WALBERG: Antiques Roadshow returns to Indianapolis on our cross-country hunt for America's treasures.
How did your mom get it?
She was Ty Cobb's private-duty nurse.
Wow.
I have goose bumps.
WALBERG: Indianapolis' dedication to honoring those who participated in America's military conflicts is quite literally monumental.
When it comes to the number of war memorials, Indy is second only to Washington, D.C.
These impressive sites command attention and admiration all over the city.
Back at the convention center, many Hoosiers are discovering more about their treasures, like this one.
It was a gift, actually, from a lady who I knew when I was younger, ended up marrying my wife's uncle.
They were divorced many years later.
And I asked her, "Whatever happened to this poster?"
A few weeks later, I get a phone call, "Come pick it up."
And it's been hanging on our wall ever since.
Fantastic.
And what do you know about it?
I know it's French.
I believe the artist is Mucha, if that's pronounced right, and really, that's about it.
Well, so far, you're batting .1000.
It is French.
Okay.
The artist is Alphonse Mucha.
We've had some of his work on the show before, including another poster that he did for the same company.
Okay.
Now, this company, JOB, was a cigarette rolling paper company.
Printed in 1898.
Oh, wow.
Which was before they had machine-rolled cigarettes.
So if you were a smoker, you had to buy rolling paper.
And it's curious, because the owner of this company, his name was Jean Bardou, so his initials were J.B. And Jean Bardou had this idea at the time, which was to sell rolling paper in little packages, and he put his initials on the front of the package, separated by a diamond.
And the public immediately took to thinking that was the letter O, a stylized O.
So instead of J, diamond, B, they referred to the company as JOB, and the name stuck.
So this is a glorious Art Nouveau poster done in the highest artistic style.
Mucha was considered the father of the Art Nouveau movement.
And his style and his designs really sort of exemplified that whole movement.
And this poster shows many of his classic design traits.
So the beautiful woman, the halo behind the woman, the elaborate, almost unimaginably decorative hair that's cascading down her shoulders, which is all here.
So that's the artistic side.
Okay.
From a marketing point of view, Mucha really did something unusual in that he provided four different levels to reinforce the brand in the eyes of the viewing public.
He starts with the title, JOB.
If you look in the background, the wallpaper has a very stylized version of "J-O-B".
So that's the second level.
The third level is, obviously, the pack of cigarette papers which she's holding, and finally the brooch is also a stylized version of "J-O-B".
Great product reinforcement from an era when this kind of thing wasn't done at all.
This poster was printed with what we call a fugitive color.
The red, for some chemical reason, faded more quickly than anything else.
And, in fact, I've seen it not faded, which is unusual, but people react to it differently because they're not used to seeing it with such bright colors.
So curiously, when it's not faded, it doesn't specifically sell for more.
What's it worth?
Any guesses?
I really...
I'm hoping maybe $1,000 or more.
In the world of Art Nouveau posters, it's by one of the most famous artists.
It's not a rare piece, but it is a great and decorative piece, and I think that at auction you'd be looking at between $7,000 and $10,000.
Wow, very nice.
Very nice.
But I would point out there are a few condition issues where you can see sharp folds.
I think without those folds, it would be as high as $8,000 to $12,000.
Wow.
But even though it's common, it's so desirable, I think that's a very reasonable price to assume you might actually achieve at auction.
A very nice gift.
WOMAN: The bracelet was a wedding present from my husband's family.
We got married 27 years ago.
And it came from his aunt, who brought it to the United States in the late '30s from Germany.
This is my husband's grandmother and his great-grandmother and his great-great-grandmother.
And this is his father's oldest brother.
And the family was a prominent family.
Yes.
They were a Frankfurt banking family.
Their bank became Deutsche Bank.
They had a summer house outside of Frankfurt.
Their next-door neighbors were the Rothschilds.
Oh, I see.
So it was a great neighborhood.
And who had the picture of the house?
My husband was looking for an image to put on bottles.
He was making vinegar.
And I went on the internet, and I was looking at Italian villas, and I thought, "Oh, I'll just look at Villa Sulzbach," because that's the family's name, and this postcard came up, and a store in Berlin was selling it.
On the reverse side is the signature.
It's a nice letter from Hilda, his grandmother.
What a fabulous, fabulous story.
And do you know anything about the bracelet?
I know nothing about it.
I just hide it in the house.
You hide it in the house.
Well, I'm glad it came out for America to see.
It's a very beautiful bracelet, and I can tell you that from a stylistic point, it's a transitional piece.
Oh, okay.
It's really Edwardian, going into Art Deco.
And one of the reasons that I say that is that it has a very nice, heavy yellow gold band, and what's holding it are these beautiful elements, almost vines, made out of platinum, diamonds, and probably natural pearls.
We can't say... ...until we got them x-rayed or something.
Yes.
And the way it's made, it's jointed.
Yes.
So it's supple.
And these rubies are perfectly matched.
They're rubies?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know they were rubies.
These are Burma rubies.
Oh, my goodness, I didn't know.
