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Antiques Roadshow - Season 30 (US) - Episode 09: Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, Hour 3
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TVTranscript
00:04Antiques Roadshow is sowing the seeds of knowledge for treasure hunters at the
00:08Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. He's scared as his children. This is the stuff of nightmares.
00:14No way! Holy cow!
00:35Antiques Roadshow has set up at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Booth Bay.
00:42Celebrating the biodiversity of the region is the name of the game here, and part of the garden's
00:48mission involves the research of native plants. Have an interest in botany? The Herbarium, a collection
00:55of dried and pressed plants used for research, contains plant specimens from the 1840s right up
01:02to the present day. Roadshow 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 handcrafted little
01:15wooden boy by an artist named John Ellison from Chicago. I got him for my boyfriend for his
01:22birthday and took him apart and sanded him down and conditioned him and re-put him together. He's
01:28poseable with a wrench so at home we keep him upside down and he holds our plants. He needed a
01:34little
01:34work but now he's super cute. I probably paid like maybe 70 bucks. So this is a Picasso print. As
01:42far as I
01:42know it came from my wife's great aunt who lived in California for a long time and she collected some
01:50art and I believe it is a numbered print. I think 20 prints is what the paperwork says on the
01:57back if
01:57that is authentic. They were a gift to me from my mother-in-law and her aunt. They were from
02:07a cottage,
02:08a seaside cottage in Maine outside of Portland that I think my great aunt-in-law got in the late
02:1550s,
02:16maybe early 60s. Great. And when did you get them? Maybe six or seven years ago. What we have is
02:23a pair
02:23of cast iron, obviously 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. Lobsters are not
02:37unique to Maine but come on. Right. This is cast iron very crudely and simply made. They're made in
02:44the sand casting technique whereby someone took a mold. I'm pretty confident they took a lobster.
02:51You make a mold, you press it into fine sand and then you have most of what you need
02:56to cast iron. I suspect they're very local, found in Portland and almost certainly made somewhere near
03:03in the state of Maine. It's hard to date them precisely. I think they were made in the second
03:08half of the 19th century, probably in the third quarter. You can see that both of them on the arms
03:14at the back have been repaired. This one with a kind of sleeve to hold the two elements together and
03:21this
03:21snapped in probably the same place and has been bolted together. Both rather crude and amateur repairs
03:28but I love the fact that someone has loved them enough to repair them. In a good antique shop in
03:35Maine
03:36I see them at least two thousand dollars, possibly two thousand five hundred. Great, but I love them.
03:51This beautiful guy 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 commissioned it.
04:16I assumed it was near Naples, Italy. And you can see that this is exactly her. Absolutely. And the detail
04:24is incredible. Incredible. So I think you're right about Naples. It's the home, Italy, the home of
04:30cameo production. It's made out of carved out of conch shell. Almost every cameo I see. They're facing right.
04:37Really? It's very rare to see one facing left. The frame also is fabulous with the garland
04:45and the ribbon. With gold being at record high prices, there's a thousand dollars just in gold.
04:52I would say at auction, probably fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars. That's great.
04:59You're not selling. No. For insurance, three thousand dollars. Terrific. That's great to know.
05:05But I'm telling you, I just, all the years we're doing this, I never did it match up like this.
05:12I own a school building in Waldenboro, Maine. And we've been renovating the building,
05:18turning it into a creative compound. And as the guys were doing demo in the ceiling,
05:23they found a whole bunch of alcohol bottles and these beer cans. They almost kind of threw them all
05:29away. I'm like, oh, these look so cool. They're super graphic. In the world of brewery,
05:33Indiana, these are actually very important cans. This is called a cone top can. And it was available
05:38as both a twelve ounce and a quart size. And the cone top just specifically relates to the form in
05:44which you would drink the beverage. The cone top can was first introduced in 1935 and it was phased out
05:50by 1960. When we look at the side of the can, we could see the full company mark here. The
05:55Croft Brewing
05:56Company, Boston, Massachusetts. The company first opened in 1934 and they were closed by 1952 when they were
06:03bought out by the Narragansett Company. They were part of that post-prohibition boom. Alcohol is now
06:08legal again. So money's flowing and people want to open breweries. And this is their stock ale. They
06:13had a cream ale. They had an all malt red label. But for collectors today, the stock ale can graphically
06:20is very attractive as it hones into art deco design. When it comes to beer can collecting, one of the
06:26first
06:26major factors is, is it an indoor can or is it an outdoor can? Literally meaning, did you discover these
06:33beer cans in the ground covered in dirt or did you find them inside? You clearly found them inside.
