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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 Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.
00:10He scared us his children.
00:12This is the stuff of nightmares.
00:14No way!
00:16Holy cow!
00:35Antiques Roadshow has set up at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Booth Bay.
00:42Celebrating the biodiversity of the region is the name of the game here, and part of the garden's mission involves
00:49the research of native plants.
00:51Have an interest in botany?
00:53The Herbarium, a collection of dried and pressed plants used for research, contains plant specimens from the 1840s right up
01:02to the present day.
01:04Roadshow will leave the plant collection to the botanists as we check out collections of valuable and not-so-valuable
01:11antiques.
01:12This little guy is a handcrafted little wooden boy by an artist named John Ellison from Chicago.
01:19I got him for my boyfriend for his birthday and took him apart and sanded him down and conditioned him
01:27and re-put him together.
01:28He'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.
01:36I probably paid like maybe 70 bucks.
01:39So this is a Picasso print.
01:41As far as I know, it came from my wife's great aunt, who lived in California for a long time,
01:49and she collected some art.
01:51And I believe it is a numbered print.
01:54I think 20 prints 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.
02:06They were from a cottage, a seaside cottage in Maine outside of Portland, that I think my great-aunt-in
02:13-law got in the late 50s, maybe early 60s.
02:18And when did you get them?
02:20Maybe six or seven years ago.
02:22What we have is a pair of cast-iron, obviously lobster form, and irons, or fire dogs are sometimes called,
02:30designed to stand permanently in a fireplace.
02:33They're so obviously related to the state of Maine.
02:36Lobsters are not unique to Maine, but come on.
02:39Right.
02:39This is cast-iron, very crudely and simply made.
02:43They're made in the sand-casting technique, whereby someone took a mould.
02:48I'm pretty confident they took a lobster.
02:50You make a mould, you press it into fine sand, and then you have most of what you need to
02:56cast iron.
02:57I suspect they're very local, found in Portland, and almost certainly made somewhere near in the state of Maine.
03:04It's hard to date them precisely.
03:06I think they were made in the second half of the 19th century, probably in the third quarter.
03:12You can see that both of them on the arms at the back have been repaired.
03:16This one with a kind of sleeve to hold the two elements together, and this snapped in probably the same
03:23place, and it's been bolted together.
03:26Both rather crude and amateur repairs, but I love the fact that someone has loved them enough to repair them.
03:33Right.
03:33In a good antique shop in Maine, I see them at least $2,000, possibly $2,500.
03:41Okay.
03:42Great.
03:42But I love them.
03:51This beautiful guy here is?
03:53My mother.
03:55Wow.
03:55Probably this picture was taken in the early 40s.
03:58Dad was gone for four years in the Second World War.
04:03Europe ended up as an aide to Eisenhower as part of the Corps of Engineers, and somewhere along the way,
04:11he had this commissioned.
04:13But I don't know exactly where he commissioned it.
04:16I assumed it was near Naples, Italy.
04:19And you can see that this is exactly her.
04:22Absolutely, and the detail is incredible.
04:24Incredible.
04:25So I think you're right about Naples.
04:27It's the home, Italy, the home of cameo production.
04:31It's carved out of conch shell.
04:33Almost every cameo I see, they're facing right.
04:37Really?
04:38It's very rare to see one facing left.
04:42The frame also is fabulous with the garland and the ribbon.
04:46With 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.
04:58That's great.
04:59You're not selling it.
05:00No.
05:01For insurance, $3,000.
05:04Terrific.
05:04That'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, turning it into a creative compound.
05:20And as the guys were doing demo in the ceiling, they found a whole bunch of alcohol bottles and these
05:26beer cans.
05:27They almost kind of threw them all away.
05:29I'm like, oh, these look so cool.
05:30They're super graphic.
05:31In the world of Breweriana, these are actually very important cans.
05:35This is called a cone top can.
05:37And it was available as both a 12 ounce and a quart size.