I have goosebumps.
I mean, you are in a very high quality of everything, from the pearls, from the design.
The only thing it's missing is it doesn't have a signature.
Yes.
But from the way it's made, the design, and just the whole history, it's probably made in Germany.
And it even was expensive then, 1910 to 1918.
That would be the period.
In 2003, there was a ban of bringing in Burma rubies into this country.
It was brought into this country much earlier, and certainly it was made much earlier.
So there is no problem with having this bracelet.
Yes.
And when you put it on before, it's like a river.
It just undulates.
I love it.
It's just a perfect, perfect bracelet with a fabulous story.
Now, value.
Value's going to be difficult.
Yes.
Besides being beautiful, of the period, and it comes from a prominent family, it has everything going for it.
If I had to insure it, I would put probably $20,000 on it, because I don't think you could find one.
Wow.
And certainly not with the whole story.
So I'm glad you came.
I said I was going to try not to cry.
Don't, no, you don't have to.
Be happy.
I didn't realize they were rubies.
We always thought they were amethysts.
Oh, no, no, these are not amethysts.
I know.
This sort of thing was exported to the United States in huge quantities.
It's a type of majolica.
This is classic German or Austrian.
It probably dates around the 1880s or 1890s.
How long were these planes flying?
The one that he painted, just maybe a couple years.
If he had signed and numbered it, we'd probably have more value in there, but $300 to $500, probably.
$300 to $500?
Yeah, yeah.
Thanks for bringing it.
You bet.
His Hall of Fame jacket when he was enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
Oh, wow, look at that.
My father played for the Cleveland Browns.
What position did he play?
Offensive tackle and place kicker.
MAN: It's, we think, a jade piece that we picked up in China in a small village near the Great Wall in about 1988, in a small little junk shop.
The guy had a drawer full of just rusty items and, like, marbles.
And I happened to see that in there, and I asked how much it was.
He held up two... three fingers for three yuan, which was about one dollar at the time.
I actually looked around in the drawer for the missing broken piece.
It was nowhere to be found.
So I still thought it was a good value.
Not surprising the piece wasn't there.
Corner's probably been missing for a while.
Looks a little worn away.
Could have been broken pretty soon after it was made, about 600 years ago.
Excellent.
This is actually a 15th century jade carving.
Made as part of a belt, there would have been several of these in a belt worn for ornamental and ceremonial purpose.
The layered carving on this is absolutely spectacular.
You see there's three layers that are meant to be represented here-- lotus leaf, representing the Buddhist tradition.
I think you have other plants and scrollwork in there.
It's absolutely gorgeous.
You paid a dollar?
If this were to show up at auction, I would expect a reasonable value is $1,500.
Wonderful.
Given the condition, I think that's a very good price.
If it were fully intact, could be about $3,000.
All right.
Well, thank you very much.
It was my husband's aunt's.
She had passed away about 20 years ago.
And the immediate family was allowed to go through the house to see if there was anything they wanted of hers.
And my husband was so interested in this that he really wanted this-- it was different.
We've had it in his den for about 20 years, collecting dust.
And was there any reason why your aunt had this particular piece in the house that you know of?
We have no idea.
No idea.
We were semi close with her, you know.
Okay.
So we didn't know a lot about the stuff that she had in the house.
And what we're looking at here is, it says very clearly, it's a Western Union Telegraph Company, and it's a ticker tape machine.
Right.
If you look very closely right over here in the brass section...
Okay.
...is Edison's name in there with a patent number.
Is it?
And Edison patented this machine in 1869.
It's a great example of this machine.
It's done in the early 20th century, 1920s or so.
Condition is phenomenal.
When you look carefully at it, right along the lip here, you can see this black tape.
That's the original tape that was there...
Yes.
...to protect the glass from breaking along the side.
Oh, okay, yeah.
When you turn the whole thing around, you can just look how clean this whole machine is from the back.
Some of the tape is in it as well.
Yes.
The ticker tape.
It's a little bit too heavy to lift, because it's quite a heavy machine.
But it was wired from underneath.
And this was made to keep up to date on the stock quotes.
The values on these machines do fluctuate, sometimes kind of coordinating with how the stock market is doing, because some of the buyers of these are stockbrokers, people in the stock industry.
And if I had this at auction on today's market value, based on condition, I would probably put an estimate somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000.
Wow.
That's fantastic.
They have sold higher at times, and they have sold a little bit lower, but $8,000 to $10,000 is a fair kind of median range.
Oh, yes.
So, it's a great machine.
Wow.
Beautiful condition, and glad you brought it in.
Yeah, I'm glad I did, too.
WOMAN: I think we bought it in 2005.
I was told it's a ghost dancer dress.
There was a society, the Ghost Dancer Society.
And this was in, like, the 1890s to the 1900s.
But then the government decided that was getting too strong, so they made it illegal for them to have these Ghost Dancer ceremonies.
The Ghost Dance came out of Nevada, and was the result of visions by a Paiute prophet named Wovoka.
And Wovoka believed that the old ways were going to come back.