06:38The lithography is vibrant. There's minimal oxidation to the tops of them. When we look at the can
06:43closest to me, it has the biggest apology out of them all. It has a large dent with a crease,
06:48also a scratch here with some paint loss. Otherwise, they all have little apologies, but they're 80 year
06:54old plus cans. So you would have a scratch or a nick too along the way. To find cans in
06:59this condition
07:00is exceptionally rare. And with exceptional condition comes exceptional jumps in value.
07:07Conservatively at auction, for the group of four cans, it would easily be 10 to 15,000 for the
07:14collection. Amazing. That could help pay for the renovation. It's amazing. Wow. Too bad there
07:22wasn't one that still had beer in it. Most recently at auction, one exceptional condition,
07:27comparable to these, but had the original cap in a court size, brought over 18,000 at auction.
07:36Oh wow. Amazing. So surprised? Yeah. So crazy. I thought I was going to be like, I don't know, like
07:41100 bucks.
07:45So this dress belonged to my mother. She lived in Philadelphia and somewhere I think around when she
07:52was 18, 19, 20, she would be a runway model for the Nanduskin department store. And I know the dress
08:01came from Nanduskin, but I don't know how my mom acquired it. I believe she wore it once. And I
08:08know
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 made
08:24by
08:24Gilbert 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 to
08:54America 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
09:19the costumes for Wizard of Oz. I just heard that recently. Yeah, I didn't, I had no idea. Yeah.
09:24That's 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 the
09:56very low sort of bread and butter, $69 suits up to $395 gowns, which is the height of again,
10:05that lower end. Right. Right. And in today's money, it's about $5,000 for, 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
10:20seems 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, very cool.
10:37I'm so happy to know more about it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Absolutely. My pleasure. Yeah.
10:44Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, which opened in 2007, is also known as the People's Garden. It's one
10:52of the few public gardens that's right on the water with over a mile of saltwater frontage.
10:57The idea for the gardens came about in 1991 when a group of local residents had the somewhat remarkable
11:06idea of creating a botanical garden here and actually mortgaged their own homes to buy it.
11:12That's where the people's garden comes from. Everyone who works here and who volunteers here
11:19and who is involved here really feels like it's their place. Like they have this sense of ownership
11:24that you don't necessarily find other places. So we really pride ourselves on being a place for everyone.
11:32I brought a necklace that was given to me as a wedding gift. It belonged to my great grandmother. I
11:39believe it was actually a gift for her 18th birthday. So I imagine it would be the 1910s is when
11:46she
11:46received this. It was given to me from my aunt and with it she sent a note that said that
11:53it was
11:53given to my great grandmother, grandmother, aunt, and now me.
11:57What year did you receive the watch? 2016 was the year we got married. It's kind of fun because
12:02today happens to be my wedding anniversary too. Oh, congratulations. Thank you.
12:07It's Cartier ladies pendant watch. Cartier, it's a Paris firm. They were founded in 1847.
12:15The time period, you are right about on the money. 1910, 1915. Edwardian period. Also Belle Epoque.
12:24Belle Epoque is not just a time period. It's also a style. This has pearls. It has diamonds. It has
12:33enamel work, the blue enamel throughout. It's set in platinum. It's set in yellow gold. The diamonds
12:41in here are rose cut diamonds. The pearls are all natural. The back here, it's blue guilloche enamel,
12:49which is hard fired enamel on top of the metal. There's diamond set initials. Are those grandma's
12:55initials? E-S was her initials. It's flowery letters. So I wasn't sure if it was just a design or
13:03if
13:03it was in fact initials. If that looks like an E-S to you, then I'll trust your judgment on
13:08it.