05:40And the cone top just specifically relates to the form in which you would drink the beverage.
05:45The 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 can see the full company mark here.
05:55The Croft Brewing Company, Boston, Massachusetts.
05:58The company first opened in 1934 and they were closed by 1952 when they were bought out by the Narragansett
06:04Company.
06:04They were part of that post-prohibition boom, alcohol is now legal again, so money's flowing and people want to
06:11open breweries.
06:12And this is their stock ale, they had a cream ale, they had an all malt red label.
06:16But for collectors today, the stock ale can graphically is very attractive as it hones into art deco design.
06:24When it comes to beer can collecting, one of the first major factors is, is it an indoor can or
06:29is it an outdoor can?
06:30Literally meaning, did you discover these beer cans in the ground covered in dirt or did you find them inside?
06:36You clearly found them inside.
06:38The lithography is vibrant, there's minimal oxidation to the tops of them.
06:42When we look at the can closest to me, it has the biggest apology out of them all.
06:46It has a large dent with a crease, also a scratch here with some paint loss.
06:50Otherwise, they all have little apologies, but they're 80 year old plus cans, so you would have a scratcher or
06:56a nick too along the way.
06:57To find cans in this condition is exceptionally rare.
07:02And with exceptional condition comes exceptional jumps in value.
07:07Conservatively at auction, for the group of four cans, it would easily be $10,000 to $15,000 for the
07:14collection.
07:15Amazing.
07:16That could help pay for the renovation.
07:19It's amazing.
07:21Wow.
07:21Too bad there wasn't one that still had beer in it.
07:23Most recently at auction, one exceptional condition comparable to these, but had the original cap in a quart size, brought
07:33over $18,000 at auction.
07:35Oh, wow.
07:36Amazing.
07:37So surprised?
07:38Yeah, so crazy.
07:39I thought it was going to be like, I don't know, like $100.
07:45So this dress belonged to my mother.
07:48She lived in Philadelphia, and somewhere I think around when she was 18, 19, 20, she would be a runway
07:56model for the Nanduskin department store.
07:59And I know the dress came from Nanduskin, but I don't know how my mom acquired it.
08:05I believe she wore it once, and I know that I wore it once, if you can believe it.
08:11But I always thought it was extraordinary, and just wild.
08:16And who makes a dress like this?
08:18So what you have here is a black silk taffeta evening gown made by Gilbert Adrian, and it's for his
08:261948 collection.
08:27He was born in Naugatau, Connecticut, 1903.
08:30Okay.
08:30A very, very artistic and precocious drawer and creative young man.
08:35He went to Parsons in New York, and they quickly said, we have no more to teach you.
08:42Go to our Parsons School in France.
08:43So he started in Paris in 1920, and he then meets up with Irving Berlin.
08:50He is invited at the age of 19 to go back to America, and he designed costumes on stage for
08:58Irving Berlin and Broadway.
09:00Wow.
09:00He then goes to Hollywood, and in 1928, he starts to work for MGM.
09:07So he becomes the MGM head costume designer from 1928 to 1941.
09:14One of the things that Adrian is most well-known for is he designed all the costumes for Wizard of
09:19Oz.
09:21I just heard that recently.
09:22Yeah, I didn't, I had no idea.
09:24Yeah.
09:24That's so cool.
09:25In 1941, he says he's leaving MGM.
09:28He's going to start his own label.
09:30In 1942, he has his very first collection.
09:34He had two different labels under his name.
09:37One was called Adrian Originals, which is what this is.
09:41And there's a label in the back, along with the Nanduskin label, which was the retailer in Philadelphia, the top
09:46of the top in Philly.
09:48He also had Adrian Customs, and those were the couture.
09:51So if you can believe, this was a ready-to-wear.
09:54His ready-to-wear went from the very low sort of bread-and-butter $69 suits up to $395 gowns,
10:04which is the height of, again, that lower end.