He lived out in severe desert conditions.
He was not a buffalo hunting person.
But a lot of people from the Plains tribes came to visit him by train.
And Cheyenne sat down with him, Arapaho sat down with him, the Sioux.
And they took up this religion.
And part of the religion was a round dance.
And it's what we all today, if we were out dancing at a powwow, we'd be calling the round dance.
And they would do this dance, and they believed that that would help the past come back, where the buffalo would return, and things would get better again.
The end of it all was basically the massacre at Wounded Knee, at Pine Ridge, where Lakota Sioux were shot down and killed by U.S. 9th Cavalry, and also infantry, in late December of 1890.
Sitting Bull was assassinated by tribal police about two weeks earlier.
They had automatic Hotchkiss guns.
And U.S. military soldiers were killed at the same time in the crossfire.
A lot of people died.
It was a huge tragedy.
And the Ghost Dance didn't stop, but it backed off a lot.
It was banned on some of the agencies at certain reservations, but not nationwide.
The Arapaho continued to practice it.
The Cheyenne continued to practice it.
They practiced it in conjunction with the Sun Dance.
I have seen Kiowa Ghost Dance dresses that were made as late as 1920, 1930.
The bad news is this is not an old dress.
It's a very beautiful dress, and it's made in completely the traditional ways.
The problem is it shows no wear.
It doesn't show any signs of use at all, and the hides are recently tanned.
All these seams, they're sewn with animal sinews.
Somebody really went over the top to make this right.
Now, that being said, what did you pay for it?
$3,000.
Okay.
I don't think you overpaid at all.
I think this dress would cost you $3,000 to $3,500 easily if it came up at auction.
If it was in a gallery, slightly more.
If this dress had documentation that could authenticate it as being an 1880s, 1890s era dress from the Ghost Dance, it could easily bring six figures.
MAN: Well, this is a silver baby cup that was made by a silversmith named Asa Blanchard.
I understand he worked out of Lexington, Kentucky, and is credited with inventing the julep cup.
This cup was originally given to a man named Johnny Brand in 1820 and was handed down to people in my family.
You can read "Elizabeth Brand Higgins," "Elizabeth Brand Higgins Mitchell," and then "Elizabeth Brand Monroe," who then gifted it to me and my son just a year ago.
He is considered one of the earliest makers of the julep cup.
The first reference to a mint julep actually occurs in about 1785 in a book which talks about home remedies.
And the julep is considered a remedy for stomach ailments.
You hold it by the edges, because of the cup being made of silver, traditionally, or occasionally pewter.
You don't want to transfer the heat to the drink.
And what you have is not really a mint julep cup any longer.
It's been modified, as you mentioned, into a baby cup.
So it has the addition of this handle.
As a mint julep cup, it would have never had a handle.
Asa Blanchard was working 1808 to 1838, but the handle could have been added when this first monogram was added on there, which I believe is 1882?
'82, yeah.
What is interesting about the history of the mint julep is that it started, we think, in Virginia, became very popular quickly, and moved to other areas, particularly Kentucky.
But it was also popular in a lot of bars up and down the East Coast, and is referenced in a couple of historical travel documents and publications written by the British and Europeans.
And in one of those travel books, it actually says that one of the few things worthwhile about going to the Americas is to sample the mint julep.
Henry Clay, the senator from Kentucky, is given credit for making the mint julep popular, as he brought it to Washington, D.C. in the 19th century, introduced it to the Willard Hotel, and then spread to most other bars where rich and wealthy and powerful men had cocktails.
Okay.
He is the best silversmith as far as mint julep cups go, and what every collector of Southern mint julep cups wants is a piece by Asa Blanchard.
If this were to come to market today, even with the addition of the handle and the personalized family monograms, you would probably expect it to bring around $6,000 at auction.
All right, wow.
Yeah.
Maybe another $1,000 if it didn't have the handle.
Okay.
This one was supposedly a Polish bowl.
It was buried under the earth when... in World War I.
There's no markings on it whatsoever.
How interesting.
He's straw filled, so he's going to be 1930s, 1940s.
Plush that's worn a little bit, obviously, especially around the nose.
Very, very pretty, nice glazes to it.
It's going to be bought today more for its decorative appeal than for its collectability.
I would expect in the $30 to $50 range.
Okay.
But it is the real McCoy.
WOMAN: 50 years ago tonight, I was getting ready to see the Rolling Stones for the first time.
I was 13.
I went with my friends to the concert in Indianapolis at the Coliseum.
This is you, right?
Yes, that's me on the end.
We kept track and remembered every song they sang.
And we tried to get them in order.
And what is the note there about the hotel?
We decided we'd start calling every hotel in Indianapolis until they would put us through to one of the Rolling Stones, and they finally did.
They sent us up there, and we got hung up on.
But you don't know who did it, do you?
No, I didn't recognize the voice.
You still have your ticket from the concert, and it's exactly 50 years today.
Tonight.
Yes.
You took all of these pictures?
Yes, I did, on my mom's Brownie camera.