13:09It's an E-S and that was a custom order. Everywhere on here are jewels. There's something a little extra
13:16special. There's something a little fancy. The quality of an object like this, it's absolutely
13:22phenomenal. Second to none. Cartier had special movements made. This was a collaboration with
13:30Cartier with another famous company, Jaeger LaCoultra. You have the original box or presentation case.
13:38You open the double door. There's a beautiful treasure inside and Cartier made that famous.
13:44Retail price on this watch is going to be $25,000 to $30,000.
13:52Holy smokes. That's wild. Well, I better keep care of it. Safety deposit box, here we come.
14:03Unbelievable condition and unbelievable to find it in the original box. It's awesome.
14:11So this belonged to our step-grandmother's aunt and we believe it is by Toshiku Takezu,
14:20who is a Japanese-American ceramicist born in Hawaii. So it's possible this is actually a student of hers.
14:30I got it at a sports memorabilia show probably like 10 years ago. Paid a couple hundred bucks for it.
14:37It's probably from the early 60s. The only thing I really know is about Nat Albright. He used to read
14:41the games and kind of like recreate the game with noises and pretend like the game was actually live
14:46off the radio, but he was actually getting it through like Morse code.
14:56I came across this fan and it was probably in the 1990s and I used to go to some West
15:03Hartford,
15:03Connecticut shows and they were vintage shows with various jewelry and materials and the fan just
15:11spoke to me. So I've always loved Victorian pieces and it's the Victorian craftsmanship. This one looked
15:18beautiful. I saw it was Tiffany. What did you pay for it back then? $50. Wow, that's a, that was
15:24a great.
15:24It was a great price. Yeah. So you have a 19th century
15:28Tiffany lace fan. It's in its original silk covered Tiffany box. It has wonderful hand needle
15:36lace in the fan with mother of pearl guards and sticks. And then what was really exciting was the
15:44loop at the bottom, which is also marked Tiffany. And then we also found another marking next to the
15:52Tiffany, which was 14K. And that's what was really exciting. You have a little bit of gold there. And
15:59as we know, the value of gold is just going up and up and up. The condition is, is really
16:05nice. You do have
16:06some discoloration along the bottom where I think that's where it adhered to the sticks. Tiffany would have
16:14put these out in the stores as kind of like an entry point for maybe a husband to buy his
16:20wife a Tiffany
16:20gift. So didn't have to go straight to the jewelry. You know, they also offered these other ladies
16:27accessories during this time period. If it was just a lace fan with mother of pearl, I'd give it an
16:33auction estimate of about $100. With the box, $350. Then you have the gold. And that's really where, where the
16:43value is coming from. I'd give it an auction estimate of eight to $1,200. Oh, that is just wonderful.
16:49Yeah.
16:49I'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, in his designs. And so he acquired these. Joseph Hoffman, he was born in
17:151870 and he actually lived until 1956. He was classically trained and he won the very prestigious
17:22pre-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 Werkstätte. And it was
17:43actually a group of different designers who worked together. Joseph Hoffman designed these for the Wiener
17:49Werkstätte. We're not sure what these are used for. They can just be decorative vases. They could be
17:57cashpo and had flowers or greenery in it. The Wiener Werkstätte did last until the 1930s, but they ran out
18:04of
18:04steam. And I think these are examples from the high point of their production, sort of 1910-15. Each of
18:12these is hand hammered. On the underside, it has the Wiener Werkstätte mark. And up here, we have Joseph
18:21Hoffman's initials. And then we have the Wiener Werkstätte mark. And then we have the mark of the
18:27person who actually fabricated it. 900 refers to the grade of silver. So most of us talk about sterling
18:34silver. Sterling silver is 925 parts of silver per thousand. This is the high point of design in the
18:41early part of the 20th century. And Hoffman was the master of design. I think a retail replacement
18:47value for them would be in the $30,000 to $50,000 range. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh my god.
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,
19:42roughly? 1930s. It's definitely a very early piece. I think the youngest, let's say,
19:47All right. It's going to be 16th century. It's a nativity scene. This could be an 18th
19:51century frame or a 17th century frame. Probably somewhere in the region of $3,000 to $5,000 at auction.
