Antiques Roadshow Series 25 Episode 14 Leeds Royal Armouries

[Music] when the Royal Armouries Museum collection in the Tower of London became too much to handle they had to find somewhere else and so this museum in Leeds was built to give you some idea of the vast array of weapons and armor that was tucked away unseen in the tower this astonishing display in the Hall of Steel contains more than 3000 items alone some of them from the 17th century right up to the end of the 19th [Music] in a moment I'll be going through the museum with Bill Herriman one of the roadshows military experts but our bill straps on his cuirass will pop back to the Leeds Town Hall to see a few items that we didn't have time to show you on our previous visit my cousin had it left to him by his employer Prez employer yes she'd no children yes and a husband used to be in the Navy yes and he served for many many years and always looked after it so when she passed away she left it to him right and then when he passed away elected my good lady I have to say these are often called bracket clocks but the sheer weight of this one precludes the use of a bracket you put this on the bracket and they'll be a lovely tinkling noise to hit the floor most English clocks of all ages that have this style are called bracket clocks when they should be more correctly called table clocks and also in fact the style of this goes back much earlier this sort of brass cast top here is called the basket top it's far more common at the end of the 17th century at the end of the 19th century so there's definitely a throwback to it now this is not only a striking clock it's a quarter striking yes that right can we just hear it okay so we take it up here and we'll make some you should hear the hour now right now we have the great Gong at the back there we go so it makes a bunch of hopeful Rises make them know the time you heard there was a variation of the Westminster chime which was previously called of Canberra shine so he's obviously taken from Big Ben it's it's the time was taken from that when we look at the name on it there it says yes Charles Fong some clock maker to the Queen quite a lot of clock makers put clock maker the Korean air after it it wasn't just him but he certainly was he looked after the photos looked after the clocks of Buchan palace we do know that and that name is repeated also if I turn around now on the back let's look at the side of it yes it's absolutely amazing and in beautiful condition they will see that the name is also inscribed down there fraud some of London there's a date under these there of 1767 I think that's the date actually when when the business founded yeah and he lost well into the 20th century so it lasts a very long time it's not the date that the plot was made no the wooden on the case is worn at its turn it round again and look at the front I now just amazed my sword I think it's you see lots of clocks like this that were made in Victorian times and none of them look as good as this one I've no idea when it would be manufactured right which is one of the reasons I brought it yeah well when it was manufactured let's say towards the end of the 19th century 1885 1898 a 95 round about that period and the value of this must be at auction three and a half thousand at least it went for four and a half thousand I wouldn't be at all surprised either you know it really is one of those wonderful clocks I've seen burn very long time know the first thing that really strikes me about these is how amazingly colorful they are aren't they and then the second thing is just how intricate and complicated the design is because they're not very big no but there's so much packed into such a small space don't tell me a bit about the where do they come from well they're a family heirloom I know they belong to my grandmother and they were passed down and they came to me when my mother died in 1976 they came from India because my grandmother's family had a timber business in India she actually a locked with a British captain in the British Army it's a background from your point of view is that they come from the east there yes India and yes yes I don't think they're Indian actually they're from Rome if you can imagine in the 19th century mmm people were traveling and they're going all around Europe and visiting cities and they're visiting Rome and what do they see when they're in Rome they see all the mosaic floors yes and that's what these are made of now they're incredibly intricate and it's actually quite difficult to see the detail but let's just pick one up this is a design which is set with tiny individual pieces of glass forming a picture in mosaic yes this is actually a swamp yes on water yeah picked out in polychrome colors you've got blues and reds and whites and greens and its individual tiny tiny colored pieces of glass called Desiree yeah little cubes of glass but the beauty of your drops for the ears these earrings is that they're in absolutely impeccable can so all right there we are then there middle part of the 19th century micro mosaic and gold drop earrings and a very nice size they're not too long not too short value well there's no diamonds or gem they are very much jewelry for the purest but I think because of their exquisite design and condition I think they're probably worth in auction maybe around a thousand pounds I would say it's probably about probably 1890 something like that horror in rather than moving into the Edwardian period is it is it a piece you've you've owned for a long time or no it's a piece mumbles and far lavond receive it as a