10:06Right, right.
10:06And in today's money, it's about $5,000 for this.
10:11Had you thought about the value at all?
10:14I was sort of in the one to three, hoping for three-ish plus, just because it seems so extraordinary.
10:22I would put an auction estimate of $1,500 to $2,000 on this.
10:27Okay.
10:27For insurance purposes, I would have an insurance value of $8,000.
10:32Oh, my gosh.
10:33Wow.
10:34Okay.
10:35Very, very cool.
10:37I'm so happy to know more about it.
10:39Thank you.
10:40Thank you so much.
10:41Absolutely my pleasure.
10:44Coastal 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 idea
11:06of 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, and who is involved here,
11:20really feels like it's their place, like they have this sense of ownership that you don't necessarily find other places.
11:26So we really pride ourselves on being a place for everyone.
11:32I brought a necklace that was given to me as a wedding gift.
11:36It belonged to my great-grandmother.
11:39I believe it was actually a gift for her 18th birthday.
11:42So I imagine it would be the 1910s is when she received this.
11:48It was given to me from my aunt, and with it she sent a note that said that it was
11:53given to my great-grandmother, grandmother, aunt, and now me.
11:57What year did you receive the watch?
11:592016 was the year we got married.
12:02It's kind of fun because today happens to be my wedding anniversary, too.
12:05Oh, congratulations.
12:06Thank you.
12:07It's Cartier Ladies Pendant Watch.
12:11Cartier, it's a Paris firm.
12:13They were founded in 1847.
12:15The time period, you are right about on the money.
12:191910, 1915.
12:21Edwardian period.
12:22Also, Belle Epoque.
12:24Belle Epoque is not just a time period, it's also a style.
12:28This has pearls.
12:31It has diamonds.
12:33It has enamel work, the blue enamel throughout.
12:36It's set in platinum.
12:37It's set in yellow gold.
12:39The diamonds in here are rose-cut diamonds.
12:43The pearls are all natural.
12:45The back here, it's blue guilloche enamel, which is hard-fired enamel on top of the metal.
12:52There's diamond-set initials.
12:54Are those grandma's initials?
12:56E.S. was her initials.
12:59It's flowery letters, so I wasn't sure if it was just a design or if it was, in fact, initials.
13:04If that looks like an E.S. to you, then I'll trust your judgment on it.
13:09It's an E.S., and that was a custom order.
13:12Everywhere on here are jewels.
13:14There's something a little extra special.
13:16There's something a little fancy.
13:18The quality of an object like this, it's absolutely phenomenal.
13:23Second to none.
13:25Cartier had special movements made.
13:28This was a collaboration with Cartier with another famous company, Jaeger LaCoultra.
13:34You have the original box.
13:36Or 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.
13:54That's wild.
13:57Well, I better keep care of it.
14:00Safety deposit box, here we come.
14:03Unbelievable condition and unbelievable to find it in the original box.
14:08It'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.
14:24So it's possible this is actually a student of hers.
14:30I got it at a sports memorabilia show probably like 10 years ago.
14:35Paid a couple hundred bucks for it.
14:36It's probably from the early 60s.
14:39The only thing I really know is about Nat Albright.
14:41He used to read the games and kind of like recreate the game with noises and pretend like the game
14:45was actually live off the radio.
14:47But he was actually getting it through like Morse code.
14:56I came across this fan, and it was probably in the 1990s.
15:00And I used to go to some West Hartford, Connecticut shows, and they were vintage shows with various jewelry and
15:08materials.
15:09And the fan just spoke to me.
15:12So I've always loved Victorian pieces.
15:14And it's the Victorian craftsmanship.
15:17This one looked beautiful.
15:19I saw it was Tiffany.
15:20What did you pay for it back then?
15:22$50.
15:23Wow.
15:23That was a great...
15:24It was a great price.
15:25So you have a 19th century Tiffany lace fan.