20:03Well, it's a Lichtenstein print that I received from my grandparents a long time ago. And I believe
20:09that it's titled Shipboard Girl. My grandparents were living in D.C. at the time. They had a large
20:14condo. They were at the age where they needed to downsize a lot. So they actually rented a second
20:19apartment, filled it with all the things that they were giving away. This was in a poster tube. And
20:23actually, this one wasn't noticed in the poster tube. There was a different poster that I was more
20:27attracted to. And they said that I could take it away. And that's how it ended up in my possession.
20:32You're absolutely right. Roy Lichtenstein's Shipboard Girl from 1965. So this is really the beginning of
20:40pop art. And in 1965, Roy Lichtenstein was represented by the Leo Castelli Gallery,
20:46which really was the pioneering gallery in New York for these pop artists, Lichtenstein and Warhol.
20:53Part of the pop ethos was to embrace commercial printmaking. So this poster is an offset lithograph,
21:01which is like photo mechanical printmaking. It's done in sort of industrial strength colors in a
21:08commercial kind of press. And there's a couple of things about this print that really stand out,
21:13which make it very exciting. First of all, are the colors. And they're really spectacular. So fresh.
21:19It seems to me that it never came out of the two. It's quite possible it was brought home from
21:24the
21:25gallery. I think so.
21:26Yeah. And hasn't seen daylight for six years. The other curious thing about your print is how it's
21:34signed. Yes. I've always wondered about that. Yeah.
21:37So it bears the pencil signature upper left of Roy Lichtenstein. And this is typically signed 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.
21:59It's in many museum collections, but no one really knows exactly how many were printed. They were never numbered.
22:06Yeah.
22:07But the signature is absolutely right. And we actually did find some other examples of this print
22:15with 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 to 30 that I had seen at that time.
22:42But yeah, the low is around five. So I've never really.
22:45Right. Well, there is a wide range of values for these.
22:49Often that's dictated by the condition. Sometimes they're quite faded.
22:52Your colors are as good as you would expect.
22:55Because it's signed in this peculiar fashion, though,
22:59we 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. Well, that's wonderful.
23:07Yeah. I love seeing it out. The colors are amazing.
23:10If 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,
23:23it's a collection of plants.
23:25Kate 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 by
23:37creating really detailed botanical illustrations. One of the things that she's most well-known for
23:42is actually discovering a species that is only found in Maine and New Brunswick, Canada. It's called
23:48Furbish's lousewort. We're really grateful to have a handful of Kate Furbish's actual specimens here in
23:55our collection. Her specimens of Yellow Avons are the specimens she used to reference while creating the
24:01botanical illustration. I brought in a crock from 1818. It's been in the family. There was a farm at
24:12one point outside Philly that my grandfather had, and he rented out the barn, and all we had a place
24:17we could go and stay there. And whether that came from that area, I don't know. Is that in Chester
24:24County? I believe so, yes. Because I do think you have a Chester County piece. Wow. This redwood jar
24:31would have been made of locally sourced clay. Potteries in Chester County in the late 18th and
24:37early 19th century, they used a lot of slip. When you add up the fact that this has this specific
24:43ovoid form with these handles, with this type of slip, and in the fact that this manganese decoration is
24:49there, it all points to Chester County, Pennsylvania. And in Chester County, because it's near Philadelphia,
24:55of course, they were influenced by Philadelphia pieces. So it's similar to Philadelphia, but has
25:00much more personality, a little more provincial, so it has an accent. And that accent is rural
25:07Pennsylvania, specifically Chester County. So it's LL and script on one side with that 1818 with the
25:16serif there. And then on the other side, we had this LL and block letters, and 1818 without a serif.
25:25I think they'd be there two different people decorating it within the pottery, which is,
25:30I've never seen before. We looked for a pottery where the LL initials would make sense.
