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Antiques Roadshow - Season 30 (US) - Episode 09: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Hour 3
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00:04Antiques Roadshow is sowing the seeds of knowledge for treasure hunters at the
00:08Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. He scared us his children. This is the stuff of
00:13nightmares. No 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
00:47garden's mission involves the research of native plants. Have an interest in
00:53botany? The Herbarium, a collection of dried and pressed plants used for
00:58research, contains plant specimens from the 1840s right up to the present day.
01:04Roadshow will leave the plant collection to the botanists as we check out
01:08collections of valuable and not so valuable antiques. This little guy is a
01:14handcrafted little wooden boy by an artist named John Ellison from Chicago. I got him
01:20for my boyfriend for his birthday and took him apart and sanded him down and
01:26conditioned him and re-put him together. He's poseable with a wrench so at home we
01:30keep him upside down and he holds our plants. He needed a little work but now
01:35he's super cute. I probably paid like maybe 70 bucks. So this is a Picasso print. As far
01:42as I know it came from my wife's great aunt who lived in California for a long
01:49time and she collected some art and I believe it is a numbered print. I think 20
01:55prints is what the paperwork says on the back if that is authentic.
02:00They were a gift to me from my mother-in-law and her aunt. They were from a cottage, a
02:08seaside
02:09cottage in Maine outside of Portland that I think my great aunt-in-law got in the late
02:1550s, maybe early 60s. And when did you get them? Maybe six or seven years ago. What we have is
02:23a pair of cast iron,
02:24obviously lobster form and irons or fire dogs as sometimes called, designed to stand
02:31permanently in a fireplace. They're so obviously related to the state of Maine.
02:36The lobsters are not unique to Maine but come on. This is cast iron very crudely and
02:42simply made. They're made in the sand casting technique whereby someone took a mold. I'm pretty
02:49confident they took a lobster. You make a mold, you press it into fine sand and then you have
02:55most of what you need to cast iron. I suspect they're very local, found in Portland and almost
03:01certainly made somewhere near in the state of Maine. It's hard to date them precisely. I think
03:07they were made in the second half of the 19th century, probably in the third quarter. You can see
03:12that both of them on the arms at the back have been repaired. This one with a kind of sleeve
03:19to hold the two elements together and this snapped in probably the same place and has been bolted
03:25together. Both rather crude and amateur repairs, but I love the fact that someone has loved them enough
03:32to repair them. Right. In a good antique shop in Maine, I see them at least $2,000, possibly $2
03:40,500.
03:41Okay, 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. Almost every Cameo I see,
04:35they're facing right. Really? It's very rare to see one facing left. The frame also is fabulous,
04:43with the garland and the ribbon. With gold being at record high prices, there's $1,000 just in gold.
04:51I would say, at auction, probably $1,500 to $2,000. That's great.
04:59You're not selling it. No. For 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
05:29all away. I'm like, oh, these look so cool. They're super graphic. In the world of breweriana,
05:33these are actually very important cans. This is called a cone top can. And it was available as
05:38both a 12 ounce and a quart size. And the cone top just specifically relates to the form in which
05:44you
05:44would drink the beverage. The cone top can was first introduced in 1935 and it was phased out by 1960.
05:51When we look at the side of the can, we could see the full company mark here,
05:55the Croft Brewing Company, Boston, Massachusetts. The company first opened in 1934 and they were closed by
06:011952 when they were bought out by the Narragansett Company. They were part of that post-prohibition
06:06boom. Alcohol is now legal again. So money's flowing and people want to open breweries. And this is
06:12their stock ale. They had a cream ale. They had an all malt red label. But for collectors today,
06:18the stock ale can graphically is very attractive as it hones into art deco design. When it comes to beer
06:24can collecting, one of the first major factors is, is it an indoor can or is it an outdoor can?
06:30Literally meaning, did you discover these beer cans in the ground covered in dirt or did you find them
06:35inside? You clearly found them inside. The lithography is vibrant. There's minimal oxidation to the tops
06:41of them. When we look at the can closest to me, it has the biggest apology out of them all.
06:46It has a
06:46large dent with a crease, also a scratch here with some paint loss. Otherwise they all have little
06:52apologies, but they're 80 year old plus cans. So you would have a scratch or a nick too along the
06:57way.
