♪ ♪
CORAL PEÑA:
"Antiques Roadshow Recut"
has highlights
from Newport, Rhode Island.
Wow!
Who knew what was in the attic?
Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
That's fabulous.
PEÑA:
Stay tuned for part three
of "Antiques Roadshow Recut:
Rosecliff."
♪ ♪
PEÑA:
Rosecliff Mansion made
"Roadshow" history
when it became the first
historic location
to host our public event.
What's the history behind
this weathered wagon?
Check it out.
♪ ♪
It was in a local ad.
I think, anyways,
it's referred to
as a Chinese carriage
or wagon
from the Qing dynasty,
if I'm not mistaken.
You're right on target,
it is Qing.
Okay.
So that means it dates
to somewhere before 1911
in China...
Okay.
...and after the Ming dynasty.
And, in my opinion,
based on the appearance,
the construction...
Hmm.
This would date
to the 19th century.
Okay.
Which is really quite unusual--
these had hard wear.
And you can see
that it's had a hard life.
That's not what it looked like
when it was built.
Right.
This was lacquered,
and you can still see traces
of burgundy lacquer on it.
Ah.
And also black lacquer.
Yeah.
And on the underside
of the ceiling in there
is a finely woven bamboo mat
that is put to the ceiling...
Mmm, yeah.
...on top of which
is this thick lacquer surface
to make it waterproof,
which we need
on a day like today.
Oh, interesting, okay.
All this
would have been likely
black, burgundy,
and gilt lacquer.
Interesting.
Oh, wow.
This was not meant
for your average person
to be carted around town.
Oh!
The thick iron bands
on the edge of the wheel...
Mmm.
...was to withstand
the wear and tear
of going over
rough cobblestoned,
potholed streets
at the time.
What we see through here
you would not have seen
through here.
This would have been lined
with beautifully painted
paper or silk.
Okay.
Part of it opened
with a curtain right there
that could be pulled back
so the person could take a look.
What'd you pay for this?
I paid $125.
Oh, my gosh,
you got a great deal.
There are very few of these
that are in good condition.
A realistic price
is going to be
in the $1,000 to $2,000 range
in an auction sale.
Ah. Okay.
But it's got to be
to an audience of people
that recognize the difference
between those that are
modern reproduction...
Mmm.
...those that were made
for transport
of somebody
of elevated stature...
Mm-hmm.
...and those that were
authentic
but made for transporting
commercial products.
Mmm.
This is the very best
of that type.
It's just unfortunate
that the decoration is gone.
Interesting.
Right, right, it's worn.
Interesting, okay.
♪ ♪
(talking in background)
So my family is from
Radford, Virginia,
up in the mountains.
Uh-huh.
And about 30 years ago,
when my mother was selling
the family house,
all these papers were just
haphazardly thrown in the attic,
and she didn't know
what they were,
so she boxed them up
and moved them to her house,
and there they sat
for another 30 years.
And till about five years ago,
I wondered
what was in all those boxes,
and I started opening them
and found these letters.
And they're all from
your great-grandfather or...
Great-great-grandfather.
He was
General Gabriel Wharton
from the Confederacy.
Right.
And, yeah, these are all
his personal letters
before, during,
and after the war.
That's what I find fascinating
about it, because, obviously,
General Wharton
was a very important
Confederate general,
and you have a tremendous amount
of material from the war.
Yeah.
But also material
prior to and after
that really fleshes out
his life.
So starting over here,
we have a fabulous letter
written to General Wharton,
obviously before the war,
by a Mr. Mason.
Yeah.
Tell me a little bit about the
letter from what you remember.
At this point,
General Wharton was a surveyor
for the railroad
on the Gadsden Purchase.
Uh-huh.
And he had friends
who were throughout the West
at that point,
so this friend, Mr. Mason,
was in Salt Lake City,
and he was working
for the Indian Affairs office,
and he just
writes him a letter
to tell him what's going on...
With the Mormons.
