27condition comparable to these, but had the original cap in a quart size, brought over $18,000 at auction.
07:35Oh, wow. Amazing. So surprised? Yeah, so crazy. I thought it was gonna be like, I don't know,
07:41like $100. So this dress belonged to my mother. She lived in Philadelphia, and somewhere I think
07:52around when she was 18, 19, 20, she would be a runway model for the Nanduskin department store. And
08:00I know the dress came from Nanduskin, but I don't know how my mom acquired it. I believe she wore
08:07it once,
08:07and I know that I wore it once, if you can believe it. But I always thought it was extraordinary
08:13and just
08:15wild. And who makes a dress like this?
08:17Yes. So what you have here is a black silk taffeta evening gown made by Gilbert Adrian,
08:25and it's for his 1948 collection. He was born in Nagata, Connecticut in 1903.
08:30Okay. A very, very
08:32artistic and precocious drawer and creative young man. He went to Parsons in New York,
08:37and they quickly said, we have no more to teach you. Go to our Parsons school in France. So he
08:44started
08:44in Paris in 1920, and he then meets up with Irving Berlin. He is invited at the age of 19
08:53to go back to
08:54America, and he designed costumes on stage for Irving Berlin and Broadway.
08:59Wow. He then goes to Hollywood. And in 1928, he starts to work for MGM. So he becomes the MGM
09:10head costume designer from 1928 to 1941. One of the things that Adrian is most well known for
09:17is he designed all the costumes for Wizard of Oz. I just heard that recently. Yeah, I didn't, I had
09:23no
09:23idea. Yeah. So cool. In 1941, he says he's leaving MGM. He's going to start his own label. 1942,
09:31he has his very first collection. He had two different labels under his name. One was called
09:38Adrian Originals, which is what this is. And there's a label in the back along with the Nanduskin label,
09:44which was the retailer in Philadelphia, the top of the top in Philly. He also had Adrian Customs,
09:50and those were the couture. So if you can believe, this was a ready-to-wear. His ready-to-wear
09:55went from
09:56the very low sort of bread and butter $69 suits up to $395 gowns, which is the height of, again,
10:05that lower end. Right, right. And in today's money, it's about $5,000 for this. Had you thought about
10:13the value at all? I was sort of in the one to three, hoping for three-ish plus, just because
10:20it seems so extraordinary. I would put an auction estimate of $1,500 to $2,000 on this. Okay.
10:27For insurance purposes, I would have an insurance value of $8,000. Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay.
10:36Very, very cool. I'm so happy to know more about it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Absolutely my pleasure.
10:41Yeah. Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, which opened in 2007, is also known as the People's Garden.
10:51It's one of the few public gardens that's right on the water, with over a mile of saltwater frontage.
10:57The idea for the gardens came about in 1991, when a group of local residents had the somewhat remarkable
11:06idea of creating a botanical garden here, and actually mortgaged their own homes to buy it.
11:12That's where the People's Garden comes from. Everyone who works here, and who volunteers here,
11:19and who is involved here, really feels like it's their place. Like, they have this sense of ownership
11:24that you don't necessarily find other places. So we really pride ourselves on being a place for everyone.
11:32I brought a necklace that was given to me as a wedding gift. It belonged to my great-grandmother.
11:39I believe it was actually a gift for her 18th birthday. So I imagine it would be the 1910s is
11:46when
11:46she received this. It was given to me from my aunt, and with it she sent a note that said
11:52that it was
11:53given to my great-grandmother, grandmother, aunt, and now me. What year did you receive the watch?
11:592016 was the year we got married. It's kind of fun because today happens to be my wedding anniversary, too.
12:05Oh, congratulations. Thank you. It's Cartier Ladies Pendant Watch. Cartier, it's a Paris firm. They were founded in 1847.
12:15The time period. You are right about on the money. 1910, 1915. Edwardian period. Also, belly pock. Belly pock is
12:25not just a time period. It's also a style. This has pearls. It has diamonds. It has enamel work,
12:34the blue enamel throughout. It's set in platinum. It's set in yellow gold. The diamonds in here are rose
12:42cut diamonds. The pearls are all natural. At the back here, it's blue guilloche enamel,
12:49which is hard-fired enamel on top of the metal. There's diamond set initials. Are those grandma's
12:55initials? E-S was her initials. It's flowery letters, so I wasn't sure if it was just a design
13:03or if it was, in fact, initials. If that looks like an E-S to you, then I'll trust your
13:07judgment on it.