15:29It'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.
15:41And then what was really exciting was the loop at the bottom, which is also marked Tiffany.
15:48And then we also found another marking next to the Tiffany, which was $14K.
15:55And that's what was really exciting.
15:57You have a little bit of gold there.
15:59And as we know, the value of gold is just going up and up and up.
16:04The condition is really nice.
16:05You do have some discoloration along the bottom, where I think that's where it adhered to the sticks.
16:13Tiffany would have put these out in the stores as kind of like an entry point for maybe a husband
16:19to buy his wife a Tiffany gift.
16:21So it didn't have to go straight to the jewelry.
16:24You know, they also offered these other ladies' accessories during this time period.
16:29If it was just a lace fan with mother-of-pearl, I'd give it an auction estimate of about $100,
16:35with the box, $350.
16:38Then you have the gold, and that's really where the value is coming from.
16:44I'd give it an auction estimate of $800 to $1,200.
16:47Oh, that is just wonderful.
16:49Yeah.
16:49I've enjoyed the show tremendously today, so it's been fantastic.
16:57They were my great-grandfather's.
17:00So my great-grandfather grew up in the same village as Joseph Hoffman in Czechoslovakia,
17:06and then they both moved to Vienna, and then my great-grandfather wanted to support him in his designs,
17:12and so he acquired these.
17:14Joseph Hoffman, he was born in 1870, and he actually lived until 1956.
17:18He 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.
17:31He designed silver.
17:33He designed glass.
17:34He designed textiles.
17:37And early 20th century, 1903, he started something called the Wiener Werkstätte.
17:43And it was actually a group of different designers who worked together.
17:47Joseph Hoffman designed these for the Wiener Werkstätte.
17:51We're not sure what these are used for.
17:53They can just be decorative vases.
17:56They could be cashpo and had flowers or greenery in it.
18:00The Wiener Werkstätte did last until the 1930s, but they ran out of steam.
18:04And I think these are examples from the high point of their production, sort of 1910, 1915.
18:11Each of these is hand-hammered.
18:14On the underside, it has the Wiener Werkstätte mark.
18:18And up here, we have Joseph Hoffman's initials, and then we have the Wiener Werkstätte mark,
18:25and then we have the mark of the person who actually fabricated it.
18:29900 refers to the grade of silver.
18:32So most of us talk about sterling silver.
18:35Sterling silver is 925 parts of silver per thousand.
18:39This is the high point of design in the early part of the 20th century,
18:43and Hoffman was the master of design.
18:46I think a retail replacement value for them would be in the $30,000 to $50,000 range.
18:51Are you serious?
18:53Yeah.
18:53Oh, my God.
18:56Wow, I had no idea.
18:59Holy cow.
19:01I should probably keep better, keep, I should probably take better care of them, keep them better.
19:08Wow.
19:09Oh, my God.
19:10That's amazing.
19:11Thank you so much.
19:16It was my husband's father's in his office at Christchurch Chapel in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.
19:25Parishioners such as Dodges or Fords would take his father to England,
19:30and they would find things to bring back to Christchurch.
19:35And clearly, if you have a Dodge or a Ford with you, they're going to have quite deep pockets.
19:40Yes.
19:40When do you think that that would have been, roughly?
19:431930s.
19:43It's definitely a very early piece.
19:45I think the youngest, let's say, it's going to be 16th century.
19:49And it's a nativity scene.
19:50This 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.
20:09And I believe that it's titled Shipboard Girl.
20:11My grandparents were living in D.C. at the time.
20:14They had a large condo.
20:15They were at the age where they needed to downsize a lot.
20:17So they actually rented a second apartment, filled it with all the things that they were giving away.
20:21This was in a poster tube.
20:23And actually, this one wasn't noticed in the poster tube.
20:25There was a different poster that I was more attracted to.
20:28And they said that I could take it away.
20:30And that's how it ended up in my possession.