With the Mormons
in the city, yep.
With the Mormons
in Salt Lake City.
Yeah, so it's a fascinating
letter from 1859,
and he recounts attending
the Tabernacle Sunday events
with Brigham Young...
Yeah.
And is a little bit derisive
about the beautiful girls
who make up his 64 wives.
Yes.
Now, when he was
in the Civil War,
he was involved in a number
of very important campaigns,
including
the Battle for Fort Donelson.
And we picked out
from your archive
just a letter,
one letter here
from General Lee, Robert E. Lee,
dated April 21, 1862.
And of course it was just after
the Battle of Fort Donelson
when Floyd and his troops
had lost the battle
to General Grant,
and there was calls
for unconditional surrender.
So this very interesting
war period letter from Lee
instructs them to gather the
troops and bring them together.
Because it's an archive
that expands beyond the war,
and he was one of the last
Confederate generals
to be in operation
before the final surrender...
Yeah.
You also have him returning
after the war to do what?
Well, you know,
the Confederacy lost,
and so he needed to have a job,
and he went back
to his old profession...
profession of surveying.
And went...
worked for the land office,
and was very lucky
to get the job, actually.
Right.
So, in the 1880s,
he's working for the land office
out in New Mexico and Arizona.
Right.
And he has a narrow escape
from Geronimo.
This is a letter
written to his wife, I believe,
from April 1886.
Yes, yep.
And, of course,
Geronimo would finally surrender
to American troops later
that year, in November of 1886.
Right.
He later acquired
this cabinet card.
It's a very famous cabinet card
from C.S. Fly.
Mm-hmm.
Who was based
in Tombstone, Arizona.
Okay.
So it's an incredibly
interesting archive,
and we only could pull out
a few things.
If it were to come to auction
at a major auction house,
it would probably have
an aggregate value
of $30,000 to $50,000.
Oh, my goodness.
And that might be
conservative,
given the richness
of what you have.
Thank you.
Thank you, I'm so glad
you were able to bring it in.
Incredible.
Thank you! Wow.
Who knew what was
in the attic?
(chuckling):
Yeah.
PEÑA:
Rosecliff was given its name
by the man who owned the estate
prior to the Oelrichs family,
George Bancroft,
a secretary of the Navy,
historian,
and a great lover of roses.
Bancroft's horticultural passion
is said to be the reason
roses are so abundant
throughout Newport today.
APPRAISER:
I think 1925, 1935, platinum,
diamonds, very dressy.
You know, women still like
these today as a dress watch.
They're great.
At auction, a watch like this
is $1,000 to $1,500.
♪ ♪
APPRAISER:
Where did you acquire this?
WOMAN:
From my father-in-law.
He was into antiques,
he loved yard sales
and stuff like that.
Do you know anything
about it?
He said it was
a Delft charger,
back around the 1760s.
Well, it is Delft,
and actually,
there's two Delfts.
There's the Delft pottery
that came from Holland,
and then the Delftware
that came from England.
Same type of thing,
a tin-glazed earthenware.
Tin-glazed
is very brittle,
so to have these chips
around the edge,
all very acceptable.
It is 18th-century,
possibly a little bit later
than you think.
Okay.
Closer to 1780 or 1790.
Okay.
The pattern, although we're
looking at a floral design,
is actually called
a peacock design.
Once you start to look
at that fanning there,
you can see that.
The market's dropped
a bit for Delft
and for a lot of ceramics
in general.
An example like this today
should sell for about $400
in a retail setting,
perhaps $250 to $350
in an auction.
Oh, okay.
Thanks for bringing it.
Oh, thank you.
"The Adventures
of Wesley Jackson."
Interesting.
Making sure it's not
a library book, all right, good.
(chuckling)
No, it's not.
Not anymore, anyways.
We'll send that over to books
and maps and posters.
You're all set.
Thank you very much.
Thank you!
They're very beautiful,
actually.
They're wooden, hand-painted,
hand-carved.