We were on the 13th row on the floor, and we could go up as close to the fence line as we wanted.
The ticket market's starting to grow, and the Rolling Stones, having something from 1966... Brian Jones was still there, he was still alive.
So that's a great time to have them.
It's an early tour for them in the United States, and you were there.
You could actually have that ticket taken out of the book to preserve it.
If you did that, the ticket's probably worth $150, $200.
Wow.
Your program, it's not in great condition, because you loved it, and you wrote in it, so it's not worth a great deal.
But all together here, it would probably be, at auction, $250 to $300.
Well, thank you, that's awesome.
You've brought in this great baseball, and I see it's signed "from Ty Cobb" here, "Ty Cobb" there.
And an interesting date here.
It appears to me to be 7, I think 9, 1961.
Exactly-- 55 years ago today.
Where has this baseball been hiding since 1961?
In 1961, it was in my mother's hall closet.
Okay.
In a brown paper lunch sack.
And then in 1986, it got put in a plastic ball carrier and put in a closet for another 20 years.
And then I got it, and it got in a crock pot until we found it, and I decided to bring it to the Roadshow.
How did your mom get it?
My mother was a private-duty nurse at Emory University Hospital in 1961, and she was Ty Cobb's private-duty nurse in the last month of his life.
He went in in June, and then he passed away July 17 of 1961.
So what did she think of taking care of him?
Well, she didn't say much, except that he was an ornery patient.
(chuckling) My mom was a nurse in the Army during World War II.
So after dealing with all these soldiers, dealing with Ty Cobb couldn't have been that too far... No, he was just ornery.
And she could deal with him.
And, apparently, he could deal with her, because she was pretty ornery, too.
So they were a match made in...
They were a match.
So Ty Cobb had this phenomenal career with the Detroit Tigers, and he still holds records today in Major League Baseball, even after retiring after the 1928 season.
He played his last two seasons with the Philadelphia As, the preceding years with the Detroit Tigers.
And he's considered probably by many one of the top three to five baseball players of all time.
He has the highest career batting average, which, depending on who you ask, is .366 or .367.
He's won the most batting titles ever, again, depending on who you ask, 11 or 12.
He was a very wealthy man when he passed away in 1961.
Right.
He's been known by many to be baseball's first millionaire player.
And do you know how he got his money?
Coca-Cola stock.
Right.
Because he was from Georgia, and also General Motors stock, because he played in Detroit.
And he gave away a lot of money in college scholarships to kids.
So his legacy has lived on well past his passing at 74 in 1961.
The writing is in green.
Normally, it's in blue or black ink, occasionally red.
But Ty Cobb signed predominantly in green.
Oh, really?
His signature's not necessarily the rarest, but it's one of the most desirable, given his position as one of baseball's top players.
That's fantastic.
Now, the other mystery that we may never solve here is why did he sign it twice-- Ty Cobb and Ty Cobb?
We may never know,.
But he did, and that's actually to your benefit.
I would place an auction estimate of $15,000 to $20,000.
Oh, my.
(laughs) I thought no way.
Because I can see my mother going by the local shop and picking up a ball and saying, "Here, sign this one," you know?
And the fact that he passed on eight days later, it just, you know, is amazing.
Oh, my.
That's crazy.
It would be $25,000 for insurance value.
Okay.
Oh, I'm going to have to call the insurance agency when I get home.
So what did you think it was worth?
About $1,800.
MAN: Well, this was Grandpa's.
Unfortunately, I never got to hear him play it.
But when I was 15, I think I found it up in the attic and Mom and Dad agreed to repair it if I took lessons.
I think I took lessons for about two months before I joined the service.
When I walked into the store with it, the owner offered me any guitar and any amplifier in the store for it.
So I kind of knew right then I had something kind of special.
Grandpa's-- I couldn't give it away or sell it.
Well, a lot of instruments get out of the family hands when things like that occur.
It's a good thing you didn't want to be a rock star.
Yeah.
Yeah, it might have been gone, you never know.
Did you learn to play it, and get to play out any?
I never really got a chance to play it a whole lot.
So hopefully now I'm retired, I can learn to play a little more.
The banjo is not an easy instrument to play.
No, it's not.
We looked at this earlier at the music table.
We took the back off of it, and we found some serial numbers.
And those numbers were?
9927-2.
And according to that, this banjo was made in 1935-- the golden time period for Gibson.
And everybody that collects this all wants stuff from before World War II.
Right.
And here you got it.
The next thing you do is you start looking at all the different components, like the style of peg head that it has, the inlay pattern in the neck.
The neck is made out of probably rosewood, looks like.
All mother-of-pearl inlay.
There have been a lot of laws enacted recently about endangered woods.
I think the neck on this is Indian rosewood, which is not endangered.
This is an RB-1.
An RB-1.
This is, like, the basic model that they would have made during that time period.
Okay.
It looks like it's never been refinished.
Not to my knowledge.
Had a little bit of repair on the neck.
This is a fabulous banjo for somebody who wants something from the period, and they can't get into those price ranges where, you know, you're holding your nosebleed.