06:57To find cans in this condition is exceptionally rare. And with exceptional condition comes exceptional
07:05jumps in value. Conservatively at auction for the group of four cans, it would easily be
07:1210 to 15,000 for the collection. Amazing. That could help pay for the renovation.
07:19It's amazing. Wow. Too bad there wasn't one that still had beer in it.
07:23Most recently at auction won exceptional condition comparable to these, but had the original cap
07:31in a court size brought over 18,000 at auction. Oh wow. Amazing. So surprised?
07:38Yeah. So crazy. I thought I was going to be like, I don't know, like a hundred bucks.
07:45So this dress belonged to my mother. She lived in Philadelphia and somewhere I think around when
07:52she was 18, 19, 20, she would be a runway model for the Nan Duskin department store. And I know
08:01the dress
08:01came from Nan Duskin, but I don't know how my mom acquired it. I believe she wore it once. And
08:08I know
08:08that I wore it once, if you can believe it. But I always thought it was extraordinary and just wild.
08:15And who makes a dress like this? So what you have here is a black silk taffeta evening gown
08:23made by Gilbert Adrian, and it's for his 1948 collection. He was born in Nagata, Connecticut in 1903.
08:30Okay. A very, very artistic 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
08:54to America and he designed costumes on stage for Irving Berlin and Broadway. Wow.
09:00He then goes to Hollywood and in 1928, he starts to work for MGM. So he becomes the MGM head
09:10costume
09:11designer from 1928 to 1941. One of the things that Adrian is most well known for is he designed all
09:18the costumes for Wizard of Oz. I just heard that recently. Yeah, I didn't, I had no idea. Yeah.
09:24This is so cool. In 1941, he says he's leaving MGM and 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 and
09:50those were the couture. So if you can believe this was a ready to wear. His ready to wear went
09:56from
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. And in today's money, it's about $5,000 for, 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. For
10:27insurance purposes, I would have an insurance value of $8,000. Oh my gosh. Wow. Okay. Very,
10:36very 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
10:50Garden. It's one of the few public gardens that's right on the water with over a mile of saltwater
10:56frontage. The idea for the gardens came about in 1991 when a group of local residents had the
11:05somewhat remarkable idea of creating a botanical garden here and actually mortgaged their own homes
11:11to buy it. That's where the People's Garden comes from. Everyone who works here and who volunteers
11:18here and who is involved here really feels like it's their place, like they have this sense of
11:23ownership that you don't necessarily find other places. So we really pride ourselves on being a place
11:29for everyone. I brought a necklace that was given to me as a wedding gift. It belonged to my great
11:38grandmother. I believe it was actually a gift for her 18th birthday. So I imagine it would be the 1910s
11:45is when she received this. It was given to me from my aunt and with it she sent a note
11:52that said that it
11:53was given 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.
12:04Oh, congratulations. Thank you. It's Cartier ladies pendant watch. Cartier, it's a Paris firm. They were
12:13founded in 1847. The time period, you are right about on the money. 1910, 1915. Edwardian period. Also
12:23Belle Epoque. Belle Epoque is not just a time period, it's also a style. This has pearls. It has diamonds.
12:32It has enamel work, the blue enamel throughout. It's set in platinum. It's set in yellow gold.
12:39Oh. The diamonds in here are rose cut diamonds. The pearls are all natural. At the back here,
12:46it's blue guilloche enamel, which is hard fired enamel on top of the metal. There's diamond set
12:53initials. Are those grandma's initials? E-S was her initials. It's flowery letters, so I wasn't sure if it
13:02was just a designer for it was in fact initials. If that looks like an E-S to you, then
13:06I'll trust your
13:07judgment on it. It's an E-S and that was a custom order. Everywhere on here are jewels. There's something
13:15a little extra special. There's something a little fancy. The quality of an object like this, it's
13:22absolutely phenomenal. Second to none. Cartier had special movements made. This was a collaboration
13:29with Cartier with another famous company, Jaeger LaCoultra. You have the original box or presentation
13:37case. You open the double door. There's a beautiful treasure inside and Cartier made that famous. Retail
13:45price on this watch is going to be $25,000 to $30,000. Holy 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...