13:08It's an E-S and that was a custom order. Everywhere on here are jewels. There's something a little extra
13:16special. There's something a little fancy. The quality of an object like this, it's absolutely
13:22phenomenal. Second to none. Cartier had special movements made. This was a collaboration with
13:29Cartier with another famous company, Jaeger LaCoultra. You have the original box or presentation case.
13:38You open the double door, there's a beautiful treasure inside. And Cartier made that famous.
13:44Retail price on this watch is going to be $25,000 to $30,000.
13:52Holy smokes. That's wild.
13:57Well, I better keep care of it. Safety deposit box, here we come.
14:03Unbelievable condition and unbelievable to find it in the original box. It's awesome.
14:11So this belonged to our step-grandmother's aunt and we believe it is by Toshiku Takezu,
14:20who is a Japanese-American ceramicist born in Hawaii. So it's possible this is actually a student of hers.
14:30I got it at a sports memorabilia show probably like 10 years ago. Paid a couple hundred bucks for it.
14:37It's probably from the early 60s. The only thing I really know is about Nat Albright. He used to read
14:41the games and kind of like recreate the game with noises and pretend like the game was actually live
14:46off the radio. But he was actually getting it through like Morse code.
14:56I came across this fan and it was probably in the 1990s. And I used to go to some West
15:03Hartford,
15:03Connecticut shows. And they were vintage shows with various jewelry and materials. And the fan
15:10just spoke to me. So I've always loved Victorian pieces. And it's the Victorian craftsmanship.
15:17This one looked beautiful. I saw it was Tiffany. What did you pay for it back then?
15:22Fifty dollars. Wow. That was a great price. It was a great price.
15:26Yeah. So you have a 19th century Tiffany lace fan. It's in its original silk covered Tiffany box.
15:33It has wonderful hand needle lace in the fan with mother of pearl guards and sticks. And then what was
15:43really exciting was the loop at the bottom, which is also marked Tiffany. And then we also found
15:50another marking next to the Tiffany, which was 14K. And that's what was really exciting.
15:57You have a little bit of gold there. And as we know,
16:00the value of gold is just going up and up and up. The condition is really nice. You do have
16:06some
16:06discoloration along the bottom, where I think that's where it adhered to the sticks. Tiffany would
16:14have put these out in the stores as kind of like an entry point for maybe a husband to buy
16:19his wife a
16:20Tiffany gift. So didn't have to go straight to the jewelry. You know, they also offered these other
16:26ladies' accessories during this time period. If it was just a lace fan with mother of pearl,
16:32I'd give it an auction estimate of about $100. With the box, $350. Then you have the gold.
16:41And that's really where the value is coming from. I'd give it an auction estimate of $8 to $1,200.
16:47Oh, that is just wonderful. Yeah. I've enjoyed the show tremendously today. So it's been fantastic.
16:57They were my great-grandfather's. So my great-grandfather grew up in the same village
17:03as Joseph Hoffman in Czechoslovakia. And then they both moved to Vienna. And then my great-grandfather
17:09wanted to support him in his designs. And so he acquired these. Joseph Hoffman, he was born in 1870,
17:16and he actually lived until 1956. He was classically trained, and he won the very prestigious Prix de Rome.
17:23And he actually started out as an architect. And he continued to do architecture throughout his life.
17:29He also designed furniture. He designed silver. He designed glass. He designed textiles.
17:37And in the early 20th century, 1903, he started something called the Wiener Werkstatt. And it was
17:43actually a group of different designers who worked together. Joseph Hoffman designed these for the
17:49Wiener Werkstatt. We're not sure what these are used for. They can just be decorative vases. They could be
17:57cashpo and had flowers or greenery in it. The Wiener Werkstatt didn't last until the 1930s, but they ran out
18:04of
18:04steam. And I think these are examples from the high point of their production, sort of 1910, 15. Each of
18:12these is hand hammered. On the underside, it has the Wiener Werkstatt mark. And up here, we have Joseph
18:20Hoffman's initials. And then we have the Wiener Werkstatt mark. And then we have the mark of the person
18:27actually fabricated it. 900 refers to the grade of silver. So most of us talk about sterling silver.
18:35Sterling silver is 925 parts of silver per thousand. This is the high point of design in the early part
18:42of the 20th century. And Hoffman was the master of design. I think a retail replacement value for them
18:48would be in the $30,000 to $50,000 range. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh, my God. Wow, I had
18:57no idea.
18:59Holy cow. I should probably keep better, keep, I should probably take better care of them, keep them
19:07better. Wow. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Thank you so much.
