Antiques Roadshow UK Season 43 - Episode 13 (Apr 25, 2021)

[Music] today the antics roger has come to a region famed for its gleaming lakes rugged coastline and for boasting the highest mountain in wales we're in north wales and we're here at the beautiful bodnant garden which lies at the foothills of snowdonia [Music] founded in 1874 this grade one listed horticultural paradise is cared for by the national trust with this grand avenues flower-filled terraces and dreamy forest glades there are beautiful vistas around every corner it takes a top team of gardeners to keep this 80 acre site looking spectacular all year round [Music] so i thought i'd pitch in on the lawnmower well i don't know if i'm making a very good job of this but it's certainly fun to drive just another 79 acres to go well okay we couldn't get it started i mean it is over 100 years old come on guys put your back into it but there's much more to bodnan than manicured lawns it's home to a staggering 50 000 varieties of plants what i want to find out is how did all these plants get here more of that later on but first of all let's see what unusual specimens our experts have turned up coming up it is just a little blue box but it has something very special written on the back probably the most curious thing are the mittens here so what we have is a great looking object with a really interesting story behind it very pleased to hear that it is a silent witness to history i find them very moving objects in this job you can wait a whole career to find something rare or you can come here today and see two at the same time the rats in china and in japan are harbingers of good fortune i have always had excellent taste [Music] well what an exquisite gown you've brought in for me today it's what's known as a robot francaise and it's a style that was very popular between about 1730 and 1780 and you really would be the lady of some wealth defaulted address like this at that time what can you tell me about it it was because to us earlier this year by a family friend and we'd known about it for years and so it was a lovely surprise when we had it and it had been worn by her mother in the 1890s to fantasy dress balls since then it had been packed away until it came to us gosh and are you a costume collector is that why it was left to you we are yes unfortunately yes we got a large collection do you have a background in fashion i trained as a dress designer and i worked for couturier ronald paterson in the early 60s oh right so i was well i was lucky i was well trained i was very very lucky yes so you can appreciate the construction of this yes um let's let's take a look at it i said they said what's called a robe alafronte a beautiful eau de nil color silk damask basically it comprises of an open robe over an underskirt which basically sort of illustrates the the huge volume of fabric that was used in making these things and that was very much like a sign of wealth and status and then we have seen the matching v-shape stomacher with it as well which again is a separate piece um and you have this lovely beautiful sort of ruffle trim on it which is very typical of you find on gowns of this period yes yes but another really nice uh detail of this is what's called a sackback gown and if you see the back here it's these box pleats which emanate from the the ruffles at the back of the neck which almost it's almost goes into a train at the back and some of these actually had very long trains on them as well what i would say about it is in remarkably nice condition they're very susceptible to light and rot yes silk dress yes this doesn't have any of that there's a very small amount of fading on it in places but essentially it's in excellent condition i think if it were at auction you're probably looking at some in the region of three to five thousand on it really that's a big surprise i think so simply because it is incredibly original um it's an excellent condition a rare survivor thank you this is a nice quality standard briar pipe carved my newly all over with place names loads of them and uh royal artillery insignia there and the dates 1940 to 1943. so where did you get this and what can you tell us about it well it was my father's and he was a prisoner of war in italy are those his initials those are his initials yes douglas george and then he went on to a prisoner war camp in germany stellar 4b where he carved that with a razor blade and it's a document of life through this conflict the the place names on here are amazingly carved so he was in the royal artillery was it was an engineer no no he was a uh surveyor he was an architect by a profession and a surveyor freetown was their first port of call coming down from down to durham and then up through the suez where was he captured to be in stellar he was captured at to brooke and then he was taken to an italian prisoner war camp and then i believe that was closed by the russians and then he was put in a cattle truck for 10 days with an injured leg and taken to the prisoner war camp in germany and this picture here well that's that's a self-portrait of him just a a very quick one what's this this book here with the photographs is it a diarrhea just a short diary really which started off from leaving liverpool with the convoys and then it goes right through africa and up into greece amazing so which one's him uh this is my father here all right on the troop ship going down towards freetown i should think hence the man yes he was very handsome these objects are amazing because long after the people that made them have gone they carry their message yeah and actually they're a symbol of the stoicism bravery and determination of these men and as such i find them very moving objects and i i find it very almost sacrilegious to to value something like that i'm sure because it's really a man's life and and also the hard part of his life yes but there are collectors that do want these things someone would easily pay a