14:18Toshiku Takeizu, who is a Japanese-American ceramicist born in Hawaii. So it's possible this
14:25is actually a student of hers.
14:30I got it at a sports memorabilia show in probably like 10 years ago. Paid a couple hundred bucks for
14:36it. It's probably from the early 60s. The only thing I really know is about Nat Albright. He used
14:41to read the games and kind of like recreate the game with noises and pretend like the game was actually
14:46live off 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
15:02West Hartford, Connecticut shows. And they were vintage shows with various jewelry and materials.
15:09And the fan just spoke to me. So I've always loved Victorian pieces. And it's the Victorian
15:17Craftsmanship. This one looked beautiful. I saw it was Tiffany. What did you pay for it back then?
15:22Fifty dollars. Wow. That was a great... It was a great price.
15:25Yeah. 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. You have a
15:58little bit of gold there. And as we know, the value of gold is just going up and up.
16:03The condition is really nice. You do have some discoloration along the bottom where I think
16:10that's where it adhered to the sticks. Tiffany would have put these out in the stores as kind
16:16of like an entry point for maybe a husband to buy his wife a Tiffany gift. So it didn't have
16:22to go
16:23straight to the jewelry. You know, they also offered these other ladies' accessories during this time
16:28period. If it was just a lace fan with mother of pearl, I'd give it an auction estimate of about
16:34a
16:34hundred dollars. With the box, three hundred and fifty dollars. Then you have the golds. And that's
16:42really where the value is coming from. I'd give it an auction estimate of eight to twelve hundred dollars.
16:47Oh, that is just wonderful. Yeah. I've enjoyed the show tremendously today. So it's been fantastic.
16:57They were my great-grandfathers. So my great-grandfather grew up in the same village as
17:04Joseph 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
17:22Prix de Rome. And he actually started out as an architect. And he continued to do architecture
17:28throughout his life. He also designed furniture. He designed silver. He designed glass. He designed
17:36textiles. And 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
17:57be cashpo and had flowers or greenery in it. The Wiener Werkstatt didn't last until the 1930s, but they
18:03ran out of steam. And I think these are examples from the high point of their production, sort of 1910,
18:1015. Each of these is hand hammered. On the underside, it has the Wiener Werkstatt mark. And up here,
18:19we have Joseph Hoffman's initials. And then we have the Wiener Werkstatt mark. And then we have the mark
18:26of the person who actually fabricated it. 900 refers to the grade of silver. So most of us talk about
18:33sterling silver. Sterling silver is 925 parts of silver per thousand. This is the high point of
18:40design in the early part of the 20th century. And Hoffman was the master of design. I think a retail
18:46replacement value for them would be in the $30,000 to $50,000 range. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh my
18:54god.
18:56Wow, I had no idea. Holy cow. I should probably keep better, keep, I should probably take better care of
19:06them, keep them better. 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 Rose Point, Michigan.
19:25Parishioners 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.
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 DC 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
20:39of pop 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,
21:00which is like photo mechanical printmaking. It's done in sort of industrial strength colors
21:07in a commercial 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. Yeah. And hasn't seen daylight for six years. The other curious thing about your
21:32print is how it's signed. 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 low
21:47right. And you can see that he signed it low right at the time, but its orientation was the wrong
21:54way.
21:54So he ended up signing it upside down. This is a well-documented print. It's in his catalog resume.
22:00It's in many museum collections, but no one really knows exactly how many were printed. They were never
22:05numbered. But the signature is absolutely right. And we actually did find some other examples of this
22:14print with the signature this way. So in the moment of giving it to somebody, a stack of prints being
22:23signed by the artist, some got turned around and were signed the wrong way, which makes it a curiosity.
22:30Yeah. Do you have any sense of the value? I had looked it up a long time ago and
22:35I've seen a wide range of numbers for it. I think the high range was around 20 to 30 that
22:41I had seen
22:42at that time, but the low was around five. So I've never really know. Right. Well, there is a wide
22:47range of values for these. Often that's dictated by the condition. Sometimes they're quite faded.
22:52Your colors are as good as you would expect. Because it's signed in this peculiar fashion though,
22:58we do have to consider that into the valuation. So I would estimate this at auction at $20,000 to
23:04$30,000.