19:17It was my husband's father's in his office at Christchurch Chapel in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
19:25And parishioners such as Dodges or Fords would take his father to England and they would find things to
19:33bring back to Christchurch. Interesting. And clearly, if you have a Dodge or a Ford with you,
19:38they're going to have quite deep pockets. Yes. When do you think that that would have been, roughly?
19:431930s. It's definitely a very early piece. I think the youngest, let's say, it's going to be 16th
19:48century. And it's a nativity scene. This could be an 18th century frame or a 17th century frame,
19:53probably somewhere in the region of $3,000 to $5,000 at all, too.
20:03Well, it's a Lichtenstein print that I received from my grandparents a long time ago. And I believe
20:09that it's titled Shipboard Girl. My grandparents were living in D.C. at the time. They had a large
20:14condo. They were at the age where they needed to downsize a lot. So they actually rented a second
20:19apartment, filled it with all the things that they were giving away. This was in a poster tube. And
20:23actually, this one wasn't noticed in the poster tube. There was a different poster that I was more
20:27attracted to. And they said that I could take it away. And that's how it ended up in my possession.
20:32You're absolutely right. Roy Lichtenstein's Shipboard Girl from 1965. So this is really the beginning of
20:40pop art. And in 1965, Roy Lichtenstein was represented by the Leo Castelli Gallery,
20:46which really was the pioneering gallery in New York for these pop artists, Lichtenstein and Warhol.
20:53Part of the pop ethos was to embrace commercial printmaking. So this poster is an offset lithograph,
21:01which is like photo mechanical printmaking. It's done in sort of industrial strength colors in a
21:08commercial kind of press. And there's a couple of things about this print that really stand out,
21:13which make it very exciting. First of all, are the colors. And they're really spectacular. So fresh.
21:19It seems to me that it never came out of the tube. It's quite possible it was brought home from
21:24the
21:25gallery. I think so.
21:26Yeah. And hasn't seen daylight for six years. The other curious thing about your print is how it's
21:34signed. Yes. I've always wondered about that. Yeah.
21:37So it bears the pencil signature upper left of Roy Lichtenstein. And this is typically signed lower
21:47right. And you can see that he signed it lower right at the time, but its orientation was the
21:54wrong way. So he ended up signing it upside down. This is a well-documented print. It's in his catalog
21:59resume. It's in many museum collections, but no one really knows exactly how many were printed. They were
22:05never numbered. Yeah. But the signature is absolutely right. And we actually did find
22:12some other examples of this print with the signature this way. So in the moment of giving
22:20it to somebody, a stack of prints being signed by the artist, some got turned around and were signed
22:27the wrong way, which makes it a curiosity. Yeah.
22:30Do you have any sense of the value? I had looked it up a long time ago and seen a
22:36wide range of
22:37numbers for it. I think the high range was around 20 to 30 that I had seen at that time.
22:42But yeah,
22:43the low is around five. So I've never really know. Right. Well, there is a wide range of values for
22:48these. Often that's dictated by the condition. Sometimes they're quite faded. Your colors are as good
22:54as you would expect. Because it's signed in this peculiar fashion, though, we do have to consider
22:59that into the valuation. So I would estimate this at auction at $20,000 to $30,000. Great. Well,
23:07that's wonderful. Yeah. I love seeing it out. The colors are amazing. If this had been signed the
23:13right way, it would be conservatively $30,000 to $50,000. Okay.
23:19And herbarium is sort of like a library, but instead of a collection of books, it's a collection
23:24of plants. Kate Furbish was an incredible botanist who made it her life's mission to collect all of the
23:31plants of Maine, or as many as she could. She did this through collecting herbarium specimens and also
23:37by creating really detailed botanical illustrations. One of the things that she's most well known for is
23:43actually discovering a species that is only found in Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. It's called
23:48Furbish's lousewort. We're really grateful to have a handful of Kate Furbish's actual specimens here in
23:54our collection. Her specimens of Yellow Avons are the specimens she used to reference while creating the
24:01botanical illustration.