thousand pounds for it all oh well it's not going anywhere no i wouldn't but it's amazing that that was done with a razor blade yeah it's extraordinary there seems to be a little spot there waiting for a name yes did you notice that i did notice that yeah where are we expected to be going next yes yes no way would we ever sell them they're a family thing and they're very precious to us so after me it will go on to my son who exactly looks the image of his granddad i just can't stop looking at the carving on this chair where on earth did you find an oak chair like this my mum bought it from a gentleman called mr fletcher who'd been working in russia before the revolution mum bought it in i think about 1951. and in the time that you've known it have you found anything out about it we believe that it's a church chair and it's got an inscription on it that we have been given a translation whether it's right or not or don't know but it reads quieter you pray the further you get the quieter you pray the further you get well let's have a look at all these decorative components probably the most unusual part of it which is the legs and the back is this sort of ark and this relates to um part of a horse harness if you can picture in russia a sleigh being pulled by three horses a troika the central horse has an arc like this over it and that's called a duga so we're on the russian track so far this central element here i think is also meant to be sort of a leather horse harness yeah i'd never thought of that before and probably the next thing that jumps out rather alarmingly at these axes they're really curious aren't they a very symbolic part of toiling in the fields and working on the land in russia and probably the most curious thing are the mittens here we thought they were like a gauntlet and as children we used to just twizzle them round and play with them they're mittens and if you'd been from a wealthier class um you wouldn't be wearing mittens you'd be wearing gloves so all of these elements are very provincial and really things from the countryside that you know the working people of russia would have used while they were toiling the fields do you still think it's a church chair i'm not sure now no [Laughter] you probably were led down that route of thinking it might have been a church chair because i think you said the inscription was the quieter you pray the further you get the further you get in fact it's a well-known russian adage which is along those lines but slightly more generalized and that is that you will get further if you do things in a quiet way and so it could be applied to praying but can be applied to lots of other things too a chair just like this was made by a designer called vasily petrovich shutoff and it was made to be an exhibit in the 1870 all russia industrial and art exhibition and it was such a fashionable chair and style and design at the time that numerous copies were made and this is one such copy so it was probably made shortly after the 1870 exhibition that's fascinating if you were to put a chair like this into auction now it would probably fetch around four thousand or five thousand pounds it's not for sale no i'm going to give it to my daughter in my will yes i'm thrilled i just remember this i used to sit on it as a little girl and i remember i can physically see my feet because i'm too short to fit the floor dangling yes waiting to leave to go out the door i'm sat with all the coats so yes i love this chair it looks like it's got a great next home to go to it sometimes on the roadshow we see items that have been salvaged from the scene of a national tragedy like the sinking of the royal charter in 1859 off the coast of anglesey coming from melbourne and bound for liverpool the steam clipper went down with a loss of around 450 lives many of them gold miners bringing home their fortune made in the australian gold rush you've brought in two objects which on the surface look fairly ordinary can you tell me about them they're both from a wreck called the royal charter that crashed in in 1859 in a hurricane that actually hit the country this super ladle which is probably out of the first class dining room came out of the 1960s dives that were going on in the wreck and uh this one has come from metal detecting just along the coast because you're a detectorist aren't you not metal detectors the royal charter is returning from australia at the time of the australian gold rush um mine is returning the hold is carrying bullion and you've got miners who probably weren't starting with very much in life at all who are returning they've made their fortune they're going to start a new life in this country returning as rich men it's a ship of dreams and then this tragedy happens to it many of the miners actually had the gold around their belts which turned out to be their undoing because when the ship sunk they sank under the weight of their own gold so it's such a poignant story in so many ways all the women and children died it was a national tragedy yeah and it really moved the whole country of course we can't say for definite that this smaller spoon here has come from the royal charter now our ladle is a different story it's got the monogram for the company the liverpool and um australia it was the liverpool australian navigation company and of course it's important to remember that you must inform the authorities whenever you make historical fines like these fascinating things well let's start with the spoon like i say there's nothing that we can definitely tie it with the actual royal charter so for that reason i'm going to say 100 pounds for the spoon the ladle is a different kettle of fish with the connection i can easily see someone asking 300 pounds it is a silent witness to history yeah thank you thank you [Music] one person's nightmare is another person's dream which do you fall into it's my absolute dream i love it normally people don't like being in the presence of mice or in this