wedding present 32 years ago right right right no I'm looking at it wondering whether or not it's gonna have a makers name on it somewhere because really it's so well made it's this is rosewood is it rosewood Brazilian rosewood in South America right but just look at the decoration here if you look up here just catch that detail here this wonderful to load molding it doesn't really refer to Georgian furniture it's a straightforward Victorian good quality piece and the way these have you have you ever played with this and see the way these doors open yeah yeah more kids used to get into trouble quite regular it was that you but broken this one no I was waiting my brother he's not here he can't defend himself but it's so beautifully made and what I like about it it's typical of a style as one designer that comes to mind George Walton who's designing furniture in a sort of cottage Mackintosh our Nouveau way I'm not saying he designed this but this shape here another design OWA s Benson they're all sorts of different designs coming to a melting pot to make what is probably a commercial piece of furniture and they're often signed on the drawers but I suspect we're not going to find one today there often have a signature along here something like that what I really want to look at is the drawer in here you can see this very very unusual type of drawer construction which is really expensive to make like that so whoever made this was a top Factory in the first factor that comes to mind for me is Gil owes given kilos of Lancaster retailing also in London they really were a major maker at this time and started in 18th century and carried on making furniture of the very very best quality and whoever's done that has had the time and money to spend on this extraordinary complicated molding but when you look at it it's a mixture of stars isn't it we talked about the sort of the vaguely Scottish influence of these octagonal doors and then you've got a very French influence here this is typically the 15th from the mid 18th century and again the cabriole leg is lower the 15th again it's a really eclectic mixture have you any idea what it's worth today No now I was offering you could help us out alright wow that's what I'm here for but I think it's not worth a huge amount and I think they're undervalued because I can see it selling for only about a thousand pounds but we've got to try and find out the exact maker before you said it if you ever do I really helped a lot I love the children I love the feel of the scene yes kind of peace and tranquility I don't know whether you know it's mainly but he's actually signed here in rather a small hand here John burr and John bear was a Scottish artist and he trained in Scotland but then came South with his brother and then pretty well stayed south but still did pictures which I suppose would be associated with Scotland but I do think what is particularly struck me about is it is almost a painting of two parts I particularly like the broad way that the landscape and the cold fill is painted the way that these birds are rising up from the corn is a cottage and just the think of it on the top of the hillside there and then we have on the far right side here beautifully drawn the grasses and stumps of an old fence where's the figures to my mind well painted charming expressions a sweet sentiment about it all most part look at have they been staged Shep they've been to my mind slightly placed in the picture while I do find it slightly curious here in this picnic basket is what it is of normals postal yes it may be it was ginger beer or something like there but it does make one think possible it might be something else there too and I think it's been good that it has been kept under glass because in a way it hasn't just saved it from the dirt which can be cleaned off but quite often restorers do more damage and actually all certainly used to to do more damage and taking off old varnish and renewing it and so it hasn't probably been cleaned too much and then value-wise something like five or six thousand pounds really why is that somewhat of a surprise the idea of having a Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds evolved in the early 90s and the Queen finally opened it in 1996 to bless the site a Japanese Archer loosed a longbow without any arrows into the four compass points of the building ostensibly to exercise any demons that might still be lurking here one that he missed was Bill Harriman whose devilishly well-informed on all things military bill what lights your fire about this place Michael the whole place lights my fire because for the first time our national collection of arms and armor has its own purpose-built Museum and it's not just looking at things in glass cases there's so much that the visitor can get involved with their film shows interactive media and you see some wonderfully evocative images here from men in steel to machine guns I think that I like the best is the wonderful flintlock rifle made by Simpson of York in about 17 38 which is just a beautiful example of English Rococo craftsmanship and worth something like about a quarter of a million pounds you sign me up Oh [Music] two happy boys with their favorite guns now this is not a beautiful thing but it was mine own from 1951 to 53 the old Lee Enfield 303 I was a national servicemen and it served me well what's yours well this wasn't my national service firearm you'll be pleased to know it's a Brown Bess musket which was the British soldiers firearm from about seventeen fifteen to eighteen forty-eight or there abouts I liked it so