Not sure where they're from--
it's very exciting.
I've had the dozen and a half
of them.
This is a little
interesting box.
It shows the local shoreline.
It was given to me
by a fisherman
when I was a little kid.
I was about ten years old.
It's absolutely
gorgeous.
And it is an excursion view
of Narragansett Bay
and Block Island.
There are two rolls in there
and they are 30 feet long each.
♪ ♪
I bought this in an auction
of jazz-related memorabilia
in New York City
about 12 years ago.
It belonged to the great
jazz tenor player Dexter Gordon.
He wore it for
the Academy Awards ceremony.
He was nominated for his role
in "Round Midnight"
as the best male actor.
He didn't win,
but I got the suit.
But he looked snazzy
going to the awards show.
Oh, yes.
You, years later,
found this photograph
of him wearing it
in French "Vogue" magazine.
So he obviously
liked this suit.
One of the most interesting
things about this suit--
beyond the fact that
it was Dexter Gordon's--
for me is
who designed it for him
and the fact that he had
a custom suit designed.
And the reason he had
a custom suit designed,
apart from wanting
something fancy,
is because...
(laughs):
...he's quite tall.
My goodness, yeah.
I think it's difficult
to find pants
to fit someone who's 6'5".
Yeah.
And his nickname actually
was Long Tall Dex, because he
was known for his great height,
which added to his
larger-than-life persona.
Arthur McGee,
the designer of the suit,
is a really important figure
that's not known as much
as he should be
because he was the first
African-American
fashion designer
on Seventh Avenue
in New York.
So he essentially broke
the color barrier
of American fashion design,
and did pave the way
for a lot of other people
who came up after him.
He's also very well-known
among a lot of African-American
entertainers.
He designed for Stevie Wonder,
Cicely Tyson, Dexter Gordon.
I think that's a really
important factor here.
What did you pay for it
back when you bought it?
I paid $1,000 for it.
Today, if it were to come up
for auction,
I would expect it should sell
for at least $5,000.
We actually had
the great fortune
in Anaheim a few years ago
to meet his daughter.
She came to the Roadshow
and she brought some beautiful
signed photographs.
Whoa!
She had Billie Holiday
and a few other people
he was friends with--
Sarah Vaughan.
She couldn't
have been lovelier,
she was such a wonderful
spirit and personality.
I love the patination
on this.
It's just, it's so warm,
and you don't want
to polish it.
You do not.
It's tempting.
Very tempting.
I know, I know,
but what you can do
is, it literally, you can
polish it with your fingers.
Oh, really?
APPRAISER:
These are chromolithographs,
which just means
color lithograph,
but it sounds more official
to say chromolithograph.
Realistically, as a pair,
you're probably still
only looking $50 for the pair.
Their greatest value is
as a family piece.
♪ ♪
WOMAN:
It's an Egyptian hawk mummy,
and I bought it in 1996
at the Knights of Columbus Hall
in Middletown, Rhode Island.
There was an auction
of the contents of a house
from an old professor
in Maine.
And I saw in the newspaper
the day before
that there was an Egyptian mummy
in the auction,
so I thought,
"I need to get down there
and buy that mummy."
Of course.
(chuckling)
Yes, so I did.
There were some Egyptologists
holding on the line
to, to bid on it,
but I outbid them.
Mummified animals
and birds are found
in many Egyptian tombs,
and they're there as offerings.
This one is to the god Horus,
the god of light.
He's also the lord of the sky,
so he's really,
really important.
Horus is a falcon,
and he's also considered
the savior of Egypt
from the scorpions.
These are found
really from about 650 B.C.
to about 250 A.D. in Egypt.
Have you any idea
what it's worth?
No, none whatsoever.
And what did you pay for it?
My top bid was
going to be $1,000.
Uh-huh.
But I went to $2,500, so...
All right.
I think a retail market
for this would be
between $3,500
and about $5,000.
Wow.
That's amazing--
I would never sell it.