20:32You're absolutely right.
20:34Roy Lichtenstein's Shipboard Girl from 1965.
20:38So this is really the beginning of pop art.
20:41And 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.
20:57So this poster is an offset lithograph, which is like photo mechanical printmaking.
21:03It's done in sort of industrial strength colors in a commercial kind of press.
21:09And there's a couple of things about this print that really stand out, which make it very exciting.
21:14First of all, are the colors.
21:16And they're really spectacular.
21:18So fresh.
21:19It seems to me that it never came out of the tube.
21:22It's quite possible it was brought home from a gallery.
21:25I think so.
21:26And it hasn't seen daylight for six years.
21:30The other curious thing about your print is how it's signed.
21:34Yes.
21:35I've always wondered about that.
21:36Yeah.
21:37So it bears the pencil signature upper left of Roy Lichtenstein.
21:43And this is typically signed low right.
21:47And you can see that he signed it low right at the time.
21:52But its orientation was the wrong way.
21:54So he ended up signing it upside down.
21:56This is a well-documented print.
21:58It's in his catalog resume.
22:00It's in many museum collections.
22:02But no one really knows exactly how many were printed.
22:05They were never numbered.
22:07But the signature is absolutely right.
22:10And we actually did find some other examples of this print with the signature this way.
22:17Well, that's incredible.
22:18So in the moment of giving it to somebody, a stack of prints being signed by the artist,
22:25some got turned around and were signed the wrong way, which makes it a curiosity.
22:30Yeah.
22:31Do you have any sense of the value?
22:32I had looked it up a long time ago and seen a wide range of numbers for it.
22:38I think the high range was around $20,000 to $30,000 that I had seen at that time.
22:42But the low was around $5,000, so I've never really known.
22:46Right.
22:46Well, there is a wide range of values for these.
22:49Often that's dictated by the condition.
22:51Sometimes they're quite faded.
22:52Your colors are as good as you would expect.
22:55Because it's signed in this peculiar fashion, though, we do have to consider that into the valuation.
23:01So I would estimate this at auction at $20,000 to $30,000.
23:05Oh, great.
23:06Well, that's wonderful.
23:07Yeah.
23:08I love seeing it out.
23:09The colors are amazing.
23:11If this had been signed the right way, it would be conservatively $30,000 to $50,000.
23:17Okay.
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 of Maine,
23:32or as many as she could.
23:34She did this through collecting herbarium specimens and also by creating really detailed botanical illustrations.
23:40One of the things that she's most well-known for is actually discovering a species that is only found in
23:46Maine and New Brunswick, Canada.
23:47It's called Furbish's lousewort.
23:49We're really grateful to have a handful of Kate Furbish's actual specimens here in our collection.
23:55Her specimens of yellow avens are the specimens she used to reference while creating the botanical illustration.
24:06I brought in a crock from 1818.
24:08It's been in the family.
24:10There was a farm at one point outside Philly that my grandfather had, and he rented out the barn, and
24:17all.
24:17We had a place we could go and stay there.
24:19And whether that came from that area, I don't know.
24:23Is 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.
24:34Potteries in Chester County in the late 18th and early 19th century, they used a lot of slip.
24:39When you add up the fact that this has this specific ovoid form with these handles, with this type of
24:46slip, add in the fact that this manganese decoration is there, it all points to Chester County, Pennsylvania.
24:52And in Chester County, because it's near Philadelphia, of course, they were influenced by Philadelphia pieces.
24:58So it's similar to Philadelphia, but has much more personality, a little more provincial.
25:03So it has an accent.
25:05And that accent is rural Pennsylvania, specifically Chester County.
25:10So 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.
25:25I think that these are two different people decorating it within the pottery, which I've never seen before.
25:31We look for a pottery where the LL initials would make sense.
25:36We didn't find one in Chester County, Pennsylvania.
25:40So it makes better sense, I think, that it be an owner.