much that in 1975 I'm blew my first University grant on one rather than pay my tuition fees and it defined the character of the British infantry throughout all of the important periods the Wars of Spanish Succession Jacobite rebellion the Seven Years War and also the Napoleonic Wars it's my favorite because it really defined the character of the British infantry during that period these terrible volleys of musketry that they put down that just shattered all of Britain's enemies my story wasn't all glorious because when King Djoser six died in 1952 lots of us squaddies had to go and line the route of the funeral procession in London in Green Park which we did now to reverse the rifles onto the turbo boot weren't supposed to look but we did Pete and the rifle slipped off on clattered to the ground and all around at the murmurs of water power and were you long in the guardroom whatever too many of us doing we'd all be in prison for the rest of our lives so are they good guns these that the lien fields in my opinion is the best bolt-action battle rifle ever made it's a very big magazine capacity ten shots and it's bolt is very very quick to operate and then skilled hands it's effective at ranges well up to about 500 meters well it's nice to see an old friend again you served me well and you'll remember me of courses that watching for 71 [Music] so this looks like a bit of nut nut where'd you get it from well it came from my deceased parents and it came from them with my grand from my grandparents I'd remember it as a child it was an ornament other than that no idea well it's difficult into typical bitter sailors were the Sailor would be coming back from the South Seas and he'd bring a coconut with him he picked up off the beach strip all the Koya off the outside of the coconut and reveal the hard nut you can hear in the side it still got the remnants of the dried out not which is which is fun made little hole to get the juice out and these carved it up but what I love about it is it's carved out firstly with the Lord's Prayer you can read it it's done in in proper script and carved in relief then you revolve it and sure enough there's the image of the vessel the Calend from Greenwich and in the middle a little shamrock which is a nice little feature and then we go around the corner and there's this sentimental inscription interlaced hearts Jewish inscription relating to mother so you love your mother and instead of having to Petra to Don your arm I love my mom you've written it on your nut and you've sort of scratched it in like this is very artistic where this sort of thing gets popular today is in a specific type of sale relating to a marine member of nautical sails and sometimes you could shell work sometimes you get scrimshaw where it's slashed into phone and all the rest of it well this is really a form of screen short but very elaborate and sophisticated so that's the sort of auction that it would go into but if you had to put an auction estimate on it I think I'd put three to five hundred pounds four to six hundred plans something like that I'm wait and see what happens great you've got the spigot that's usually the bit that gets lost and there it goes and we've got one wonderful water filter do you use it I personally don't but it was actually used by my mother in a village called Malta near new market when her only source of drinking water was off the roof and so this was all the drinking water went through this in early 30s late twenties a stroke well that's interesting you think I'm in the 19th century clean running water was something that they had to manufacture now this factory in particular the doulton factory is famous for its association with sanitary wares and with sanitation in general they produced the pipes for London drainage and they also produce these water filters now there you have the very very heavy lid and inside you've got the carbon filter through which the water eventually feeds into the lower reservoir and then out it comes of the spigot at the bottom now Dalton had a foot in each camp here we are up in the Potteries Staffordshire where majority pottery was made in the British Isles but of course Dalton started off in London and lambu and this piece was made in Lambeth it wasn't made up here yes they did have a bridgehead off at Burslem just a few miles up the road but here from from London it went to what Newmarket or there abouts yes and still in use in the nineteen what twenties yes yeah well I mean you go to a supermarket today and you buy water filters basically they are the descendants of these well today in a Sarah met will probably fetch in the region of 150 to 250 pounds over 30 years ago I bought a house and content yes and this was one of the contents and was it a big country households in a small house the gentleman who unfortunately died is how I came to he did collect from country houses he was a collector and a restorer and it was a friend of the family so he would have probably picked it up maybe it's a country house auction or something like that nature well that makes a lot of sense although it's only a store it's a very grand sort on a much bigger scale than some and to me it gives the impression that it may have been part of a much larger suite of furniture sometime or rather now it's actually in the sort of state the people who collect furniture love to see things first of all but the design is the thing which really strikes me it's very elegant very much in the taste of the gorge to the fourth period so what is known as the Regency period or it was probably dates from the time in the 