case rats i just think it's so beautifully made and so intricate i mean i've loved it since i was a young child used to sit in my grandmother's house and just hold it this is a japanese wood box it is now rats in china and in japan are harbingers of good fortune can you think why it's a curious association in years of good harvest yes there are lots and lots of rats of course yes so they are an indicator that something has gone right it is a wonderful piece of carving the idea is that this is is modeled as a string drawn bag bursting at the sides so not only do we have rats emerging over the top but we have rats peeping out having eaten their way through the wall of this bag and this is the great thing inside the lid there they are again the thing that's unusual for me is is that it's sort of scooped what was it used for do you know it was always empty until i got it and now i put little things that i might lose in it okay all right and then underneath we have a signature there it is now i would have to look that up but the style of the signature and this whole style of the box is very much something that would date to around 1900 1910 oh really i think it's really gorgeous good okay what's it worth i think it could be a thousand pounder you're joking change a thousand pounds really i think i see it's a really really i have always had excellent taste oh that's absolutely wonderful but just don't let the rats get at it oh thank you so much i'm so thrilled [Music] bodnant garden receives around a quarter of a million visitors a year who come to enjoy the lush beauty and to be inspired by the vast range of plants gathered from all over the world in the late 19th and early 20th century the mclaren family who owned boardnut employed men to risk life and limb in the most far-flung parts of the world in search of new trees shrubs and flowers to bring back to britain they became known as plant hunters delving into the mclaren family archives our book specialist clive farahan is keen to show me some of these intrepid explorers first-hand accounts [Music] clive these plant hunters were the indiana jones of their time weren't they i suppose that's absolutely the case and of course the mclarens employed these plant hunters but we've got two letters here there's one i rather like here which is from a a chinese plant hunter to lord abba conway here january the 18th 1935. tali yunan which is on the burma tibetan border it is very dangerous to gather plants in the mountain now for the outlaw to be found everywhere would you kindly give me a pistol and some bullets to defense myself as i go on to gather you don't generally think of gardening or anything to do with it as being dangerous absolutely not and yet you get this one here which is another letter from kingdom ward who's a little later a dear mclaren the immediate purpose of this letter is to tell you that the rhododendron cinequeus grows here abundantly there should therefore be no mistake and no difficulty in getting the seed of it this autumn it's because many people think of the rhododendron as such a british plant but it's not at all is it they've come from from burma and the himalayas and all all over and of course the plants all around us here at bodna are descended from the plants that those those men of great intrepid daring to brought back all those years ago he looks so real you you have to stroke him to realize he's actually made of pottery of course so does he have a name it's called bob hello bob and how long has he been of the family pet i've never known life without him he lived with my grandparents he lived in the hallway right at the side of the door he was made in germany or the traditions go back to vienna in austria they used to make animals in blondes and painted them in realistic colors and the austrian bronzes were loved in britain but they were very expensive and potters in nearby germany felt we can make the same thing in terracotta which is just basic fired clay but painted to look just like the real dog what's what breed his body my mum always thought he was a fox terrier then she rushed out and bought a fox terrier because she liked him so much oh right so she had the real dog with him she did and what did her fox terrier make of bob not very much really indifferent too because they're usually damaged and it's always the family pet that's to blame cats and dogs seem to fight with them he's had a bit of damage over the years hasn't he his head got broken there's been a bit of damage and some glue there um and much earlier on i see he had a broken leg and that's been stitched together with old metal rivets and a little band i mean that's a charming old repair because that probably was broken by the family dog more than a hundred years ago it was made in the 1880s early 1890s yeah it was the period these dogs were popular i always wondered how old he was bob here has suffered a bit more damage than we'd like to see but it can be mended easily and for that reason he's still worth a thousand pounds really that's amazing is he saying considering that he really needs that he's he's really considerable damage i didn't think he'd be worth anything at all he's a survivor yes it's not every day on the antiques roadshow that we get a visit from a large elephant in a fluffy pink dressing gown and a one armed badger so how did these wonderful characters come to be yours well they've been in my life for the past 50 years when i was child my grandmother knew a lady called anna hume and i believe anna worked on giaconori and i had some of the storyboards in her house and said i could choose one and i liked the elephant i chose this one when i was 10. when you were 10 i know and had you been familiar with jack and ori yes i used to watch it every week of course i think like a lot of people sitting at home we all used to watch it that 15 minutes where a story was read by a famous person and then you had the illustrations in the background to bring the story alive