Right.
For insurance purposes, I would probably put about $6,000 or $7,000 on it.
Okay.
Market value, you find them out there in the $4,000 to $5,000 range.
Okay.
But this is in fabulous condition.
The only thing really it looks like has been done to it is they put the head on it.
That's about it.
You going to play it for us?
You want to hear it?
Yes, that would be great.
I'm a guitar player trying to be a banjo player.
I feel like it's Hopi, from the Hopi tribe.
But I don't really know much more about it.
That's why I brought it, to hopefully learn more.
And you're probably talking about something that's a fair market auction value of around $150 to $200.
Well, that's not bad at all.
That's not bad at all.
In the exact same condition, pre-1898, where it's an antique, it picks up almost 50% in value.
I'd probably estimate it at $800 to $1,000, somewhere around there.
Well, good.
WOMAN: I brought my father's flag when he was serving in the Pacific theater.
I also brought his diary.
And also his picture as a signalman.
APPRAISER: So our flag is in pretty rough condition here.
This flag came from his LST number 797 through the typhoon of Okinawa.
He was in four typhoons.
Whether this was the flag from one of them in Okinawa, I think it was.
Because it was labeled as such.
A 48-star American flag from World War II is a wonderful thing, but, honestly, not something that has a whole lot of value.
But when you can connect an artifact with a specific historic event, knowing that this particular flag flew above that LST during the invasion of Okinawa, which was the largest amphibious operation in the Pacific theater during World War II, makes it a lot more significant.
And the diary, the photographs, the other material that you have, that's the glue that holds all of that together.
We find some wonderful stories in here.
I was very impressed with his diary.
It's legible.
Yes.
Did he mention Ernie Pyle to you?
He was close to Ernie Pyle when he was gunned down.
Ernie Pyle was very popular with the guys.
They absolutely loved him.
He lived in the mud with them, and he told their story in their voices, and they loved him for it.
And it was a real dagger through the heart when Ernie died.
He talks about dodging these typhoons.
These vessels look so big when they're in port.
But when you're out in the middle of the ocean getting tossed around...
Right.
...you realize that Mother Nature is a powerful entity.
And a number of ships were lost...
Yes.
...to those typhoons.
Yes.
With the connection to Okinawa, we believe that a conservative auction estimate for the flag would be between $4,000 and $6,000.
Oh, wow.
That is a shock.
That is a shock.
Thank you so much.
My mother was born in 1918, lived in Iowa.
And she collected stamps when she was a little girl.
But, luckily, she didn't collect any of the stamps off of these letters, and saved the whole group together.
We've got about 20 to 25 letters.
There's certain ones that are more interesting than the others.
They're written from Colorado back to Iowa.
And they talk about Idaho fever.
One lady in the letter is talking that she had lost her hair, and the daughter had lost her hair.
Okay.
And then they talk about the Indians, and that they can't get home, and they're worried about whether they can even get the mail through.
When are these letters from?
1864.
Well, I'm so glad your mother is a stamp collector, saved the envelopes, and unlike most stamp collectors here's an example of one of the envelopes here, with the stamp still intact.
Most stamp collectors would, in fact, cut the stamps or soak the stamps off the envelopes, destroying a postal history, which is very, very important in the philatelic sense.
The country of Great Britain invented postage stamps, and as a result, they're the only country in the world that actually gets to not put the name of the country on a postage stamp.
The letters are from 1864.
Colorado Territory didn't exist until 1861.
It was carved out of portions of Kansas territory on the east and Utah territory to the west.
The Mormon empire of Deseret or Utah extended all the way to the crest of the Rocky Mountains, up until the U.S. government carved the Territory of Colorado out of, as I said, Kansas and Utah territories.
Oh, I didn't realize that.
This is the very early days, the beginnings of Colorado history.
This is the back of the letter.
This has got the map of either Fort Kearney or Fort Cottonwood.
Well, in the bottom of the letter, it says that they are holed up.
There's about 50 people, and they call it Fort Innes.
And if you'll notice the room on the far side over here, shows "I-N-N-E-S," so I believe that's they call it that name.
They were sending people to Kearney and to Cottonwood forts for safety.
We have four territorial Colorado letters and two envelopes.
A retail value for the collection would be between $6,000 to $7,500.
My goodness.
Okay.
Thank you.
MAN: I was at an antique auction.
They were stacked together.
I pulled them each apart carefully.
And I loved the brilliant colors.
They were just vibrant, and I thought they told a story, but I couldn't figure out how they told a story.
But I came back to looking at them really closely, and it looked like they were almost painted as opposed to printed.
And so I said I had to have them.
How long ago did you purchase this?
Oh, probably maybe about five to ten years ago, maybe more toward the ten years.
I paid $100 for all four of them.
So you paid $100 for something that you didn't know anything about, just on a hunch.
Well, you had a good hunch.
Great, thank you.
These are Japanese.
Japanese, okay.
They are 17th century.
They are fragments of a hand scroll, which was a scroll that you would roll out and keep looking at the pictures as you unrolled it.