1820s when the Prince Regent had become George the fourth it's got absolutely gorgeous white and gold decoration and what is most unusual is that the decoration I suspect has never been redone so although it's very dirty and you can see on the higher surfaces where the gilding is worn and where the dirt is really interfered in the effect it could all be cleaned and I think one would end up with a very genuine surface but it's a very very bold design and interestingly it corresponds very closely with a design which was published in 1826 by someone who claimed to be a cabinet maker whose name was George Smith he published two books he published a book of designs in 1808 and the second volume in 1826 and this store is almost straight out of that design now George Smith claimed to be a cabinet maker but no furniture by him has ever come to light so this is most likely made by another very proficient I'm sure London cabinet maker but after that design you've had a little bit of restoration on it in one place that I know some ticularly and that's here where there's obviously been some damage and that's been replaced and there's no great problem in getting that foot right in terms of value even in this state I would say that you should insure it for four and a half to five thousand pounds it's a very very good piece of Regency there's a condition even in this condition and if it were to be restored it might be worth bit more but it would need to be very gently restored if it was over restored it would almost reduce its value but it's in a state which is perfect to be improved it's a gorgeous thing the museum offers what it calls live interpretation where performers in full costume bring history to life in the most graphic way Wow well how long could they keep that up as I say wonderful wasn't it probably for not very long because the armor was very heavyweight about sort of 40 kilos which when you think about it is like having a small person on your bank yet surprisingly very much less than you would expect to find in the knapsack and the equipment of a world war two infantryman and everything that they've used there are exact replicas of that which would have been really used for that sort of fighting so this sword is is an original hundreds of years old which is why it cost way of wearing gloves yes it's a beautiful late 15th century double handed fighting sort of the sort that would have been used in that sort of combat and we have to wear gloves to protect it's polished steel surface because our hands exude all kinds of acids and they will actually etch the blade and ruin this wonderful polished surface on this better than the blade itching yourself upon me yes indeed anyway the gloves and it's quite heavy when I've seen the movies it's always a very highly choreographed all this fighting were they're very strict rules yes paternal fighting they were very strict rules and they were agreed and sorted out first and then they were enforced very stringently by the marshal in charge of the tournament and they were there to make sure that the participants who were there to impress the crowd and the ladies and to show off their chivalry prowess could get in there and have a good scrap and wherever possible to make sure that the risk of someone actually being killed was minimized there were rules there also rule changes result of one of those sets of rule changes was this wonderful armor made for King Henry the eighth Henry the eighth now this isn't what I'd expect at all I mean that's a tall slim man's armor isn't it well in his youth he wasn't a fat old chap he was a very tall lithe athletic man who loved and excelled in every kind of sport and this armor would have been made for him absolutely custom made and it would have been as he was at the time when it was ordered a revelation so what was this armor made for it was originally made for foot combat fighting in the lists and in 15-20 specifically for the field of cloth of gold which was this great diplomatic Summits between Henry the eighth and Francis the first of France and it was a wonderful event tremendous amount of pageantry of razzmatazz let's call the field of cloth of gold because their tents were actually made of cloth of bill which was top end of the social fabric so to speak talking of social fabric what is the technical term for this particular item of menswear well in the in the vulgar term it's known as a codpiece but we arms and armor historians have a Pasha word for it which is a bread which comes from a French word bray which means under buns and is that king-sized or what we're most definitely in this case king size if you look at the rest of the armor you can see that it's beautifully articulated you think how complicated the human body is with all those joints this allows somebody who is inside that to do everything that he could without it and the innovation comes from the top part here these are known as the pauldrons and the pieces the plates that they're made from articulate upwards rather than downwards which was the law at the time so this was absolutely the cutting edge of armor making we spoke technology at the time I would never get into one but it's a work of art my late mother-in-law gave me it about five years ago she said she'd actually bought it and didn't care House Hotel in the early sixties but arrestin Brewer in 1864 I understand because the the actual data's on the right we've got the inscription here for tenebra and also the date 11th September 1868 a painting of this title or of this subject was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh in 1869 Wallace who Payton was one of the first Scottish artists to paint out of doors yes and what this is likely to be I think is is basically a watercolor sketch albeit in the medical treatable form of a painting that would have been exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy yes presumably this is one of the sea lochs of the first applied and this wonderful assemblance of steam yacht sailing craft and fishing boats whether it's some regatta or whether as the York's are dressed overall yeah we've got there's sort of signal pennants there haven't they so there's a wonderful range of color but also I think what's interesting is just the remarkable detail in delicacy about the execution of the work no you choose any area of this composition and there's so much going on whether it's the sort of figures and it rowing boat here all the sort of activity in the shoreline there's a great deal of activity it's a beautiful watercolor it's in very nice condition I would expect this picture to sell for in the region of three to four thousand Pines at auction and for insurance purposes that set a bid finding at least five days my dad was first business about 14 years ago I am it was phoned at the back we shop in a bit of about to be my dad's a really really liked it so he going to and cleaned up and put my case and it's been our family ever since for some reason railway motoring doesn't really get into its stride oh until 1860 seventies eighties the last quarter century the early models that do exist tend to be engineering models to demonstrate a particular technique a particular technology what-have-you and they are extremely rare from this period so first of all how do we know the period well the most magical thing about this to me is on the steam dome here there is an inscription and it is an extraordinary thing which I will attempt to read it says by desire of the directors I have to summarize it what it says is by the desire the directors of the Edinburgh and Glasgow railway this locomotive was demonstrated in the board room at Queen Street Station in Glasgow in 18-49 to amuse the Prince of Wales on the occasion of the Queen Victoria and Albert first visit to Casca 1849 and it was made by some decor Peter Gow in Linlithgow the previous year so in 18-49 the Prince of Wales was assembled and it would have been perfect and you could imagine him coming with his parents to Glasgow thinking and the directors thinking what are we gonna do with his child I know we'll set up a toy train for him to look at it and this must have been running up and down in the board room in Queen Street the Queen Victoria and Albert sort of standing there nodding and the Prince of Wales getting very excited seeing a miniature train when you got it was it like this no it was very dirty and very austere my gosh was it colors yes it had bits of paint on it north along and what sort of colors were there if you remember he just the colors I have to say it's a pity you repaint and on you your father repainted it you can see the paintwork is quite if I say crude I'm not criticizing him but it's been brush drawing and that does affected which is a great pity because a collector is very concerned about authenticity originality and even chipped old paint I have to say is better than shiny new paint because of the story because of the Association because it is as I say the first royal toy train I'm gonna put 5,000 pounds Admiral Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington to Great British heroes and exciting pieces of porcelain what do you know about them didn't know anything about them in total 850 last night when we had a visitor to kitchen she knew that we were coming here on another presentation and asked if we would present those two to the portion sided exhibitions all right so you're different have any history of them yourself yes there's a bank learned of whose brother was in the Navy and was a subject in the Navy and I'd sort of pre nineteen hundred and that's about as much as I'd like so Tia enable background so I put a bit to collect a medallion of Nelson right what we have our portlet medallions made at Worcester and modeled by one of the great ceramic sculptures a man called Thomas Baxter Thomas Baxter had very close links himself with Nelson early on when he worked in London he was a miniaturist and he painted portraits of Emma Hamilton and and Nelson and had links he visited Nelson's home down at Merton and made a lot of pieces especially for Nelson and Emma Hamilton and this is slightly later in his career he came to Worcester we have on the back of these medallions the bay probably written patty mark and you've got there right barman bar royal porcelain works Worcester and tammas Baxter arrived in Worcester in 1840 he was a painter he was also a very talented modeler and had modeled Nelson earlier from life yes he's also here modelled Wellington and it's done at the time when Wellington was just getting really famous in 1814 and 1815 Thomas Baxter would have done the fuelling and that water is superb when you actually look closely at it and each little tiny jewel there is colored enamel paste raised up placed on top of gold and fired in the kiln and very superb ly evenly done all the way around and he also did the blue ground lay he did the whole lot and very few were made these are very rare there are a lot of collectors who would would love these so does your friend have an idea of their value no I do know that something like five years ago she did have them valued for about 500 pounds and Athiya I think to the right collectors who