i think it first started in the mid-1960s and the last jakanori was shown i think in 1996 and what i love about this picture is that these characters have been so beautifully brought to life by a very quick pen and ink and it is unmistakably quentin blake who is of course the nation's i think most favorite illustrator uh he's probably most famous now for his collaboration with roald dahl it wasn't until the um 2009 i decided to find out who actually had drawn it and a friend of mine thought it might be by quentin blake so i emailed his gallery and he wrote back to me he emailed me to say he had drawn this and it was about a very rich elephant called uncle it was called uncle do you know who the author was i believe j.p martin i've never read the books myself but the characters are quite funny as you can see this little cat called goodman so the picture's been executed in his trademark technique which is to use a pen with ink to outline all the characters and to give you the little bits of detail he's used watercolor just to bring out their features and to give a bit of pizzazz to their clothing what's really interesting to see is that even at this sort of earlier stage in his career his trademark style was there already have you got any idea what it's worth no if this was to come at auction today we'd put an estimate in the region of about two to three thousand pounds wow is that surprising for you look i said it wasn't signed by quentin blake yes it does but wow thank you very much no it's definitely why quentin blake and it's such a cool image i love that it's by quentin blake and this is well before he became famous so it really does give you an insight into what he was up to back in the 60s and 70s it's such a great thing i'm so thrilled to have seen it so you brought along this wonderful hoya wristwatch now hoya were synonymous with motorsport formula one in the 60s and the 70s you see the drivers with the hoya in badge on their overalls they'd sponsor the stopwatches and the lap timers and everything else do you have an interest in motor sports well i'm not into motor racing but it's something that i like the look of when i saw it in a friend's jewellers in the middle 60s so i purchased it well i can see why you were drawn to it it's a very attractive watch it's got a great color combination with the rotating hour marker bezel you've got the black dial you've got these very fine sort of loom hands with these batten markers it's very much of its period and it's the hoya ortavia now this particular model is now known as the mario andretti model because he is a very famous formula one indy 500 racer but you can actually find photographs of him wearing this model of watch so the most important thing for collectors nowadays is condition original condition is vital so to know that the the dial hasn't been restored or replaced the bezel is the original in the 90s and even early 2000s we were restoring watches and making them look like new sometimes but what's really important to collectors nowadays is that nothing's been done and this is a lovely example when you bought it do you remember how much you paid for it round about 28 30 pounds i would have been a couple of weeks wages for me at the time so a good investment oh yes i was hoping so a good pre-sale auction valuation would be around seven to ten thousand pounds right yeah very nice it's a very handsome watch very wearable watch i really like it thanks very much when i started on the antiques road show i definitely have a contract that says arms and military and it doesn't have anything in it about silver boxes because there are many more people on this show that know so much more about this and then we looked at it a bit more and you're going to tell me this wonderful story about this little box now well the box belonged to my great uncle who had a career in the civil service and he was deputy cabinet secretary in sir winston churchill's war cabinet and suddenly it made sense you said the word winston churchill now it is just a little blue box it is but it has something very special written on the back and when you turn it over it says this box was in constant use by sir winston churchill on his dining table for toothpicks i love that bit that's superb it was given to lord normanbrook by lady churchill in 1965 in memory of happy days with them both and suddenly that is just fantastic isn't it now we have this let up now this letter is from clementine spencer churchill obviously churchill's wife and it is presenting the box to your relative so who was lord norman brooke well uncle norman was one of uh so winston's advisors they as families became quite close and he was one of the 12 poll bearers at sir winston's state funeral wow so it's really quite a little historic piece really isn't it yes it has great great provenance and a great story it doesn't have any toothpicks in it anymore did he actually have something in it when it used to have toothpicks quill toothpicks in it yes wow as a box 120 pounds for the box something around about that sort of mark however with that beautiful inscription on the back and such a wonderful piece of provenance i do keep saying about things like this they have to have the story written down and not only have you got it written down but you've got it written down by clementine herself so that's absolutely fantastic probably an auction that would make somewhere between two and a half and three thousand pounds very nice which is not bad for a toothpick box not bad at all it's another one of those moments on the roadshow where you get to hold something you get to hold in your hand something that belongs to someone so famous that all of the world knows about sir winston churchill and there you are holding something so simple a toothpick box there again you see it's that link back with the past and with that person what what other job can you have that lets you do that well it's been handed down from my father-in-law to my