23:05Oh, great. Well, that's wonderful. Yeah. I love seeing it out. The colors are amazing.
23:11If this had been signed the right way, it would be conservatively $30,000 to $50,000. Okay.
23:19An herbarium is sort of like a library, but instead of a collection of books, it's a collection of plants.
23:24Kate Furbish was an incredible botanist who made it her life's mission to collect all of the plants
23:31of 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
23:54here in our collection. Her specimens of yellow avens are the specimens she used to reference while
24:01creating the botanical illustration.
24:06I brought in a crock from 1818. It's been in the family. There was a farm at one point outside
24:12Philly
24:13that my grandfather had and he rented out the barn and all we had a place we could go and
24:18stay there.
24:19And whether that came from that area, I don't know. Is that in Chester County?
24:24I believe so, yes.
24:26Because I do think you have a Chester County piece.
24:29Wow.
24:30This redwood jar would have been made of locally sourced clay. Potteries in Chester County in the
24:36late 18th and early 19th century, they used a lot of slip. When you add up the fact that this
24:41has this specific ovoid form with these handles, with this type of slip, and in the fact that this
24:48manganese decoration is there, it all points to Chester County, Pennsylvania. And in Chester County,
24:53because it's near Philadelphia, of course, they were influenced by Philadelphia pieces. So it's
24:58similar to Philadelphia, but has much more personality, a little more provincial, so it has
25:04an accent. And that accent is rural Pennsylvania, specifically Chester County. So it's LL and script
25:12on one side with that 1818 with the serif there. And then on the other side,
25:20we had this LL and block letters in 1818 without a serif. I think that these are two different people
25:27decorating it within the pottery, which I've never seen before. We look for a pottery where the LL
25:34initials would make sense. We didn't find one in Chester County, Pennsylvania. So it makes better
25:41sense, I think, that it be an owner. So you have manganese vertical little slashes, kind of drips,
25:49that add depth to the decoration. You have this copper oxide, this greenish color in this area,
25:57which gives it great color. It adds interest to the glaze. And redware jars like this were
26:03utilitarian. They kept liquids in them, they kept dry goods in them. And this is a fairly large example.
26:09You have some chips on the piece, but they're small. You know, there's a nip over here. You do have
26:14a chip
26:14to the base. The damage on here, although damage is expected on a piece of redware, when you add it
26:21all up, it does affect the value of the piece. I grew up collecting and dealing in redware and stoneware.
26:28So before I found out of our girls, my brother and I, after dinner, would hug our jars. That's
26:36literally, we'd talk about our collection, hug our collection. So just to see an old boy form like
26:42this is pretty exciting. A piece like this, you could put at auction in the range of $6,000
26:51to $8,000. Wow. And I used to keep it at the top of the stairs. And then when I
26:55saw something on
26:56roadshow, I was like, maybe I shouldn't leave that at the top of the stairs. So this, my future father
27:03-in-law
27:03bought at an antique store in New Hampshire. I think it was $19. It looks to be wood and then
27:10parts of it
27:10are plaster. This is an 1852 Shields map of Boston. I used to work at a frame shop in Brookline,
27:23Mass.
27:23And when you're at a frame shop, you meet lots of collectors. And I made friends with a woman who,
27:29that was
27:29her business. And she found this in Brookline Town Hall attic. So she gave it to me. Eventually, I framed
27:37it.
27:37It used to have wood on the top and the bottom, like a map you hang on the wall.
27:42My great grandfather purchased it at a flea market for $1 in South Paris, Maine in the 1920s.
27:51Well, 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 certainly 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 Birmingham
28:20gun trade in the mid-19th century in England. The Dutch guns of this period are often thought to be
28:26copies of British Brown Bess-type muskets. But the reality is, is the Dutch were using these patterns
28:32actually a little bit earlier than the British. And in many ways, their design sort of influenced what
28:38becomes known as the Brown Bess musket, circa 1730, when they officially adopt a pattern for the long
28:46land pattern musket for the British military. The best part about this gun, other than that it's
28:51completely untouched, hasn't had anything done to it, and remains an original flint, is the marking on
28:58top of the barrel that says S. Carolina. South Carolina starts off as a British colony. The colonies
29:05were important to the British, but they weren't necessarily worth spending a lot of money on,
29:11in terms of their defense. So, as early as 1731, the British government started buying used Dutch
29:19muskets 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.