know Baxter's work and know Nelson and Wellington two great names lots of collectors I would have fought when there were four thousand pounds for the pair will appear there will be diving one of the things that they do so well at the Royal Armouries is these life-size and tableaus which are incredibly realistic the one that we have here is the Battle of jávea in 1525 fought between the French and the imperialist troops you can see the French Knights on their big armored horses not much different from some of the armors that we looked at earlier with Henry the 8th here we have the infantry the sort of gun-toting working classes armed with rudimentary early firearms that were capable of dealing with armor almost like anti-tank guns are today so the got guns but they're still using pikes that packs are very important it's the classic antique cavalry charge tactic by the Pikes actually hold the cavalry stop the maneuvering and the guns are used to kill the individual right as the armor piercing the same principle was used at a zinc ore but the difference here is that these men with guns could be trained very quickly you could get any old peasant off the field put an arquebus in his hand give him a day a few days training and he would be potentially effective a difference with a long Bowman was that he had to train from a very early age and he had to be a big fit chap but the principles are both there so what we're seeing here is the end of medieval warfare and the new techniques coming in yes and those new techniques I'm going to show you now and how far does this get us well Michael it takes us on about 125 years from the Battle of Pavia and it's known as a hawk reverse armor armor but it's not much of that inside there's there and that Yellow Jacket must have been a bit of a target it was actually more armor in it than first meets the eye obviously on the top of his head he's got a thick steel helmet known as a hawk or is a spot and then his main body protection comes from this very thick leather jerkin known as a buff coat on one side he has a short farm or carbine now or how Kubus Slone which gives him his name and on the other side he has a sword slung from a baldric a baldric so what is a baldric a Baldrick's a belt a belt I always thought said smallest paintings in the world 20 would fit on a postage stamp Queen bys - and here they are what must be the smallest paintings in the world they are quite incredible tell me about them well they came into my possession about 20 years ago they were given to me by an elderly family friend in Folkestone she had them a number of years but I don't know their earlier history it says now you now you are satisfied mrs. Catchpole was it this mrs. Nash wasn't mrs. Catchpole you have now got my smallest and then he signs it again there that's quite incredible and then he goes on here and Majesty was first interested in stir Bert's work in 1923 when she accepted from him a miniature painting of the Cenotaph to hang on the walls of the Queen's doll's house and then presumably these are actually smaller than I think they must be yes because he actually states so in his little note and I think it's a very good idea to keep them under glass like this because you know one breath of wind and they're gone aren't they yes are they watercolors or warble two covers I mean I have to use a magnifying glass to to appreciate that it does say in me newspaper article that they were painted with the naked eye with no magnification at all yeah and that at times he used just a single hair as his paintbrush they must have had some telescopic sight I think and why would he want to do it that's the other well I think as less is more I'm data value these seeing as they're some in the Royal Collection and go to value these three at a thousand pounds I think there are an enormous piece of fun and there are always collectors around for this type of thing it was my grandfather's my grandfather brought to in the nineteen fifties yes my grandmother passed it on tonight well that's marble isn't it because what looks like a standard dining table reveals the solid oak blonde oak leaves and what we got underneath is this great little snooker table and I bet the children of loved it haven't they know five-year-olds on this table well cuz let's see it's built by mr. Riley of Accrington and solidly made Riley started making billiard tables around 1900 1899 to 1900 and this compact convertible dining table model was very popular they started making it in the 20s and do you know when this one was actually made did your grandfather buy it or we've got the brochure for 1951-52 which I've assumed is when he made the purchase yes well that would be about right so a long production run for Riley's with these things you convert it from a dining table by picking it up from below and it goes on these kind of cantilevered arms which is really clever it's a fan it's a fantastic object and in brilliant condition and you've got some accessories we've got the score board yeah yeah and a good box of balls and all the rest of it and at auction you're likely to get about 1,500 to 2,000 pounds that sort of price you should insure it for two and a half thousand pounds it was given to me by a elderly gentleman friend of the family and he just knew we died with me my daughter night-horses and so good I like it yes thank you very much and put it up on the share from that chat it ever since he's actually made in the early years of the 20th century by a chap called Louie de Menard who's a Frenchman obviously made of bronze with this wonderful sort of very nicely