25:43So you have manganese vertical little slashes, kind of drips that add depth to the decoration.
25:52You have this copper oxide, this greenish color in this area, which gives it great color.
25:59It adds interest to the glaze.
26:01And redware jars like this were utilitarian.
26:04They kept liquids in them.
26:05They kept dry goods in them.
26:06And this is a fairly large example.
26:09You have some chips on the piece, but they're small.
26:12You know, there's a nip over here.
26:13You do have a chip to the base.
26:15The damage on here, although damage is expected on a piece of redware,
26:20when you add it all up, it does affect the value of the piece.
26:24I grew up collecting red 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.
26:35You know, that's literally, we'd talk about our collection, hug our collection.
26:39So just to see an old boy form like this is pretty exciting.
26:44A piece like this, you could put at auction in the range of $6,000 to $8,000.
26:53And I used to keep it at the top of the stairs.
26:55And then when I saw something on Roadshow, I was like,
26:57maybe I shouldn't leave that at the top of the stairs.
27:01So this, my future father-in-law bought at an antique store in New Hampshire.
27:06I think it was $19.
27:08It looks to be wood, and then parts of it are plaster.
27:17This is an 1852 Shields map of Boston.
27:21I used to work at a frame shop in Brookline, Mass.
27:24And when you're at a frame shop, you meet lots of collectors.
27:26And I made friends with a woman who thought was her business.
27:30And she found this in Brookline Town Hall Attic.
27:34So she gave it to me.
27:36Eventually, I framed it.
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.
27:55The original variant of these guns had iron furniture.
27:58This has a brass butt plate and trigger guard, so it's a little bit later.
28:02But the Dutch were making these certainly by about 1730, which probably dates its production to circa 1735 to 1745.
28:12The Netherlands was one of the largest sources of firearms during that period,
28:17really on until the advent of the Birmingham gun trade in the mid-19th century in England.
28:23The Dutch guns of this period are often thought to be copies of British brown-bess-type muskets.
28:29But the reality is, is the Dutch were using these patterns actually a little bit earlier than the British.
28:35And in many ways, their design sort of influenced what becomes known as the brown-bess musket,
28:41circa 1730, when they officially adopt a pattern for the long-land pattern musket for the British military.
28:48The best part about this gun, other than that it's completely untouched, hasn't had anything done to it,
28:55and remains an original flint, is the marking on top of the barrel that says S. Carolina.
29:01South Carolina starts off as a British colony.
29:04The colonies were important to the British, but they weren't necessarily worth spending a lot of money on,
29:11in terms of their defense.
29:12So, as early as 1731, the British government started buying used Dutch muskets to arm the colonials.
29:21The 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
29:36is that on the barrel, at the end, there is a rack number that was the Dutch arsenal rack number
29:43for the gun.
29:44Dutch musket, unmarked, just an 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.
30:05I think a conservative auction estimate for this gun is between $20,000 and $30,000.
30:13Oh, my goodness. I was not expecting that whatsoever.
30:16I would probably insure it in the range of $30,000 to $35,000.
30:22It's an incredibly difficult gun to replace.
30:24There 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.
30:45My father was maybe a water boy for the football team from 1932, 1933 until he graduated in 1936.
30:54If you're going to be a water boy, Notre Dame is a pretty good thing to be a water boy
30:57for, right?
30:57So he goes to this banquet in 1933, and who's there?
31:01The Four Horsemen.
31:02The Four Horsemen of Notre Dame called that because famous writer Grant Lynn Rice deemed them to be the Four
31:07Horsemen 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.
31:16The four autographs together featuring the Four Horsemen is quite a fine.
31:20Well, we think at auction this would sell for $3,000, $3,500.
31:24No way!
31:27Holy cow!
31:29That's awesome.
31:30Now, I do have to make a comment about the fact that the autographs aren't authenticated.
31:33We have the provenance.
31:34We believe them to be authentic.