(talking in background)
I found it last fall
in a local antiques store.
I went to visit it
almost every weekend for...
for a month,
and it was meant to be mine,
you know.
I absolutely love the piece.
I mean, this piece of furniture
dates from probably
1760, '70.
It's made of mahogany,
as you know.
This has the earmarks
of a Queen Anne dressing table
of good quality.
They went to the trouble of
molding the edge of the top.
Mm-hmm.
The top has a little bit
of overhang,
which gives it more grace.
The drawers are thumb-molded,
and that's typical
of that period.
And thumb molding is this,
is this molded edge.
The central drawer has
a well-executed carved fan,
and that cost extra money.
These legs are well-formed,
in pad feet on platforms.
And a pad foot
on a platform, again,
cost a little bit of extra.
The top edges
of the drawer sides
are double-beaded.
Mm-hmm.
That's a sign
of a good cabinetmaker.
He didn't have to do it,
but it finishes it off nicely.
And there's this...
on the bottom of the drawer,
there's this terrific oxidation.
But you can see the center
of the drawer,
which runs on
a central support underneath.
You know, the oxidation
is considerably worn away.
These are things
that we want to see.
I think the origin
of this piece,
probably the North Shore
of Massachusetts,
in the Salem area.
I've seen similar
dressing tables and high chests
that have very much the same
treatment of a valance.
Mm-hmm, okay.
So at the time
that you purchased it,
what did it cost?
I ended up paying
$8,500 for it.
Okay.
Do you think
you got a bargain?
What do you think it's worth?
I feel I got a bargain.
Yeah.
I was told that...
Well, that the family might have
had it appraised
some time in the early '90s,
and the appraisal came in
rather high.
How high?
$30,000.
$30,000
This is what's happened
to the American
furniture market.
A) You're buying
at a really good time.
Mm-hmm.
Because as wonderful
as this piece is,
it isn't worth particularly
more than you paid for it.
Mm-hmm.
So you paid around $8,500.
Mm-hmm.
I think that's
kind of on the money.
In an auction situation,
for example,
I would not be surprised
if it brought $8,500.
I think, I think, um...
I think that's
realistic.
Yeah? Okay.
Well, to me it's worth
a million, so...
And I absolutely love it,
and, um...
I'll pass it on to my son.
It's money well spent.
The thing that prevents it
perhaps from being
a little more valuable
is that the brasses are old,
but they're not original.
They've been replaced.
Really?
And also the quality
of the mahogany,
as good as it is,
is not spectacular.
Today's market is not supported
by a lot of young folks.
The fact that
you're interested in this
is a really good thing.
But that's what's lacking.
Competition
for these pieces today
is just not what it used to be
25 years ago.
25 years ago,
when the market was up,
you know, $35,000--
that's what I would have
gotten for this.
♪ ♪
PEÑA:
Along the Atlantic Ocean
coastline behind Rosecliff,
the historic Cliff Walk
stretches in either direction,
allowing passersby the chance
to admire the views of the sea,
as well as the opulent mansions.
The walk crosses both public
and private properties,
and is about three-and-a-half
miles long.
♪ ♪
These are some memorabilia
from World War II
that I got from my father.
He joined the Army
and joined the Medical Corps
361st station hospital,
which went
to the Philippines.
After Japan surrendered,
they sailed up Hiroshima Bay
and stopped in Kure,
where there was
a naval hospital.
They were just ten miles
from Hiroshima,
which had just been bombed
three weeks earlier.
And when they went up
to Hiroshima
to provide medical care,
they found complete
devastation.
Everything was glazed.
And in the rubble,
he found these artifacts
left over
that had not been
completely destroyed,
but had been blasted with sand
that turned to glass
from the intense heat
of the explosion.
When you opened the box
and you brought these out,
it was immediately evident
to me what they were.
It's a little amazing to think
that here were American G.Is.
in and amongst the survivors
fairly soon after the fact.