25:37We didn't find one in Chester County, Pennsylvania. So it makes better sense, I think,
25:42that 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,
25:56which 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. There's a nip over here. You do have a chip
26:14to the
26:15base. The damage on here, although damage is expected on a piece of redware, when you add it all up,
26:21it does affect the value of the piece. I grew up collecting and dealing in redware and stoneware. So
26:29before I found out of our girls, my brother and I, after dinner, we'd hug our jars. That's literally,
26:37we'd talk about our collection, hug our collection. So just to see an old boy form like this
26:43is pretty exciting. A piece like this, you could put at auction in the range of $6,000 to $8
26:52,000.
26:52Wow. And I used to keep it at the top of the stairs. And then when I saw something on
26:56Roadshow,
26:57I was like, maybe 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. It looks to be wood and then parts of it are plaster.
27:17This is an 1852 Shields map of Boston. I used to work at a frame shop in Brookline,
27:23Mass. And when you're at a frame shop, you meet lots of collectors. And I made friends with a woman
27:28who thought was her business. And she found this in Brookline Town Hall Attic. So she gave it to me.
27:36Eventually I framed it. It used to have wood on the top and the bottom, like a map you hang
27:40on 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
28:20Birmingham gun trade in the mid 19th century in England. The Dutch guns of this period are often
28:25thought to be copies of British brown best type muskets. But the reality is, is the Dutch were using
28:32these patterns actually a little bit earlier than the British. And in many ways, their design sort of
28:38influenced what becomes known as the brown best musket, circa 1730, when they officially adopt a
28:45pattern for the longland pattern musket for the British military. The best part about this gun, other
28:50than that it's completely untouched, hasn't had anything done to it, and remains an original flint,
28:56is the marking on top of the barrel that says S. Carolina. South Carolina starts off as a British
29:03colony. The colonies were important to the British, but they weren't necessarily worth spending a lot of
29:09money on in terms of their defense. So as early as 1731, the British government started buying used
29:18Dutch muskets to arm the colonials. The gun almost certainly came here from a British purchase,
29:26probably around the time of the Seven Years War, better known as the French and Indian War here.
29:32One of the ways we know that the gun was actually purchased out of a Dutch arsenal,
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 $3,000 to $5,000, maybe a little bit more.
30:01Wow.
30:02But it gets a whole lot better because of that mark. I think a conservative auction estimate for this gun
30:08is between $20,000 and $30,000. Oh my goodness, I was not expecting that whatsoever.
30:16I would probably insure it in the range of $30,000 to $35,000. It's an incredibly difficult gun to
30:24replace. There are only a handful of known examples. And this is the best marked one I have seen.
30:30Wow, really?
30:31It's just everything that makes my heart go aflutter when I see just a wonderful piece of history like this.
30:39I brought in a pamphlet from a 1933 banquet at Notre Dame. My father was maybe a water boy for
30:48the
30:48football team from 32, 33 until he graduated in 36. If you're going to be a water boy, Notre Dame
30:56is
30:56a pretty good thing to be a water boy for, right? True.
30:58True. 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 find. But we think at auction this would sell for $3,000, $3,500.
31:24No way. Holy cow. That's awesome. Now, I do have to make a comment about the fact that the
31:32autographs aren't authenticated. We have the provenance. We believe them to be authentic. When
31:35they're graded, values go up. We've seen examples as high as $5,000, $7,500 for the Four Horsemen autographs.
31:45I'm speechless. Oh my gosh. Thank you. That is so awesome.
31:52My great-great-grandmother was an assistant in the Hamilton House, which was where the Tyson family
32:00resided in South Berwick, Maine, during the summer. She worked with Miss Tyson quite a while, and she
32:08gave this among many items to my great-great-grandmother as gratitude for her service.
32:14They knew Celia Thaxter, who was a painter of pottery.
32:18On the bottom, it says Celia Thaxter, 1888. Then below that, it says H and C over L.
32:29H and C stands for Haviland and Company, and L stands for Limoges, the city in France. So this
32:36is made of porcelain, and it would have been shipped to America as a plain white picture.
32:42And then she would have selected this to hand paint on it. She has hand painted all the way around
32:49these beautiful purple iris and the wonderful long spiky leaves. Celia Thaxter was born in 1835,
32:58and she died in 1894. She was in a fairly educated and fluid family. She moved to live at her
33:06father's
33:06hotel, which was named Appledore Hotel, which was on the Isle of Shoals, which is off the coast of Maine.