These were meant to be read right to left.
Okay.
I say "fragments," because it appears, although you can see the end of this chapter going into the beginning of that chapter...
Okay.
...if you try and put them all together, it doesn't all make sense.
Okay.
So we're missing about two sections, I would say.
These depict military battles, or what we call gunki monogatari.
That means military stories.
Okay.
Based on Kamakura battles and battle scenes and daily life.
Kamakura period was from 1192 to 1333.
The rise of feudalism in Japan, a lot of turbulence during that period.
So you see that here in all of these fantastic warrior scenes.
This is a 17th century representation of that time period, probably done by the Kano school, which was one school of painters in that area.
This is depicted in mineral pigments and ink on paper with gold flecking in the clouds.
And the clouds was a painting technique to tie all of the scenes together.
In 2001, a hand scroll of this type was sold at auction.
It was complete.
It also had stories in calligraphy.
It brought $50,000.
(laughing): Okay.
Unfortunately, yours is not complete.
That's fine.
And no calligraphy.
However, at auction today, even incomplete, your $100 purchase would be estimated at between $10,000 and $20,000.
Wow.
If you had shown this to us in the 1980s, this would be worth more than $10,000 to $20,000.
Okay.
The bubble burst in the Japanese art market in the late '80s and early '90s, and prices have readjusted.
But still, it's a great purchase.
Still.
And for being as old as you said it is.
That's right.
It's in remarkable shape.
WOMAN: In 1921 and 1927, my grandparents were missionaries in China.
My mother and aunt were born there.
They had to flee because of the civil war in China in 1927.
And when they returned, they brought many artifacts with them, and things that they had purchased in China, and this was one of them.
APPRAISER: So you're under the impression that this rug probably was Chinese in origin all this time?
Yes.
Okay, well, I can tell you that it is in fact a Persian rug, comes from the city of Kashan.
It was woven in the first quarter of the 20th century.
One of the identifying factors of Kashan rugs from this period in time is the quality of wool that's utilized.
This is woven with Manchester wool from the United Kingdom, taken from the finest Merino sheep.
So the wool has a very soft, supple handle to it.
Between 1890 and 1930, since Kashan is in a desert area in Persia, and generally had poor quality wool, they imported the wool, and this very fine wool was used, up until 1930, when the Great Depression came.
And at that point the British and the German carpet companies that had interests in Iran defaulted on them.
And so the Shah at that period decided that he was going to nationalize the carpet industry.
And post-1930, all of the wool used was Iranian wool, which is not as fine and not as soft as the Manchester spun wool.
So we have this rug from the early 20th century.
It has a very crisp, curvilinear pattern.
It has a few small areas of wear, which detract slightly from the value.
But it also has a very unique feature that I haven't seen in any Kashan rug before.
It's a salt-and-pepper- type effect to the field color, and it gives it a very pleasing, subtle effect.
And it's all highlighted by this palmette border.
And I think it's a very artistic rug.
This rug retail would sell in the vicinity of $5,000.
If the rug were in better condition, it would easily sell for $10,000.
Oh, wow.
So I'd like to thank you so much for bringing it in today.
Oh, thank you.
That's really a surprise.
Thank you.
You're very welcome.
APPRAISER: It's 14-karat gold.
That's very nice to know.
It's nice to see Victorian jewelry in such good shape.
It's pretty dramatic, but it's really made to be sold as a costume.
WOMAN: Okay.
APPRAISER: You have this wonderful example of Egyptomania, this great Egyptian attendant.
There would have been a bowl on the top.
Because of the condition, there's not a huge amount of value, but it is great looking, so I'd say in the store today maybe $250 to $300.
Okay.
All right?
It's more than I paid for it.
WOMAN: This is drawn by Erik Magnussen, who was my grandmother's first husband.
He designed this for Gorham silver.
APPRAISER: Erik was brought over from Denmark because he was already a world renowned silver designer, by Gorham in 1925 for just a brief period, 1925 to 1929.
And he designed this coffee service called the "Cubic coffee set" in 1927, based on the Cubist motifs that Picasso and Braque were evoking in their French cubist paintings.
This is the artist rendering before, presumably, the coffee set was made.
The coffee set was made.
It was heralded by the New York Times as being the lights and the beauty of New York City or Manhattan.
It evoked skyscrapers, the Jazz Age.
You can see it here, the gold wash on top, and then there's an ebonized wash that's on top as well and it's to give it dramatic light changes you would see during the course of the day.
And this is what the artists were responding to at the time.
It's arguably the most magnificent, most important 20th century piece of metalwork in America.
Wow.
The finished set is now in the Rhode Island School of Design.
And here we have the original drawing.
We think a minimum of $10,000 to $15,000 in the auction market today.
Wow, that's surprising.
That's great.
MAN: Well, this is a family heirloom.
As far as I know, it's been in the family all the way back to when it was manufactured in Haverhill, New Hampshire, by John Osgood.
It's passed down from father to son, but it's supposed to go first son, first son.