29:31One of the ways we know that the gun was actually purchased out of a Dutch arsenal,
29:36is that on the barrel at the end, there is a rack number that was the Dutch arsenal rack number
29:43for
29:43the gun. Dutch musket, unmarked, just original flintlock Dutch musket, in kind of attic condition.
29:51The gun would probably sell somewhere in the range of three thousand to five thousand dollars,
29:59maybe a little bit more. Wow. But it gets a whole lot better because of that mark. I think a
30:05conservative
30:06auction estimate for this gun is between twenty thousand and thirty thousand dollars. Oh my goodness,
30:14I was not expecting that whatsoever. I would probably insure it in the range of thirty to thirty-five
30:20thousand dollars. It's an incredibly difficult gun to replace, there are only a handful of known examples,
30:27and this is the best marked one I have seen. Wow, really? It's just everything that makes my heart
30:33go aflutter when I see just a wonderful piece of history like this. I brought in a pamphlet from a
30:421933
30:44banquet at Notre Dame. My father was maybe a water boy for the football team from 32, 33 until he
30:52graduated in
30:531936. If you're going to be a water boy, Notre Dame is a pretty good team to be a water
30:57boy for,
30:57right? True. So he goes to this banquet in 1933, and who's there? The Four Horsemen. The Four Horsemen
31:03in Notre Dame called that because famous writer Grant Lynn Rice deemed them to be the Four Horsemen
31:08when they won the college championship in the Rose Bowl in 1924. Okay, so the four of them are Don
31:13Miller, Elmer Layden, Jim Crowley, and Harry Studer. The four autographs together featuring the Four
31:19Horsemen is quite a fine. But we think at auction this would sell for $3,000, $3,500.
31:24No way. Holy cow. Yeah.
31:29That's awesome. Now, I do have to make a comment about the fact that the autographs aren't
31:32authenticated. We 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.
31:44I'm speechless. Oh, my gosh. Thank you. You're welcome. That is so awesome. My great-great-grandmother
31:54was an assistant in the Hamilton House, which was where the Tyson family resided in South Berwick,
32:02Maine, during the summer. She worked with Miss Tyson quite a while, and she gave this,
32:09among many items, to my great-great-grandmother as gratitude for her service. They knew Celia
32:15Faxter, who was a painter of pottery. On the bottom, it says Celia Faxter, 1888. Then below that,
32:25it says H and C over L. H and C stands for Haviland and Company, and L stands for Limoges,
32:34the city in France. So this is made of porcelain, and it would have been shipped to America as a
32:40plain
32:41white pitcher. And then she would have selected this to hand paint on it. She has hand painted
32:48all the way around these beautiful purple iris and the wonderful long spiky leaves. Celia Faxter was born
32:57in 1835, and she died in 1894. She was in a fairly educated and fluid family. She moved to live
33:05at her
33:06father's hotel, which was named Appledore Hotel, which was on the Isle of Shoals, which is off the
33:13coast of Maine. And lots of famous people came and stayed there. Now, she was a writer, and she published
33:20a lot of books and poetry. She was a writer's writer. Some of her biggest fans were some of the
33:27greatest writers of the time, and they were her friends because they came and stayed in the hotel.
33:33She was friends with Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was also good friends with a
33:40lot of famous artists of the day. She's most known for her writing about the ocean, but when she painted,
33:47she didn't paint the seashore. She painted her garden, her flowers. Many of them actually include
33:53hand-painted quotes from some of her poetry. Oh, wow. As a beautiful, well-painted piece of antique
34:01porcelain, if it was unsigned, it would probably be worth $100. But because it's signed by her,
34:11there are people who are avid collectors of her work. I would estimate a retail price
34:17to be between $3,000 and $5,000. Oh, my gosh.
34:22She, she, her work is very desirable. Wow.
34:26There are significant collectors. Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
34:29Wow, what a treasure. This is wonderful. Yeah, it is a treasure.