33:14And lots of famous people came and stayed there. Now, she was a writer, and she published a lot of
33:21books and poetry. She was a writer's writer. Some of her biggest fans were some of the greatest writers
33:28of the time, and they were her friends because they came and stayed in the hotel. She was friends with
33:34Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was also good friends with a lot of famous artists
33:41of the day. She's most known for her writing about the ocean, but when she painted, she didn't paint the
33:48sea shore. She painted her garden, her flowers. Many of them actually include hand-painted quotes from
33:55some of her poetry. Oh, wow. As a beautiful, well-painted piece of antique porcelain, if it was
34:03unsigned, it would probably be worth $100. But because it's signed by her, there are people who are avid
34:13collectors of her work. I would estimate a retail price to be between $3,000 and $5,000.
34:20Oh, my gosh. She, she, her work is very desirable. They are significant collectors.
34:27Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Wow, 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. My father
34:45-in-law
34:45was a Unitarian minister, and he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during all of the civil
34:52rights unrest. It's such an intense, powerful letter. This letter was written in October of 62
34:58at the end of the Albany, Georgia campaign to your father-in-law, who must have been present
35:07at the Albany campaign. He was a religious leader, and he was there to support King and the movement.
35:12Let me just read the first paragraph. Dear Reverend Poppendreau, 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
35:35high points of the summer was the contribution rendered by our brothers from the North who came
35:40to share with us in the fight against injustice. It goes on for two pages, and it sort of closes
35:46with
35:46another kind of really meaningful, heartfelt paragraph. He says,
35:52your continued help and prayer will be greatly appreciated. You have now become sensitized to
35:58the problem in a new way. We are counting on you to discern some methods of action which will
36:04contribute to our national problem in race relations. Our nation suffers when churches are burned or when
36:10mobs kill and ravish in protest of a single person of color being admitted to an institution
36:16of higher learning. So he's talking about integrating the universities, right? So we need,
36:21we continue to need your help in this long battle. So terrific letter, signed by King, great content,
36:28and then you have some other supporting materials that come with it. So your father-in-law participated in
36:35the 1963 march on Washington, right? Yes, he did. He's in that photo, right? Right there in that photo.
36:41In Life Magazine. This is summer of 63. And then this is must be the December of 1963 holiday card
36:50from King.
36:51It has a really emotional image of the four little girls that were killed in the Birmingham church
36:58bombing of the fall of 1963. There's a message inside that is actually printed. This is not handwritten by
37:08King. This is a printed card. But it does actually show that more than a year after this, your father
37:17-in-law
37:17is still in the movement. He's still connected to the civil rights battle. The value is in the letter
37:23itself. This, these other items are supporting material. It's great to have them. They tell the story,
37:30but independent of the letter, they don't really have much value. At auction, I would estimate this letter
37:36at $20,000 to $30,000. And I would expect it to do as well or better because the content
37:43is terrific.
37:45The letter is amazing. The content is amazing. That's incredible. I never, I could never have imagined that.
37:55It was so wonderful to see it in person and read it for myself.
37:59It really just totally overwhelms me when I, when I read the words. If you were going to insure this,
38:08I would tell your insurance company to put a number of $50,000 on it. Okay.
38:16This is a handshaped Greg Knowles minigun surfboard. The guy brought it into our surf shop looking for
38:23boards for his grandkids. So I swapped him for it. It's short. It's a minigun that's short. So I'm hoping
38:28it's
38:28worth 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 this signature and I'm hoping to learn more about it today.
38:53All I know is my grandfather brought it back from Europe when he served in World War II. France,
38:59obviously, but then his divisional symbols on the front and I just kind of wanted to find out more
39:03about it.
39:08This is a painting that belonged to my grandfather. 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 and that he liked sailboats. It's an oil on canvas.
39:43I would date it around the 1920s, 1930s. The subject is Monhegan Island but he's sort of standing on
39:52Monhegan Island. It doesn't have an official title but I would give it the unofficial title of View of
39:57Monana. This is Monana Island. You can see here there's a little bit of a boat landing here and
40:04that boat landing belonged to a guy named Ray Phillips who was known as the Hermit of Monana.