It's in my hands now because my grandfather had a twin brother, and my grandfather was born a few minutes before his twin brother, so that's why it wound up on my side of the family.
Inside the clock are names of people that repaired it or cleaned it, or something like that.
And other than doing just a little bit of looking on the internet, I don't really know a whole bunch more about it, quite frankly.
APPRAISER: John Osgood, interesting clock maker.
He was born in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1770, went to apprentice with his uncle, Michael Carlton.
And in 1793, he went up to Haverhill, New Hampshire, where he worked, and he then died in 1840.
Do you know anything about the restoration that's been done to this clock over the years?
Not a whole lot.
So, like, the face on there is a cardboard piece that is covering the original face.
I have no idea when that was placed on there.
The paper mat on the dial, why some people do some things that they do it's hard to explain.
All the numbers have been relined and the signature has been strengthened underneath that.
I don't believe this case started off life with this movement.
This is a brass works movement that is in what I believe to be a wooden work case.
So the gears would be cut of wood.
It's a very primitive pine case that's been mahogonized, and originally this would be in a hardwood case like a cherry or a mahogany.
I'm going to slide the bonnet off, and I'm going to talk a little bit about this dial.
This has been added, and there's been really extensive painting restoration in the arch of the dial.
Right.
So you wonder is this really a John Osgood clock?
And the beauty of John Osgood is that he often engraved his back plates and numbered them.
Okay.
And when I take this out, you'll see that it's engraved right here, number 377.
And that's the 377th clock that he made.
I've seen numbers from 13 to 373, is the last production number that I've found.
Does this correspond with 1812?
It could, but because 1812 has been added, I don't know that.
Sure.
A lot has been done.
The bell has been moved over here.
It would generally be on a bell stand here.
This would be a solid wood door.
So this was cut out at a later date.
And all these signatures that you mentioned on the inside of here of repairmen that serviced this clock over the years, probably a few of them are the culprits of these restorations.
Sure.
That being said, if it was a John Osgood in a hardwood case, like a cherry case, and it didn't have all the restoration on the dial, it's so important to leave dials alone, it would be a clock that would be in the $12,000 range.
Really.
I've seen very formal mahogany case John Osgoods sell for as much as $35,000, but this is a country clock.
So, in my opinion, a clock like this is really parts.
It's still a John Osgood clock.
Sure.
The movement is engraved correctly, but this clock would probably sell at auction in the $800 to $1,000 range today.
Sure, all right.
And that's okay.
And that's okay.
WOMAN: It belonged to Frances Hodgson Burnett.
She was the famous children's writer who wrote Secret Garden and Little Lord Fauntleroy, and Little Princess, among some of my favorites.
Yes.
So I inherited this from my dad.
Mrs. Burnett was a very popular writer in about the '20s.
She traveled a lot and had this made for her.
It has her initials on it.
This is part of a 97-piece set that has been passed down.
My dad was orphaned in 1918 in the flu epidemic.
Oh, gosh.
So he was raised by a grandmother in Long Island and a grandmother in Florida.
And the grandmother in Long Island was Edith Hodgson-- her name was then Jordan, and she was Frances Hodgson Burnett's sister.
And they lived together.
Sister, okay.
In Plandome, Long Island, a beautiful estate.
So Edith was my great-grandmother.
He should have inherited it.
I have the will, actually, where it is designated that he would get everything in the house, and the house.
But he did not, since his father had died, his uncle took over the business and married a woman, and somehow, through all that, he had got nothing.
Oh dear, oh dear.
So, after that aunt died, things went to auction in New York City.
It was 1959.
He bought just what he remembered from the house in Plandome.
And he bought this.
Now, how much did he pay for it?
$410.
He had it appraised in 1988.
They said it was worth $5,000 then.
There's 97 pieces.
So how much do you think this is worth now?
So I'm assuming, like other glassware and antiques has dropped in value.
So I don't know.
I would say I'm guessing a couple of thousand maybe now.
It's a fabulous set.
It was made by Salviati, who is an Italian Venetian firm, late 19th century.
Could have been 1885, 1890.
And they started in the mid-19th century, and actually continue today.
The gilding on it has worn down over time.
Did you use this set?
We did use it.
We used it growing up at Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Oh, wonderful.
And occasions, yes.
So people's hands have been on it.
So some of the gilding's come off a little bit, but that's okay.
It's got all the bells and whistles.
It's got this wonderful ruffled edge.
Very Venetian iconography with the griffins and it's got her initials on it, which are... it's fantastic.
Although, glass in general, there has been some downturn in the market.
I think that this still has held its value over time.
People are still very much enamored with the craftsmanship of this, this beautiful enamelware paint.
It's gorgeous to look at.
So right now we have eight of the 97 pieces, which is a massive set.
I would say that each piece is worth at least about $100.
We've got eight pieces here.
At auction I would say $800 to $1,200 for what we see right here.
So let's count 97 times $100.
And $9,700.
I would put an auction estimate on this of $10,000 to $15,000.
Would you really?