24:06I brought in a crock from 1818. It's been in the family. There was a
24:10farm at one point outside Philly that my grandfather had, and he rented out the barn and all we had
24:17a
24:17place we could go and stay there. And whether that came from that area, I don't know. Is that in
24:23Chester
24:24County? I believe so, yes. Because I do think you have a Chester County piece. Wow. This redwood jar
24:31would have been made of locally sourced clay. Potteries in Chester County in the late 18th and early 19th
24:37century, they used a lot of slip. When you add up the fact that this has this specific ovoid form
24:44with
24:44these handles, with this type of slip, and in the fact that this manganese decoration is there, it all
24:50points to Chester County, Pennsylvania. And in Chester County, because it's near Philadelphia, of course,
24:55they were influenced by Philadelphia pieces. So it's similar to Philadelphia, but has much more
25:01personality, a little more provincial, so it has an accent. And that accent is rural Pennsylvania,
25:09specifically Chester County. So it's LL and script on one side with that 1818 with a serif there,
25:17and then on the other side, we had this LL and block letters, and 1818 without a serif. I think
25:31we've never seen before. We look for a pottery where the LL initials would make sense. We didn't find
25:37one in Chester County, Pennsylvania. So it makes better sense, I think, that it be an owner. So you
25:44have manganese vertical little slashes, kind of drips, that add depth to the decoration. You have this
25:53copper oxide, this greenish color in this area, which gives it great color. It adds interest to the glaze.
26:00And redware jars like this were utilitarian. They kept liquids in them, they kept dry goods in them.
26:06And this is a fairly large example. You have some chips on the piece, but they're small. You know,
26:12there's a nip over here. You do have a chip to the base. The damage on here, although damage is
26:18expected
26:19on a piece of redware, when you add it all up, it does affect the value of the piece. I
26:24grew up
26:24collecting red and dealing in redware and stoneware. So before I found out about girls, my brother and I,
26:32after dinner, would hug our jars. You know, that's literally, we'd talk of our collection, hug our
26:39collection. So just to see an Ovoid form like this is pretty exciting. A piece like this you could put
26:46at auction in the range of $6,000 to $8,000. Wow. And I used to keep it at the
26:54top of the stairs.
26:55And then when I saw something on Roadshow, I was like, maybe I shouldn't leave that at the top of
26:59the
26:59stairs. So with this, my future father-in-law bought at an antique store in New Hampshire.
27:05I think it was $19. It looks to be wood and then parts of it are plaster.
27:17This is an 1852 Shields map of Boston. I used to work at a frame shop in Brookline,
27:23Mass. And when you're at a frame shop, you meet lots of collectors. And I made friends with a
27:28woman who thought was her business. And she found this in Brookline Town Hall attic. So she gave it
27:35to me. Eventually, I framed it. It used to have wood on the top and the bottom, like a map
27:40you hang
27:40on the wall. My great grandfather purchased it at a flea market for $1 in South Paris, Maine in the
27:501920s. Well, what you have here is a Dutch musket. The original variant of these guns had iron furniture.
27:59This has a brass butt plate and trigger guard. So it's a little bit later. But the Dutch were making
28:04these
28:04certainly by about 1730, which probably dates its production to circa 1735 to 1745. The Netherlands
28:13was one of the largest sources of firearms during that period, really on until the advent of the
28:20Birmingham gun trade in the mid 19th century in England. The Dutch guns of this period are often
28:25thought to be copies of British brown best type muskets. But the reality is, is the Dutch were using
28:32these patterns actually a little bit earlier than the British. And in many ways, their design sort of
28:38influenced what becomes known as the brown best musket circa 1730 when they officially adopt a pattern
28:45for the long land pattern musket for the British military. The best part about this gun, other than
28:50that it's completely untouched, hasn't had anything done to it, and remains an original flint, is the
28:57marking on top of the barrel that says S Carolina. South Carolina starts off as a British colony.
29:04The colonies were important to the British, but they weren't necessarily worth spending
29:08a lot of money on in terms of their defense. So as early as 1731, the British government started buying
29:17used Dutch muskets to arm the colonials. The gun almost certainly came here from a British purchase,
29:26probably around the time of the Seven Years War, better known as the French and Indian War here.
29:32One of the ways we know that the gun was actually purchased out of a Dutch arsenal is that on
29:37the
29:37barrel at the end, there is a rack number that was the Dutch arsenal rack number for the gun.
29:45Dutch musket, unmarked, just original flintlock Dutch musket in kind of attic condition.
29:51The gun would probably sell somewhere in the range of $3,000 to $5,000, maybe a little bit more.
30:01Wow.
30:02But it gets a whole lot better because of that mark. I think a conservative auction estimate
30:07for this gun is between $20,000 and $30,000. Oh my goodness. I was not expecting that whatsoever.
30:16I would probably insure it in the range of $30,000 to $35,000. It's an incredibly difficult gun to
30:24replace. There are only a handful of known examples, and this is the best marked one I have seen.
30:30Wow, really?
30:31It's just everything that makes my heart go aflutter when I see just a wonderful piece of history like this.