34:37I brought in a letter that was written to my father-in-law from Martin Luther King Jr.
34:44My father-in-law was a Unitarian minister and he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
34:51during all of the civil rights unrest. It's such an intense, powerful letter. This letter was written
34:57in October of 62 at the end of the Albany, Georgia campaign to your father-in-law who must have
35:06been
35:06present at the Albany campaign. He was a religious leader and he was there to support King and the
35:12movement. Let me just read the first paragraph. Dear Reverend Poppendrew, for several weeks,
35:18I have intended writing to express my personal appreciation to you for your marvelous witness
35:22in Albany. But the accumulation of a flood of mail has stood in my way. The smoke is gradually clearing
35:29from the nonviolent battle at Albany. And as we assess the results, we all agree that one of the high
35:35points of the summer was the contribution rendered by our brothers from the north who came to share
35:40with us in the fight against injustice. It goes on for two pages and it sort of closes with another
35:47kind of really meaningful, heartfelt paragraph. He says, your continued help and prayer will be
35:54greatly appreciated. You have now become sensitized to the problem in a new way. We are counting on you to
36:01discern some methods of action which will contribute to our national problem in race relations. Our nation
36:07suffers when churches are burned or when mobs kill and ravish in protest of a single person of color
36:14being admitted to an institution of higher learning. So he's talking about integrating the universities,
36:20right? So we need, we continue to need your help in this long battle. So terrific letter, signed by King,
36:27great content. And then you have some other supporting materials that come with it. So your father-in-law
36:33participated in the 1963 March on Washington, right? Yes, he did. He's, he's in that photo, right?
36:40Right there in that photo. In Life magazine. This is summer of 63. And then this is must be the
36:47December of 1963
36:49holiday card from King. It has a really emotional image of the four little girls
36:56that were killed in the Birmingham church bombing of the fall of 1963. There's a message inside that is
37:06actually printed. This is not handwritten by King. This is a printed card, but it does actually show
37:13that more than a year after this, your father-in-law is still in the movement. He's still connected to
37:19the
37:20civil rights battle. The value is in the letter itself. This, these other items are supporting material.
37:28It'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. And I would expect it to do
37:41as well
37:41as or better because the content is terrific. The letter is amazing. The content is amazing.
37:49That's incredible. I never, I could never have imagined that. It was so wonderful to see it
37:57in person and read it for myself. It really just totally overwhelms me when I, when I read the words.
38:04If you were going to insure this, I would tell your insurance company to put a number of $50,000
38:12on it.
38:13Okay. This is a handshaped Greg Knowles minigun surfboard. The guy brought it into our surf shop
38:22looking for boards for his grandkids. So I swapped him for it. It'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.
38:37I picked this up about 20 years ago at a flea market for $20. I've been for the last 20
38:43years
38:43trying to decipher the signature and I'm hoping to learn more about it today.
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 want to find out more
39:03about it.
39:07This is a painting that belonged to my grandfather. It was given to him as a gift from a grateful
39:14patient. He was a surgeon at Yale New Haven Hospital. I never got to meet him, but the painting
39:21hung in my aunt's house my whole life. And then it went to my mother. And when my mom passed
39:27away,
39:28my four siblings and I had a lottery and I won it. I think it's Charles Ebert. I've been told
39:36it's
39:37Monhegan Island and it's off the coast of Maine. Right. And that he liked sailboats.
39:42It's an oil on canvas. I would date it around the 1920s, 1930s.
39:48The subject is Monhegan Island, but he's sort of standing on Monhegan Island.
39:53It doesn't have an official title, but I would give it the unofficial title of View of Manana.
39:58Okay.
39:58This is Manana Island. You can see here, there's a little bit of a,
40:02of a boat landing here. And that boat landing belonged to a guy named Ray Phillips,
40:06who was known as the Hermit of Manana. He was the only person who lived on Manana.