(chuckles) Well, that is more than I would have said, yes.
Whoo.
Okay.
Given the provenance that it has from a very famous author and people's love of her, it could do better.
This lamp belonged with a coffee table, was purchased by my parents when we lived outside of Philadelphia.
And they knew of George Nakashima's work, and we went and actually visited his studios in New Hope.
And they actually helped to pick out what they were looking for, for both this lamp and a coffee table.
They ordered from him.
They helped to pick out the wood and everything else.
And this is back in 1974, I believe.
He then produced it for us.
So this was over the course of several visits.
This was over the course of a few visits, yes.
And you brought with you not only the floor lamp, but you also brought a Nakashima catalog and original drawings in George's hand signed by George.
Correct.
There were people who copied his work, there were people who worked there who did work of their own on the side that approximated Nakashima's work.
So particularly in the case of George Nakashima, it's really quite critical.
And you have the original paperwork.
You also have the original bill of sale.
George Nakashima settled in New Hope.
During World War II, he had been in an internment camp.
The architect Antonin Raymond sponsored him to come to New Hope, where he made furniture in the... what we call the Modernist Organic style.
He pioneered that.
His style was defined by raw pieces of wood.
He felt that this piece of wood could never be anything but what it is.
This tree existed for this base to be the base of this lamp.
And so he really sought to find the soul of the tree, the inner part of that wood, the spirit of it that became manifest in the furniture designs that he became rather famous for.
And his daughter, Mira Nakashima, continues in that tradition still in New Hope through today.
So a couple of unusual things about this lamp.
This is called the Kent Hall lamp.
What George Nakashima would do is he would name a design for a certain commission or client.
So the Kornblut cabinet was named after Dr. Kornblut, and every Kornblut cabinet that was made after that would be known as the Kornblut cabinet, even if it was no longer for Dr. Kornblut.
Originally, this design was made for Kent Hall at Columbia University in 1962.
He did three commissions for Kent Hall.
And this is one of the more famous forms that came out of it.
It's the only... one of the only floor lamps-- in fact there's two different versions shown in this catalog page.
But quite rare, he did not do a tremendous amount of lighting.
What is also unusual about this, and very important that you have this piece of information here, you don't normally see it with this wooden base.
Originally, when they designed this and were building it, I think they felt that maybe it was a little too unstable because the bottom is small, and therefore he felt like he needed-- this is what I've been told at least-- that they needed to add the base for stability.
So that if it was put on carpet or was put on uneven surfaces that the lamp would not tip over.
And the invoice I saw said, "no charge."
Correct.
For the base edition.
So this is the only one I've ever seen with this base edition.
And it was important to establish that it happened by George's hand and not by someone else.
So, also, different materials were used to make this lamp.
The base is English walnut, which is the most typical wood that Nakashima used.
And this wood, to your understanding?
I believe it's cherry.
It does look like that, but I'm not certain, and you felt this was ash.
Ash or something like that.
Ash or birch.
But tell me about the paper that was used for the shade.
And the paper we believe is rice paper.
It's a very thick rice paper.
I noticed when looking over the lamp there's a tear in the shade that seems to have been repaired.
It occurred because this lamp is in normal use in the household with my parents.
Grandchild or pet?
Grandchild.
(laughing) So, you know, my mother then went back and tried to repair it on her own.
The rip didn't tear out.
It seems like a very even seam.
So my recommendation in this case would be to leave it be.
I think your mom did a fine job on it.
Your family paid how much for this?
I believe the original receipt says $530 or something like that.
That was for the lamp and the table.
I believe that's correct.
So this alone was about $250.
So let's take a look at this turned on.
Beautiful.
Realistic value on this at auction is somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000.
Wow, okay.
Excellent, thank you.
WALBERG: An d now it's time for the Roadshow feedback booth.
We bought this at an auction for $32, and it's worth $800 to $1,200.
See, Mom and Dad, that art history degree is paying off.
Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.
Thanks, Antiques Roadshow.
We learned that we're very good at buying odd things that aren't entirely worthless, so... We had a great time.
We had such a good time.
I brought this mug that has a ballerina on it, and it turned out that it's worth $100 from Germany.
I was hoping it was worth more, so I'm just going to go home and drink beer out of it, and then do some dancing.
Our greatest treasure today was my mother-in-law who has been wanting to come to Antiques Roadshow for over 20 years.
You made it, Sandy, and you had a great time.
I mowed the lawn for a neighbor for a summer and he paid me with a lamp.
It worked out well for about $500.
I found out my great-grandmother's watch is worth about $100.
And I found out that my grandma's watch is worth about $1,000.
He's buying lunch.
I brought some vases that came from my grandparents' restaurant that customers gave them.
I have to say, Nona, the cannoli recipe is worth a lot more than these vases.
We love Indianapolis and had a great time at Antiques Roadshow.
But Grandpa's not getting us anything.
Thank you, Antiques Roadshow, for having us today.
It's been a real blast!
(imitates rocket ship launching) WALBERG: I'm Mark Walberg.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time on Antiques Roadshow.