40:08He was the only person who lived on Monana and what's interesting about Monhegan is that it was
40:14an artist colony starting in the 1890s. It's about 12 miles off the coast of Maine. You can only go
40:20by
40:21boat. There are no cars there and it's been an artist colony since the 1890s where artists like Robert
40:26Henry and Edward Hopper and George Bellows all painted. Ebert was a member of that colony. He was also
40:33a Parisian trained American Impressionist painter who was a member of the old lime Connecticut
40:40artist colony. He summered in Monhegan starting in about 1909 eventually building a house there with
40:46his wife who was also an artist. And what I love about this painting which is of really really excellent
40:52quality and I've been to Monhegan many times is that this is like late summer color. He's captured the
40:58summer clouds. There's a little bit of a breeze boats and figures and paintings like this always
41:03are very attractive very desirable and add value. Tell me about the condition when you first got this.
41:09Yeah well growing up I remember seeing it in my aunt's house it was really a mess. It was it
41:14kind of
41:15sagged and cracked. I really just thought it was worthless. I think when my mother got it she had it
41:22conserved and 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 paintings
41:35market was kind of like the 2008 period and prior to 2008 never really came back to its previous levels.
41:43That said it is a really gorgeous painting. Even in the current market I would for insurance purposes
41:51say it's probably around $30,000 would be the price. Okay great thanks. Wonderful.
42:04The eastern white pine is an iconic tree here in Maine and we have it throughout our woodlands. It's
42:11got a long history. It was used back in the 1800s for masts for ships and it's still a very
42:18popular and
42:19useful lumber tree. The state flower of Maine is actually a pine cone in the tassel and on a white
42:26pine tree they have both male and female reproductive parts. The pollen comes from the male reproductive parts
42:32pollinate the female cones and then you end up with a cone that looks like this. We get what we're
42:38familiar with those beautiful white pine cones that people use in holiday decorations and they can
42:44range from what you see here like three or four inches but they can get up to six seven eight
42:48inches.
42:52My grandmother passed away in 1982 I believe one of her helpers sent us a box of stuff and this
43:00was 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. I'm thinking
43:11that it was one of a number that would have been in the tomb. Sometimes there would be 500 depending
43:17on how wealthy they 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 chapter six from the book of the dead which also has a spell and when that spell
43:39is spoken and the ushabti comes to life he says I hear and I obey. This one is from the
43:4626th dynasty
43:48664 to 525 BC and this is when Samtick became the pharaoh and he'd thrown out the Assyrians. Egypt had
43:57been rather a mess before then and he sort of got it together and made more of an association with
44:02the
44:02Greeks and this was really a renaissance the last major blooming of Egyptian art the 26th dynasty
44:08and the headquarters were in a place called site in in Egypt. It's known for its extraordinary quality.
44:15The piece of this quality was absolutely for a particular person. He was probably a very important
44:21official or a priest in the 26th dynasty. It's a glazed ceramic it's called faience and they vary in color
44:30a
44:30lot. They go from white to dark and some are vivid blue the cobalt ones. The 26th dynasty usually ends
44:36up being this pale green. Very desirable. You can see the staining on the sides and the bottom that's
44:42really come from oxidation in the ground where it's been lying. But the quality is just so sublime.
44:48You look at it and it's the quintessential Egyptian mummiform face as we know it. I think a retail value
44:55would be in the region of eight to ten thousand dollars.
45:01Okay. And I would insure it probably for about fifteen thousand dollars. Very good.
45:10When I was eleven 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 the way
45:23to Valerice because we lived in Saint-Laurent-du-Vas which is outside of Nice and she bought the plate.
45:30And the year was 1967. It is a glazed ceramic plate made at the Madura studios in Valerice in the
45:39south of
45:40France. The first one of this particular group was designed in 1963. Picasso had been doing ceramics at
45:49Madura since about 1947 and I love to use this as a snapshot of where he was in his life.
46:00Do you know
46:00how old he was when he designed this plate? No, I don't. He was 82 years old. Oh my goodness.