husband and we think it was given in lieu of a debt for pies a depth of pies yeah my father-in-law um had a butcher's and a pie shop so i'm a man who likes both firearms and pies so it's my ideal food yes it's known as a gizelle a gizelle i think the gun is probably 1870s 1880s it could come from pakistan or afghanistan and if you look there's lots of little decorative details i like the love part on the other side you would expect to pay no more than about 350 pounds for it right how many pies how many pies how many pies will you take for this [Music] it's been in my family since certainly the early 60s at first glance it looks like a spoon but as you know if you flip it over you've got the fork in the back and the spoon comes off and the real feature of this piece is that it folds so that you can put it in your pocket take it to dinner and bring out your silver cutlery and in the finial here is a toothpick as well hidden inside it is in fact a 19th century copy of a 17th century spoon at auction today it's going to be in the region of 120 to 180 pounds if it was 17th century you'd be looking more at 1500 possibly even a little bit more maybe 2 000 times [Music] this is a wonderfully visual object isn't it but it's also an object with a really good story behind it but before i go into the story i'm going to ask you how you come to have this figure it's been in our family for three or four generations and it was in a family home in south london stood outside the back door right my great grandfather used to give it a coat of paint every year right and my grand brother was a thames lighterman and he when my family moved to lancaster had it sent by carriage wrapped up in hessian sacking it's interesting because you meant mentioned thames lighterman there as well have you uh thought that that this was perhaps a ship's figurehead that is what we've always known it else yes right okay well listen i'm going to come back to that again in a minute okay and essentially what we have is a piece of folk art this character is a gentleman called paul pry now he's a character that probably modern audiences will know nothing about but in the early 19th century this character was a very well known character indeed around about 1825 a play was written called paul pry by a gentleman called john paul and he was a meddlesome kind of character whose whole presence really really revolved around the idea that he would leave his umbrella somewhere and he would always go back for it and he did this on purpose so that he could be nosy and he could find out what was going on it was his raison d'etre for being involved in things the later 1820s 30s and even into the 1840s many public houses named after him ships also carried figureheads of him now i've been thinking about this one and there are certain things about it that say to me that this possibly isn't a ship's figurehead and for instance this his umbrella just lifts straight out and that just wouldn't work would it seem and yet it's absolutely central as part of his character so that kind of points me in another direction all right he may in fact be a a sign an emblem basically perhaps from a public house as i mentioned earlier to me that makes more sense yeah so essentially what we're looking at is a carved figure probably carved of elm from the 1830 to 40 period his detail is good and we're looking at something that really essentially is 200 years old yes yeah have you ever thought about the value of it no not really but i would like if tiffany was worth something i think he's easily at auction worth between three and five thousand pounds wow amazing so what we have is a great looking object with a really interesting story behind it lovely thank you very much that's been very enlightening you often hear people say today we live in a world that is you know driven by celebrity culture like it's something new and like everything it's not new these are pieces of memorabilia from celebrities from almost 200 years ago who are they well these are the ladies of flan gotham lady elena butler and miss sarah ponsonby who escaped from ireland in the late 18th century to live together and they found a place in wales which became their haven yes i mean they were two irish aristocratic ladies who had fallen in love with one another and they decided to elope they were dressed in in men's clothing they had their dog and their housekeeper with them uh their pistols in their their belts and they ran away they were found in a barn in wexford because the dog was barking dragged back home one of them was threatened with the convent and miraculously for the time this is the end of the 18th century they persuaded their family to let them be and their family said as long as you leave ireland take the shame away i suppose yes and then it was of course it makes sense because there was a ferry from wexford to wales yes and part of them wanted to be alone but then they also like to receive visitors and everybody who was anybody charles darwin the duke of wellington to wordsworth all of the luminaries of the day visited them they were fascinated and i think i admired because this was two women in the late 18th early 19th century who lived as though they were married so they were celebrated for that and even when you look at the pieces of ceramics in the front from about 1900 70 years after they died they were still famous and that is a power which you can equate to marilyn monroe elvis today yes so what's your fascination because i think you are fascinated by them i am fascinated by the ladies i was born in sangot and went to school there and the town is very proud of the ladies and the tourism that is brought to the town especially when the railway came to vangothen i suppose we should maybe look at the value i mean the original version of this print is very rare that's about 50 pounds okay uh the plate it's a piece of welsh poultry it has them on 100 pound gosh uh the figures 80 to 100 pounds the little mugs