31:35When they're graded, values go up.
31:38We've seen examples as high as $5,000, $7,500 for the Four Horsemen autographs.
31:44I'm speechless.
31:46Oh, my gosh.
31:47Thank 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 family resided in South
32:01Berwick, Maine, during the summer.
32:03She worked with Miss Tyson quite a while, and she gave this, among many items, to my great-great-grandmother
32:12as gratitude for her service.
32:14They knew Celia Thaxter, who was a painter of pottery.
32:18On the bottom, it says Celia Thaxter, 1888.
32:24Then below that, it says H and C over L.
32:28H and C stands for Haviland and Company, and L stands for Limoges, the city in France.
32:35So this is made of porcelain, and it would have been shipped to America as a plain white pitcher.
32:42And then she would have selected this to hand paint on it.
32:46She has hand-painted all the way around these beautiful purple iris and the wonderful long spiky leaves.
32:55Cecilia Thaxter was born in 1835, and she died in 1894.
33:00She was in a fairly educated and fluid family.
33:04She moved to live at her father's hotel, which was named Appledore Hotel, which was on the Isle of Shoals,
33:12which is off the coast of Maine.
33:14And lots of famous people came and stayed there.
33:16Now, she was a writer, and she published a lot of books and poetry.
33:22She was a writer's writer.
33:25Some of her biggest fans were some of the greatest writers of the time, and they were her friends because
33:31they came and stayed in the hotel.
33:33She was friends with Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
33:38She was also good friends with a lot of famous artists of the day.
33:42She's most known for her writing about the ocean.
33:46But when she painted, she didn't paint the seashore.
33:48She painted her garden, her flowers.
33:51Many of them actually include hand-painted quotes from some of her poetry.
33:56Oh, wow.
33:57As a beautiful, well-painted piece of antique porcelain, if it was unsigned, it would probably be worth $100.
34:08But because it's signed by her, there are people who are avid collectors of her work.
34:15I would estimate a retail price to be between $3,000 and $5,000.
34:20Oh, my gosh.
34:22Her work is very desirable.
34:25Wow.
34:26They are significant collectors.
34:27Yeah.
34:28Oh, my goodness.
34:29Wow, what a treasure.
34:30This 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.
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.
34:53It's such an intense, powerful letter.
34:56This letter was written in October of 62 at the end of the Albany, Georgia campaign to your father-in
35:04-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.
35:12Let me just read the first paragraph.
35:14Dear Reverend Poppendreau, for several weeks, I have intended writing to express my personal appreciation to you for your marvelous
35:22witness in Albany.
35:42It goes on for two pages, and it sort of closes with another kind of really meaningful, heartfelt paragraph.
35:51It says, your continued help and prayer will be greatly appreciated.
35:55You have now become sensitized to the problem in a 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.
36:07Our 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?
36:20So we need, we continue to need your help in this long battle.
36:24So terrific letter, signed by King, great content.
36:28And 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.
36:42This is summer of 63.
36:44And then this is, must be the December of 1963 holiday card from 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.
37:03There's a message inside that is actually printed.
37:07This is not handwritten by King.
37:08This 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.
37:25This, these other items are supporting material.
37:27It's great to have them.
37:29They tell the story, but independent of the letter, they don't really have much value.
37:34At 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.
37:47The content is amazing.
37:50That's incredible.
37:52I 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 hand-shaped 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.
38:26It'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 Europe when he served in World War II.
38:58France, obviously, but then his divisional symbol's 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, and that he liked sailboats.
39:42It's an oil on canvas.
39:43I 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.
39:58This is Manana Island.
40:00You can see here there's a little bit of a boat landing here, and that boat landing belonged to a
40:05guy named Ray Phillips, who was known as the Hermit of Manana.
40:08He 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.
40:17It's about 12 miles off the coast of Maine.
40:20You 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 Parisian-trained American Impressionist painter who was a member of the Old Lime, Connecticut artist colony.