When you look at
an artifact like this,
it has a profound impact
on you.
You realize this was there.
This was in Hiroshima
when that bomb went off.
This was in somebody's house.
I've heard the explanation
that it was dust
and things in the air
that were turned to glass.
I've also come across
individuals
who support the idea
that it was glass that melted
that was in the vicinity
of the objects.
Every once in a while,
an artifact
really speaks to you.
Just by looking
at that artifact,
that tells what you
need to know
about the atomic explosion
at Hiroshima.
That's why it raised the hair
on my arm
when you brought it
out of the box,
and that's one of the reasons
why it is profoundly important
that these artifacts
exist in the world,
and that's also a reason
why people would be upset
that there would be a value
associated with them.
Mm-hmm.
Because of the horrendous nature
of the event that happened.
Artifacts like this
are sought out
by collectors and museums
in order to tell that story.
From a monetary value
perspective today,
a retail price for these
on the market would be
between $2,000 and $3,000.
Mm-hmm.
MAN:
It's a snuff bottle.
A gift from a friend.
She bought it in the 1960s
as a possible Fabergé piece.
It's a stunning piece.
It is a Fabergé piece.
That's amazing.
Fabergé was opened in 1842
by Gustav Fabergé.
And then his son,
at the age of 18, Carl,
toured the world,
came back to Russia
and came into the business.
And then Tsar Alexander III
had them declared
goldsmith by special appointment
to the imperial crown,
thus beginning the association
with the Russian tsars.
Also, Tsar Alexander III
commissioned
the first Easter egg to be made
in 1885.
So what we have here
is really
a fabulous jadeite
snuff bottle.
The snuff bottle dates
from the 18th century.
Wow.
And then Fabergé put this cap
on top of it here,
probably around 1890 to 1900,
in that era.
Okay.
The cap is made
out of 14-karat gold,
which is a Russian standard.
I looked at these
little round cabochon stones.
Do you know what kind
of stones those are?
They look a little bit
like rubies to me.
They are rubies,
and they're the best kind--
they're Burmese rubies.
They're Burma rubies
all the way around there.
It's capped on top with
absolutely a fabulous
cabochon garnet.
Do you have a wild guess,
if we had to put a value on it,
what it could be worth?
I really don't-- Fabergé.
I wasn't even sure it was real,
so...
Oh, it is real.
I'm very happy
to tell you,
retail, this is,
easily would sell
between $50,000
and $75,000.
Oh, my gosh.
That's fabulous.
And it is a unique piece,
it's not replaceable.
No, no, absolutely not.
It should be insured
for $100,000.
It's absolutely
a fabulous piece.
That's wonderful.
It's museum-quality.
PEÑA:
You're watching part three
PEÑA:
And now it's time
for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.
We had a great time,
and this was...
I'm going to cross this
off my bucket list.
But the second thing
on the bucket list
was going home a millionaire,
and that's not working.
(laughs)
Well,
I have a porcelain figurine
that is probably from Germany
in the 1920s.
It has some museum markings
on it,
and the appraiser said
it's worth
between $200 and $300.
I brought a painting,
and we were hoping we were
going to get enough money
so we could buy a car,
but it looks like we know
what his sister's getting
for her wedding present.
Yup.
And I brought
a diamond stick pin from Dad,
and it's real.
Yay-yay!
(chuckles)
I brought my, my rifle.
They said it was a nice rifle,
with a lot of pieces missing,
from the 79th Regiment,
and they said
it was, was a good rifle,
but not in really good shape.
And I found out
that my bracelet is 1910,
but I'm going to wear it
in the year 2017.
(chuckles)
And-- oh, I have a coffin, too.
It's from the 1850s to 1890s,
and I'm really glad for a show
like "Antiques Roadshow"
that people here would
appreciate something like this.
#RoadshowNewport.
#RoadshowNewport.
PEÑA:
Thanks for watching.
Tune in again
for another great episode
of "Antiques Roadshow Recut."