46:09So he was very prolific and he never stopped creating in 63 of the plates he did that year. This
46:19is my favorite. Oh it's mine too but then again it's always been in my house but that's so nice
46:26that
46:26I brought you a favorite plate. I love this one. This plate like many many others is called in French
46:33Visage or Face. The editions are as small on these plates as 100 and they go up to 500. Okay.
46:42And this
46:42one is 150. So that is considered a small edition. It is numbered 147 out of 150 so we assume
46:50he did
46:50all 150. If this was offered at auction being conservative I would probably go with a pre-auction
46:59estimate of $6,000 to $9,000. Okay. They have been bringing over $20,000. That's a lot. It's all
47:12right. I'm not
47:13selling it. It's my plate. It's just a period of life that I wouldn't trade for anything and this is
47:21this is sort of emblematic of it. And if I were to insure this I would probably go around $10
47:28,000. Okay.
47:31Came out of a Dundacoast lake I believe. We have a picture here of it with it on the top
47:34of 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. It was in a shed as a shelf. So I took it down and found the sign
47:44and a friend
47:44of mine 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 in the 40s.
48:01I got it from my father and I think he got it for trade for something back in the 70s.
48:13My grandfather had been traveling around the globe around 1909. We think this is one of the pieces
48:19that he brought back possibly from Japan. He was at the base of the home that my father grew up
48:26in
48:26at the staircase. When my grandfather passed away he came into our home in New Jersey. I inherited him in
48:342012. I've always been told that he was some type of an idol, a Japanese idol. It is Japanese. Okay.
48:42It's enormously heavy. Yes. Yes. We weighed this section it was 80 pounds. Just that section. Yes. Right.
48:51And it's because this is made of bronze. It's a lantern. What you see on the surface
48:57is not the way the metal appears when it comes out of the foundry. Also what they do in that
49:03process
49:04when it comes out of the foundry is they're finishing the details. Then you need to do something
49:10to give a uniform appearance that takes away that those kind of inconsistencies and that is 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
49:24color. How much light do you think is going to come through this? With a candle not a lot. Not
49:29a lot.
49:30It's supposed to be more atmospheric. It's supposed to be something that is going to conjure up
49:35some 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 achieved
50:04with some sort of enamel. That would have shown and been penetrating in a low light. This dates to
50:12about 1909. Okay. Which is at the end of the Meiji period, which ended in 1912. During the Meiji period,
50:21Japan was rapidly industrializing. One of the ways they did that was by creating works of art that would
50:28be astounding that would be sold to people who had influence, which would be seen by the other people
50:37of influence that would then have an effect on commerce with Japan. For insurance purposes,
50:44a reasonable figure would be in the $60,000 range. Oh, that's very nice. How nice.
50:51One of seven. I have to sure have a discussion with them.
50:59And now it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
51:03Tomorrow's my 31st birthday. And while we're not going to retire early, we did learn that this
51:07March on Washington button is worth $250. And we got a bonus appraisal when the appraiser said that she
51:14thinks she owned that sweater in the 1980s. So we had a great time at the Roadshow today. And we've
51:20carried
51:20this around for 50 years. And it's an 1840 mantelpiece from the top of a building in Canton,
51:26China that could be worth up to $1,200. And I said I would throw it away if it wasn't
51:30worth anything,
51:31but I guess we're going to have to keep it. And I brought my mother's pearls that she brought in
51:35from Japan when she got married and came to the States over 50 years ago. And I didn't know there
51:41was
51:42a clasp here that you could use it for both as a bracelet and a necklace, which I would tell
51:48my mom
51:48those four. And it was, we didn't really know how much it was worth, but it was worth a couple
51:52thousand dollars, which is pretty cool. But so we're so excited to have met the appraisers here as
51:58well. Mahalo. Thank you. Aloha. We brought two dolls. This one is from Germany and it's from the 1890s
52:07and worth about $200. This one's from America from the 1990s, worth about $50. We had a lot of fun,
52:14even the lines were fun. And I got to see all my favorite appraisers. Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.
52:21Thanks for watching. See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.
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