30:39I brought in a pamphlet from a 1933 banquet at Notre Dame. My father was maybe a water boy for
30:48the
30:48football team from 32, 33 until he graduated in 36.
30:54If you're going to be a water boy, Notre Dame is a pretty good team to be a water boy
30:57for, right?
30:57True.
30:57So he goes to this banquet in 1933, and who's there?
31:01The Four Horsemen.
31:02The Four Horsemen in Notre Dame called that because famous writer Grant Lynn Rice deemed them to be the
31:07Four Horsemen when they won the college championship in the Rose Bowl in 1924.
31:11Okay, so the four of them are Don Miller, Elmer Layden, Jim Crowley, and Harry Studer. The four
31:17autographs together featuring the Four Horsemen is quite a fine, but we think at auction this would sell
31:22for $3,000, $3,500.
31:24No way!
31:27Holy cow!
31:28Yeah.
31:29That's awesome.
31:29Now, I do have to make a comment about the fact that the autographs aren't authenticated.
31:33We have the provenance. We believe them to be authentic. When they're graded,
31:37values go up. We've seen examples as high as $5,000, $7,500 for the Four Horsemen autographs.
31:45I'm speechless. Oh my gosh. Thank you.
31:48You're welcome.
31:48That is so awesome.
31:52My great-great-grandmother was an assistant in the Hamilton House, which was where the Tyson
32:00family resided in South Berwick, Maine, during the summer. She worked with Miss Tyson quite a while,
32:07and she gave this, among many items, to my great-great-grandmother as gratitude for her service.
32:14They knew Celia Faxter, who was a painter of pottery.
32:18On the bottom, it says Celia Faxter, 1888. Then below that, it says H and C over L.
32:29Okay.
32:29H and C stands for Haviland and Company, and L stands for Limoges, the city in France. So this is
32:36made of
32:37porcelain, and it would have been shipped to America as a plain white pitcher. And then she would have
32:43selected this to hand paint on it. She has hand-painted all the way around these beautiful purple iris, and
32:52the wonderful long spiky leaves.
32:56She was born in 1835, and she died in 1894. She was in a fairly educated and affluent family. She
33:04moved to live at her father's hotel, which was
33:07named Appledore Hotel, which was on the Isle of Shoals, which is off the coast of Maine. And lots of
33:14famous people came and stayed there.
33:16Now, she was a writer, and she published a lot of books and poetry. She was a writer's writer. Some
33:25of her biggest fans were some of the greatest writers of the time.
33:28And they were her friends because they came and stayed in the hotel. She was friends with Hawthorne, Longfellow, and
33:37Ralph Waldo Emerson.
33:38She was also good friends with a lot of famous artists of the day. She's most known for her writing
33:44about the ocean. But when she painted, she didn't paint the seashore.
33:48She painted her garden, her flowers. Many of them actually include hand-painted quotes from some of her poetry.
33:56Oh, wow. As a beautiful, well-painted piece of antique porcelain, if it was unsigned, it would probably be worth
34:06$100.
34:09But because it's signed by her, there are people who are avid collectors of her work. I would estimate a
34:16retail price to be between $3,000 and $5,000.
34:19Oh, my gosh. Her work is very desirable. There are significant collectors.
34:27Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Wow, what a treasure. This is wonderful.
34:32Yeah, it is a treasure.
34:37I brought in a letter that was written to my father-in-law from Martin Luther King Jr. My father
34:45-in-law was a Unitarian minister, and he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during all of the civil
34:52rights unrest.
34:53It's such an intense, powerful letter. This letter was written in October of 62 at the end of the Albany,
35:01Georgia campaign to your father-in-law, who must have been present at the Albany campaign.
35:08He was a religious leader, and he was there to support King and the movement. Let me just read the
35:13first paragraph.
35:14Dear Reverend Papandrew, for several weeks, I have intended writing to express my personal appreciation to you for your marvelous
35:22witness in Albany, but the accumulation of a flood of mail has stood in my way.
35:27The smoke is gradually clearing from the nonviolent battle at Albany, and as we assess the results, we all agree
35:34that one of the high points of the summer was the contribution rendered by our brothers from the North who
35:40came to share with us in the fight against injustice.
35:42It goes on for two pages, and it sort of closes with another kind of really meaningful, heartfelt paragraph.
35:51He says, your continued help and prayer will be greatly appreciated. You have now become sensitized to the problem in
35:59a new way.
35:59We are counting on you to discern some methods of action which will contribute to our national problem in race
36:06relations.
36:06Our nation suffers when churches are burned or when mobs kill and ravish in protest of a single person of
36:14color being admitted to an institution of higher learning.