40:10And what's interesting about Monhegan is that it was an artist colony starting in the 1890s. It's
40:17about 12 miles off the coast of Maine. You can only go by boat. There are no cars there. And
40:22it's been
40:23an artist colony since the 1890s where artists like Robert Henry and Edward Hopper and George Bellows all
40:29painted. Ebert was a member of that colony. He was also a, a Parisian trained American Impressionist
40:37painter who was a member of the old lime Connecticut artist colony. He summered in Monhegan starting in
40:43about 1909, eventually building a house there with his wife, who was also an artist. And what I love
40:48about 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. He's captured the summer clouds. There's a little
40:59bit of a breeze. Boats and figures and paintings like this always are very attractive, very desirable,
41:05and add value. Tell me about the condition when you first got this painting. Yeah. Well, growing up,
41:10I remember seeing it in my aunt's house. It was really a mess. It was, it kind of sagged and
41:15cracked.
41:16I really just thought it was worthless. And I think when my mother got it, she had it conserved.
41:22And when it came back, I just was amazed. It's in beautiful condition now. The American
41:28Paintings Market is not at the best place at this current moment. The height of the American
41:34Paintings Market was kind of like the 2008 period. And prior to 2008, it never really came back to its
41:42previous levels. That said, it is a really gorgeous painting. Even in the current market, I would,
41:49for insurance purposes, say it's probably around $30,000 would be the price. Okay. Great. Thanks.
41:57Wonderful.
42:04The Eastern White Pine is an iconic tree here in Maine. And we have it throughout our woodlands.
42:10It's got a long history. It was used back in the 1800s for masts for ships. And it's still a
42:18very
42:18popular and useful lumber tree. The state flower of Maine is actually a pine cone in the tassel. And
42:25on a white pine tree, they have both male and female reproductive parts. The pollen comes from the male
42:31reproductive parts, pollinate the female cones. And then you end up with a cone that looks like this.
42:37We get what we're familiar with, those beautiful white pine cones that people use in holiday
42:42decorations. And they can range from what you see here, like three or four inches,
42:46but they can get up to six, seven, eight inches.
42:52My grandmother passed away in 1982, I believe. One of her helpers sent us a box of stuff. And this
43:00was in
43:00it. We saw one very similar to it on Antiques Roadshow many, many, many years ago. It's called a
43:05shabti and would be called upon during death by the gods to do work. I'm thinking that it was one
43:12of a number that would have been in the tomb. Sometimes there'd be 500, depending on how wealthy
43:17they were, because 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. These are the
43:27tools used to work the fields and the farms. It has a seed packet on the back of its shoulder.
43:32The writing on
43:33them, it's usually in chapter six from the Book of the Dead, which also has a spell. And when that
43:38spell is spoken, the shabti comes to life. He says, I hear and I obey. This one is from the
43:4626th
43:46dynasty, 664 to 525 BC. And 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. And this was really a renaissance, the last major blooming of Egyptian
44:06art, the 26th dynasty. And the headquarters were in a place called Said in Egypt. It's known for its
44:13extraordinary quality. The piece of this quality was absolutely for a particular person. He was
44:20probably a very important official or a priest in the 26th dynasty. It's a glazed ceramic. It's called
44:27Faience. And they vary in colour a lot. They go from white to dark and some are vivid blue,
44:33the cobalt ones. The 26th dynasty usually ends up being this pale green, very desirable. You can see
44:40the staining on the sides and the bottom. That's really come from oxidation in the ground where it's
44:45been lying. But the quality is just so sublime. You look at it and it's the quintessential Egyptian
44:51mummiform faces. We know it. I think a retail value would be in the region of eight to ten thousand
44:59dollars. Okay. And I would insure it probably for about fifteen thousand dollars. Very good.
45:10When I was 11, my mother decided to take a leave from her job at the Museum of Modern Art
45:16in New York
45:16and took us to France, the south of France, for six months. We biked all over. One trip, we biked
45:22all
45:23the way to Valerice because we lived in Saint-Laurent-du-Vas, which is outside of Nice. And she bought
45:29the plate.
45:30And the year was? 1967. It is a glazed ceramic plate made at the Madura studios in Valerice,
45:39in the south of France. The first one of this particular group was designed in 1963. Picasso had
45:47been doing ceramics at Madura since about 1947. And I love to use this as a snapshot of where he
45:58was in
45:59his life. Do you know how old he was when he designed this plate? No, I don't. He was 82
46:06years old.