sort of worn patination and louis Damona was following in a very well established tradition which the French established in the middle of the nineteenth century of doing what we call an Amalia bronzes in other words they took the idea of the horse or any other animals and really sort of concentrated on on what the horse actually looked like and by the early 20th century which is when when this was done I think they really got it right I just like the way he's observed the whole thing of getting the leading rein stuck around the leg and then it comes all the way back here and there's a drape going over so in terms of actually how you observe a horse absolutely brilliant now if you were a betting lady and wanted to have money on the horses what would you think he'd romp home at in terms hopefully maybe 500 plan but you could probably add a nought to that yeah I think you could certainly add a nought to that I think we should be looking more on the region certainly from an insurance point of view of 5,000 pounds yeah I think he's wonderful well I was very struck by the way in which her white apron is framed by these colors and also the relationship between I think this is a maid and the little girl and they're both concentrating so hard on on their sewing and I think the little girl is probably saying something for a dog it just seemed a very loving relationship between the two women yes is amazing that you clicking like that brilliantly across that picture yes and up lighting the maid space and backlighting the little girl's head so that her profiles lost in shadow it really is a pretty picture it is it's lovely I fell in love with it that's why I bought it I mean it it was I felt the absolutely outstanding picture in this exhibition I went to but it was by no means the most expensive so it just seemed I had to have it that's interesting I think it is a Scottish painting so yeah yes definitely I'm James Carr Lawson born in Scotland but actually I think at a very young age his parents emigrated to Canada and he was taught art there and only returned to to to Europe later on in his life where he did become quite influential anyway I'm sorry I could come back to the money you want me to tell you how much I paid for it in 1980 yeah and I paid I couldn't remember with it it was less just less or just over a thousand pounds for it we struck me at the time as very large amount of money for me to be spending but I was just so struck by this painting so I bought it I think any amount of money for a painting is crashing quite a big leap it's like a diving board you know it's it's really a scary moment and you only really know years later when you're living with the picture that it was worth it new glad you'd spent oh yes I think now you've really got to be looking at about eight thousand pounds for this picture at least it's a painting thank you very much bill this is very cute what is it it's a out of a Christmas cracker no matter what it's a cracker in itself it's a Calibri and it's the smallest automatic pistol ever made but not deadly yes absolutely deadly and this brings us to the self defense gallery this is all about firearms for personal protection and people don't realize I think that many years ago people carried two firearms for personal protection completely routinely people like travelers pilgrims and particularly ladies they would have carried something like this little flintlock pistol here it's known to us today as a muff pistol because it was often carried by ladies in these big fur Murph's but it could have been carried in a handbag or any other convenient place and it's made in about 1820 in Sheffield and it's recently been acquired by the museum from a local option for about a thousand pounds so museum is always a little cut for new items yes it's by no means a static collection and they're always looking to acquire new items and recently they've obtained a pretty unremarkable English hammer gun but it was actually presented to John Brown by Queen Victoria and also the mountain pistols which I found at Buxton last year on the Rhode show they belonged to General John Jacob who was a statesman and soldier on the Northwest Frontier they've been lent to the museum so there's this constant acquisition to reinforce the display and also to create this wonderful research facility which is also about unraveling stories which is so dear to us on the roadshow [Music] the oriental galleries here at the Leeds armories are quite fascinating but a really glittering prize is Japanese armor given by the then Shogun's son to King James the first in 1613 the very first Japanese armor to be seen in Britain in the oriental gallery you'll find one of the museum's icons elephant Armour no less is very rare of course FL it's the only example of its kind in a public exhibition anywhere it weighs over 250 pounds plus the elephant imagine trying to stop that but that's where we have to stop I'm afraid so many thanks to the Royal Armouries Museum for their hospitality and to Bill Herriman for sharing his expertise until the next time keep your powder dry and from Leeds good bye [Music] they save lives but how are they trained follow the work of mountain rescue dog snakes tonight on BBC one at the Animal Hospital [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: UK VHS Archive

Views: 30,230

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

Keywords: Antiques Roadshow, Antiques Roadshow Series 25, Antiques Roadshow 2002, Rare Antiques, BBC, BBC 1, VHS, 50fps, Leeds

Id: k4y5GziHxu8

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 30 2018