36:17So he's talking about integrating the universities, right? So we need, we continue to need your help in this long
36:23battle.
36:24So terrific letter, signed by King, great content, and then you have some other supporting materials that come with it.
36:32So your father-in-law participated in the 1963 March on Washington, right?
36:37Yes. Yes, he did.
36:38He's, he's in that photo, right?
36:40Right there in that photo.
36:41In Life magazine. This is summer of 63. And then this is must be the December of 1963 holiday card
36:50from King.
36:51It has a really emotional image of the four little girls that were killed in the Birmingham church bombing of
37:00the fall of 1963.
37:02There's a message inside that is actually printed. This is not handwritten by King. This is a printed card.
37:09But it does actually show that more than a year after this, your father-in-law is still in the
37:17movement.
37:18He's still connected to the civil rights battle.
37:21The value is in the letter itself. This, these other items are supporting material.
37:27It's great to have them. They tell the story, but independent of the letter, they don't really have much value.
37:33At auction, I would estimate this letter at $20,000 to $30,000.
37:39And I would expect it to do as well as, or better because the content is terrific.
37:45The letter is amazing. The content is amazing. That's incredible. I never, I could never have imagined that.
37:55It was so wonderful to see it in person and read it for myself.
38:00It really just totally overwhelms me when I, when I read the words.
38:05If you were going to insure this, I would tell your insurance company to put a number of $50,000
38:12on it.
38:13Okay.
38:16This is a handshaped Greg Knowles minigun surfboard.
38:20The guy brought it into our surf shop looking for boards for his grandkids, so I swapped him for it.
38:25It's short. It's a minigun that's short.
38:27So I'm hoping it's worth a little bit of money because it's kind of unique.
38:36I picked this up about 20 years ago at a flea market for $20.
38:41I've been for the last 20 years trying to decipher this signature and I'm hoping to learn more about it
38:49today.
38:53All I know is my grandfather brought it back from, from Europe when he served in World War II.
38:58France, obviously, but then his divisional symbols on the front and I just kind of wanted to find out more
39:03about it.
39:08This is a painting that belonged to my grandfather.
39:10It was given to him as a gift from a grateful patient.
39:14He was a surgeon at Yale New Haven Hospital.
39:18I never got to meet him, but the painting hung in my aunt's house my whole life.
39:24And then it went to my mother and when my mom passed away, my four siblings and I had a
39:31lottery and I won it.
39:34I think it's Charles Ebert.
39:35I've been told it's Monhegan Island and it's off the coast of Maine.
39:40Right.
39:40And that he liked sailboats.
39:42It's an oil on canvas.
39:43I would date it around the 1920s, 1930s.
39:47Okay.
39:48The subject is Monhegan Island, but he's sort of standing on Monhegan Island.
39:53Okay.
39:53It doesn't have an official title, but I would give it the unofficial title of View of Monana.
39:58Okay.
39:58This is Monana Island.
40:00You can see here there's a little bit of a, of a boat landing here.
40:04And that boat landing belonged to a guy named Ray Phillips, who was known as the Hermit of Monana.
40:08He was the only person who lived on Monana.
40:10Wow.
40:11And what's interesting about Monhegan is that it was an artist colony starting in the 1890s.
40:17It's about 12 miles off the coast of Maine.
40:19You can only go by boat.
40:21There are no cars there.
40:22And it's been an artist colony since the 1890s where artists like Robert Henry and Edward Hopper and George Bellows
40:29all painted.
40:30Ebert was a member of that colony.
40:32He was also a, a Parisian trained American Impressionist painter who was a member of the old lime Connecticut artist
40:41colony.
40:41He summered in Monhegan starting in about 1909, eventually building a house there with his wife, who was also an
40:47artist.
40:47And what I love about this painting, which is of really, really excellent quality, and I've been to Monhegan many
40:54times, is that this is like late summer color.
40:57He's captured the summer clouds.
40:59There's a little bit of a breeze.
41:00Boats and figures and paintings like this always are very attractive, very desirable and add value.
41:06Tell me about the condition when you first got this painting.
41:10Well, growing up, I remember seeing it in my aunt's house.
41:12It was really a mess.
41:13It was, it kind of sagged and cracked.
41:16I really just thought it was worthless.
41:19And I think when my mother got it, she had it conserved.
41:23And when it came back, I just was amazed.
41:26It's in beautiful condition now.
41:28The American Paintings Market is not at the best place at this current moment.
41:33The height of the American Paintings Market was kind of like the 2008 period and prior to 2008.
41:40It never really came back to its previous levels.