46:06Oh my goodness. So he was very prolific and he never stopped creating in 63. Of the plates he did
46:18that year, this is my favorite. Oh, it's mine too. But then again, it's always been in my house. But
46:25that's so nice that I brought you a favorite plate. I love this one. This plate, like many, many others,
46:32is called in French visage or face. The additions are as small on these plates as 100 and they go
46:40up
46:40to 500. Okay. And this one is 150. So that is considered a small edition. It is numbered 147 out
46:49of
46:49150. So we assume he did all 150. If this was offered at auction, being conservative, I would probably go
46:58with a pre-auction estimate of $6,000 to $9,000. Okay.
47:04They have been bringing over $20,000. That's a lot. That's all right. I'm not selling it.
47:15It's my plate. It's just a period of life that I wouldn't trade for anything. And this is sort of
47:22emblematic of it. And if I were to insure this, I would probably go around $10,000. Okay.
47:30Came out of a Dundacoast Lake, I believe. We have a picture here of it with it on the top
47:34of this
47:35building. But I took it out of a building when I was restoring a building, working on it in Washington
47:39Street in Camden. It was in a shed as a shelf. So I took it down and found the sign.
47:44And a friend of
47:44mine found this picture at a lawn sale years later and gave it to us.
47:53Well, it's a Bacon Belmont claw hammer style banjo. I think that it was manufactured in the
47:59in the 40s. I got it from my father. And I think he got it for trade for something back
48:05in the 70s.
48:12My grandfather had been traveling around the globe around 1909. We think this is one of the pieces that
48:20he brought back possibly from Japan. He was at the base of the home that my father grew up in
48:26at the
48:27staircase. When my grandfather passed away, he came into our home in New Jersey. I 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. It's enormously heavy. Yes. Yes. We weighed this section. It was 80 pounds.
48:48Just that section. Yes. Right. And it's because this is made of bronze. It's a lantern. What you see on
48:55the
48:55surface is not the way the metal appears when it comes out of the foundry. Also, what they do in
49:03that
49:03process when it comes out of the foundry is they're finishing the details. Then you need to do
49:09something to give a uniform appearance that takes away those kinds of inconsistencies. And that is
49:16called a patina. And one of the things that you can see on the shoulder here is the first coat
49:22was a
49:22deep reddish brick color. Yes. How much light do you think is going to come through this? With a candle,
49:28not a lot. Not a lot. It's supposed to be more atmospheric. It's supposed to be something that is going
49:34to
49:35conjure up some sort of an emotional response. What kind of emotional response does he conjure up?
49:41Well, he's scared as his children. That's exactly right. This is the stuff of nightmares. Yes. Yes.
49:47And that's exactly who that is. This is an Oni. And an Oni is a mythical figure that we can
49:53best describe
49:54as a devil who has superhuman powers. The eyes have a kind of off-white appearance that has been
50:04achieved with some sort of enamel. That 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. During the
50:20Meiji
50:20period, Japan was rapidly industrializing. One of the ways they did that was by creating works of art
50:27that would be astounding, that would be sold to people who had influence, which would be seen by
50:35the other people of influence, that would then have an effect on commerce with Japan. For insurance
50:43purposes, a reasonable figure would be in the $60,000 range. Oh, that's very nice.
50:50How nice. One of seven. I have to sure 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. And we got a bonus appraisal when the
51:13appraiser said that she thinks she owned that sweater in the 1980s. So we had a great time at the
51:18Roadshow today. And we've carried this around for 50 years. And it's an 1840 mantelpiece from the top
51:24of a building in Canton, China that could be worth up to $1,200. And I said I would throw
51:29it away if it
51:30wasn't worth anything, but I guess we're going to have to keep it. And I brought my mother's pearls
51:34that she brought in from Japan when she got married and came to the States over 50 years ago. And
51:40I didn't
51:41know there was a clasp here that you could use it for both as a bracelet and a necklace, which
51:47I would
51:47tell my mom that it was for. And we didn't really know how much it was worth, but it was
51:52worth a couple
51:52thousand dollars, which is pretty cool. So we're so excited to have met the appraisers here as well.
51:58Mahalo. Thank you. Aloha.
52:00We brought two dolls. This one is from Germany and 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. Thanks Antiques Roadshow.
52:20Thanks for watching. See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
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