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.
41:01Boats 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.
41:09Yeah, well, 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.
41:39And prior to 2008, it 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.
41:55Yes, okay.
41:56Great, thanks.
41:57Wonderful.
42:04The Eastern White Pine is an iconic tree here in Maine, and 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, and it's still a very popular and useful lumber
42:20tree.
42:20The state flower of Maine is actually a pine cone in the tassel.
42:25And 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,
42:34and 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 decorations.
42:43And they can range from what you see here, like three or 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, and 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,
43:18because 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.
44:02And 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.
44:15The 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, it's called faience, and they vary in colour a lot.
44:30They go from white to dark, and some are vivid blue, the cobalt ones.
44:34The 26th dynasty usually ends up being this pale green, very 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
45:16in New 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-Var,
45:25which is outside of Nice.
45:27And she bought the plate.
45:30And 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.
46:16In 1963, of the plates he did that year, this is my favorite.
46:21Oh, it's mine too, but then again, it's always been in my house.
46:25But that's so nice that I brought you a favorite 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.
46:42And this one is 150.
46:43So that is considered a small addition.
46:46It is numbered 147 out of 150, so we assume he did all 150.
46:53If this was offered at auction, being conservative, I would probably go with a pre-auction estimate
47:00of $6,000 to $9,000.
47:02Okay.
47:04They have been bringing over $20,000.
47:09That's a lot.
47:11That's all right.
47:12I'm not selling it.
47:14It'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
47:39Street in Camden.
47:40It was in a shed as a shelf.
47:42So I took it down and found the sign, and a friend of mine found this picture.
47:45It was on sale years later and gave it to us.
47:53Well, it's a Bacon-Belmont claw hammer style banjo.
47:57I think that it was manufactured in the 40s.
48:01I got it from my father, and 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.
48:41It's enormously heavy.
48:44Yes.
48:45Yes, we weighed this section, it was 80 pounds.
48:48Just that section.
48:50Yes.
48:50Right.
48:51And it's because this is made of bronze, it's a lantern.
48:54What you see on the surface is not the way the metal appears when it comes out of the foundry.
49:02Also, what they do in that process when it comes out of the foundry is they're finishing the details.
49:08Then you need to do something to give a uniform appearance that takes away those kind of inconsistencies, and that
49:16is called a patina.
49:17And one of the things that you can see on the shoulder here is the first coat was a deep
49:23reddish brick color.
49:24How much light do you think is going to come through this?
49:28With a candle, not a lot.
49:29Not a lot.
49:30It's supposed to be more atmospheric.
49:33It'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, yes.
49:47And that's exactly who that is.
49:49This is an Oni, and an Oni is a mythical figure that we can best describe as a devil who
49:56has superhuman powers.
49:59The eyes have a kind of off-white appearance that has been achieved with some sort of enamel that would
50:07have 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.
50:24One of the ways they did that was by creating works of art that would be astounding, that would be
50:30sold to people who had influence, which would be seen by the other people of influence, that would then have
50:39an effect on commerce with Japan.
50:42For insurance purposes, a reasonable figure would be in the $60,000 range.
50:50Oh, that's very nice.
50:51How nice.
50:51One to seven.
50:53I sure hope.
50:54Have 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, we did learn that this March on Washington
51:08button is worth $250, and we got a bonus appraisal when the appraiser said that she thinks she owned that
51:15sweater in the 1980s.
51:17So we had a great time at the Roadshow today.
51:19And we've carried this bag.
51:20And we've carried this around for 50 years, and it's an 1840 mantelpiece from the top of a building in
51:25Canton, China that could be worth up to $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, which I would tell my mom that it was for.
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.
51:59Aloha.
52:00We brought two dolls.
52:01This 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.
52:14Even the lines were fun.
52:16And I got to see all my favorite appraisers.
52:18Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.
52:21Thanks for watching.
52:22See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
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