41:44That said, it is a really gorgeous painting.
41:47Even in the current market, I would, for insurance purposes, say it's probably around $30,000 would be the price.
41:55Okay.
41:55Okay.
41:55Great, thanks.
41:56Wonderful.
42:04The Eastern White Pine is an iconic tree here in Maine.
42:08And we have it throughout our woodlands.
42:11It's got a long history.
42:13It was used back in the 1800s for masts for ships.
42:17And it's still a very popular and useful lumber tree.
42:20The State Flower of Maine is actually a pine cone in the tassel.
42:24And on a white pine tree, they have both male and female reproductive parts.
42:29The pollen comes from the male reproductive parts, pollinate the female cones, and then you end up with a cone
42:36that looks like this.
42:37We get what we're familiar with, those beautiful white pine cones that people use in holiday decorations.
42:43And they can range from what you see here, like three to four inches, but they can get up to
42:47six, seven, eight inches.
42:52My grandmother passed away in 1982, I believe.
42:55One of her helpers sent us a box of stuff.
42:59And this was in it.
43:00We saw one very similar to it on Antiques Roadshow many, many, many years ago.
43:04It's called a shabti and would be called upon during death by the gods to do work.
43:11I'm thinking that it was one of a number that would have been in the tomb.
43:14Sometimes there would be 500, depending on how wealthy they were.
43:18Yeah.
43:18Because you would want as many people to help you in the afterlife as possible.
43:21The shabti is in typical mummified form with a tripartite wig and a pick and a flail.
43:27These are the tools used to work the fields and the farms.
43:30It has a seed packet on the back of its shoulder.
43:32The writing on them, it's usually chapter six from the Book of the Dead, which also has a spell.
43:38And when that spell is spoken, the shabti comes to life.
43:42He says, I hear and I obey.
43:44This one is from the 26th dynasty, 664 to 525 BC.
43:51And this is when Samtik became the pharaoh and he'd thrown out the Assyrians.
43:56Egypt had been rather a mess before then and he sort of got it together and made more of an
44:01association with the Greeks.
44:03And this was really a renaissance, the last major blooming of Egyptian art, the 26th dynasty.
44:08And the headquarters were in a place called Sait in Egypt.
44:12It's known for its extraordinary quality.
44:15A piece of this quality was absolutely for a particular person.
44:19He was probably a very important official or a priest in the 26th dynasty.
44:24It's a glazed ceramic.
44:26It's called faience.
44:28And they vary in color a lot.
44:30They go from white to dark and some are vivid blue, the cobalt ones.
44:35The 26th dynasty usually ends up being this pale green.
44:38Very desirable.
44:39You can see the staining on the sides and the bottom.
44:42That's really come from oxidation in the ground where it's been lying.
44:45But the quality is just so sublime.
44:48You look at it and it's the quintessential Egyptian mummiform face as we know it.
44:53I think a retail value would be in the region of $8,000 to $10,000.
45:01Okay.
45:02And I would insure it probably for about $15,000.
45:07Very good.
45:10When I was 11, my mother decided to take a leave from her job at the Museum of Modern Art
45:16New York
45:16and took us to France, the south of France, for six months.
45:20We biked all over.
45:21One trip, we biked all the way to Valerice because we lived in Saint-Laurent-du-Vas,
45:25which is outside of Nice.
45:28And she bought the plate.
45:29And the year was?
45:311967.
45:32It is a glazed ceramic plate made at the Madura Studios in Valerice in the south of France.
45:40The first one of this particular group was designed in 1963.
45:47Picasso had been doing ceramics at Madura since about 1947.
45:52And I love to use this as a snapshot of where he was in his life.
46:00Do you know how old he was when he designed this plate?
46:03No, I don't.
46:04He was 82 years old.
46:07Oh, my goodness.
46:08So, he was very prolific.
46:12Yeah.
46:12And he never stopped creating.
46:15In 1963, of the plates he did that year, this is my favourite.
46:21Oh!
46:22It's mine, too.
46:23But then again, it's always been in my house.
46:25But that's so nice that I brought you a favourite plate.
46:28I love this one.
46:29This plate, like many, many others, is called in French visage or face.
46:35The additions are as small on these plates as 100 and they go up to 500.
46:41Okay.
46:41And this one is 150.
46:43So, that is considered a small addition.
46:46It is numbered 147 out of 150.
46:49So, we assume he did all 150.
46:53If this was offered at auction, being conservative, I would probably go with a pre-auction estimate of $6,000
47:01to $9,000.
47:02Okay.
47:04They have been bringing over $20,000.
47:09That's a lot.
47:11That's alright.
47:12I'm not selling it.
47:15It's my plate.
47:16It's just a period of life that I wouldn't trade for anything.
47:20And this is sort of emblematic of it.
47:23And if I were to insure this, I would probably go around $10,000.
47:29Okay.
47:30It came out of a Dundacoast Lake, I believe.
47:32We have a picture here of it with it on the top of this building.
47:36But I took it out of a building when I was restoring a building working on it in Washington Street
47:40in Camden.
47:40It was in a shed as a shelf.
47:42So, I took it down and found the sign.
47:44And a friend of mine found this picture at a lawn sale years later and gave it to us.
47:52Well, it's a Bacon Belmont claw hammer style banjo.
47:57I think that it was manufactured in the 40s.
48:00I got it from my father.
48:02And I think he got it for trade for something back in the 70s.
48:12My grandfather had been traveling around the globe around 1909.
48:18We think this is one of the pieces that he brought back possibly from Japan.
48:22He was at the base of the home that my father grew up in at the staircase.
48:27When my grandfather passed away, he came into our home in New Jersey.
48:32I inherited him in 2012.
48:35I've always been told that he was some type of an idol, a Japanese idol.
48:40It is Japanese.
48:41Okay.
48:42It's enormously heavy.
48:44Yes.
48:45Yes.
48:45We weighed this section.
48:47It was 80 pounds.
48:48Just that section.
48:50Yes.
48:50Right.
48:50And it's because this is made of bronze.
48:53It's a lantern.
48:54What you see on the surface is not the way the metal appears when it comes out of the foundry.
49:01Also, what they do in that process when it comes out of the foundry is they are finishing the details.
49:08Then you need to do something to give a uniform appearance that takes away those kind of inconsistencies.
49:16And that is called a patina.
49:17One of the things that you can see on the shoulder here is the first coat was a deep reddish
49:23brick color.
49:25Yes.
49:25How much light do you think is going to come through this?
49:28With a candle?
49:28Not a lot.
49:29Not a lot.
49:30It's supposed to be more atmospheric.
49:32It's supposed to be something that is going to conjure up some sort of an emotional response.
49:38What kind of emotional response does he conjure up?
49:41Well, he's scared as his children.
49:42That's exactly right.
49:44This is the stuff of nightmares.
49:46Yes.
49:46Yes.
49:47And that's exactly who that is.
49:49This is an Oni.
49:50And an Oni is a mythical figure that we can best describe as a devil who has superhuman powers.
49:58The eyes have a kind of off-white appearance that has been achieved with some sort of enamel.
50:06That would have shown and been penetrating in a low light.
50:11This dates to about 1909, which is at the end of the Meiji period, which ended in 1912.
50:19During the Meiji period, Japan was rapidly industrializing.
50:23One of the ways they did that was by creating works of art that would be astounding,
50:29that would be sold to people who had influence, which would be seen by the other people of influence,
50:38that would then have an effect on commerce with Japan.
50:42For insurance purposes, a reasonable figure would be in the $60,000 range.
50:49Oh, that's very nice.
50:51How nice.
50:52One of seven.
50:53I'm sure I'll have a discussion with them.
50:59And now, it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
51:02Tomorrow's my 31st birthday, and while we're not going to retire early,
51:06we did learn that this March on Washington button is worth $250.
51:10And we got a bonus appraisal when the appraiser said that she thinks she owned that sweater in the 1980s.
51:17So we had a great time at the Roadshow today.
51:19And we've carried this around for 50 years.
51:21And it's an 1840 mantelpiece from the top of a building in Canton, China that could be worth up to
51:27$1,200.
51:28And I said I would throw it away if it wasn't worth anything, but I guess we're going to have
51:31to keep it.
51:32And I brought my mother's pearls that she brought in from Japan when she got married and came to the
51:37States over 50 years ago.
51:39And I didn't know there was a clasp here that you could use it for both as a bracelet and
51:45a necklace,
51:47which I would tell my mom that it was four.
51:49And we didn't really know how much it was worth, but it was worth a couple thousand dollars, which is
51:53pretty cool.
51:54So we're so excited to have met the appraisers here as well.
51:58Mahalo.
51:58Thank you. Aloha.
52:00We brought two dolls. This one is from Germany.
52:04And it's from the 1890s and worth about $200.
52:08This one's from America from the 1990s, worth about $50.
52:13We had a lot of fun. Even the lines were fun.
52:16And I got to see all my favorite appraisers.
52:18Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.
52:20Thanks for watching. See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
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