maybe 50 pounds yes and then this is a copy of the print and then the the photograph of the house around 1900 those two together 40 to 50 pounds but i don't think it really matters no it doesn't um and i think we should maybe leave the last words to wordsworth so wordsworth said sisters in love a love allowed to climb even on this earth above the reach of time and i think that sums up nicely i think so too thank you the ladies of clangothlon pushed at the boundaries of 18th century society and they weren't the only strong-minded women to live in north wales laura mclaren inherited the bodnand estate in 1895 but was also a leading suffragette for over 50 years she fought for women's right to vote she made speeches attended rallies founded the liberal women's suffrage union and finally saw the first women get the vote in 1918. [Music] well in this job you can wait a whole career to find something that's rare or that you've not seen before or you can come here today and see two at exactly the same time and here we have these two fantastic models but before we say more about them i just want to know your stories mine which is this one actually came from my husband's auntie and she worked at wedgewoods from the 1940s through to the 80s and whoever made it she was talking to them saw that on the windowsill and said oh that's beautiful and he said you can have it because it's got a crack around the base how lovely and your story the same sort of thing my granddad worked for wedgewood who was the former mole maker there that tiger was made there was about seven made and the mold was broken and they were given to various people that he had a good relationship with helped him do either of you know let me ask do you know who actually made these tigers no except on the underside of ours it has got an inscription well let's pick it up and have a look at that inscription and we've got to roy and mary do those names mean anything to you no okay but it says here from colin 1947 and let's just pick yours up and if we see underneath here you more simply just have melbourne 1947. well let's just put those two names together colin melbourne and that means colin melbourne the designer the ceramicist in 1944 he actually gained an apprenticeship to become an assistant modeler at wedgwood he's a young man by the time these are made he's 19 years old yet at 19 years old this is what he's creating i'm aware of them but i've never seen one looking at yours you mention the fact he's damaged and if we look back underneath we have this great crack here now that is what we call a firing crack and if we stun them again face to face you can see your head has sunk down the head of the tiger's dropped yours it's all okay but that to me shows an inherent fault in the mold and that again is fine it's technical know-how it's a young man learning his skill so when we consider the numbers you mentioned that you thought there may have been only seven or eight well there is one in the museum collection i'm aware of another that was sold at auction a few years ago that makes two three four i've never seen any others but it's a very interesting piece and it's something very very exciting for wedgewood collectors and colin melbourne collectors so yours is to all intents and purposes perfect so because of that i'm going to value yours somewhere in the region of a thousand pounds yours despite those issues i think we're still looking in the region 800 to a thousand pounds wow yeah so while you two ladies own these figures independently they come together to show the start of a career of a designer who went on to such fantastic things so thank you very much thank you thank [Music] you so we've got three really pretty pieces of jewelry here how did they come into your collection they're ones that i've inherited the necklace and the ringer from my grandmother and and the brooch is from my godmother oh how lovely i really want to wear the ring but it's just too big for me so i need to get it altered so it fits me okay so is that your favorite piece then the ring i think so yeah well they're all very different periods we've got a fabulous cultured pearl necklace here which is graduating so the pearls are larger at the front and then go to the smaller ones at the back very fashionable piece of jewelry during the 1950s and 60s and so they they do look beautiful a fabulous color some are slightly creamy some are a bit whiter but all have got that beautiful lustre or shine as we call it so they've obviously been kept very well and perhaps a sign that you haven't really been wearing them at all no and then we've got of course the tiffany and co brooch which again is is really pretty 1960s period tiffany and co of course are very important jewelers then of course you've got your sapphire and diamond clustering very pretty date wise 1915 to 1920 we're just coming out of the edwardian period which was very light and delicate and all to do with diamonds and pearls and then we're beginning to move towards the art deco period which is all to do with much bolder shapes contrasts of colors so again all in keeping with the periods which do you think is the most collectible now i think the name tiffany is popular isn't it so i would have thought that's probably the most collectible you are absolutely right at the moment named signed pieces of jewelry are what people are really interested in at auction but they are also interested in lovely rings like the sapphire and diamond one as well so the pearl necklace is perhaps the one that might struggle a little bit more at auction but there's one thing that's going for it the clasp is by mapping and web and again a really good jewelers yeah so as far as values are concerned at auction the sapphire and diamond ring we'd be looking at four to six hundred pounds for that but it's a really good look for a reasonable estimate for the pearl necklace we'd be looking at between six and eight hundred pounds and then the tiffany and co brooch in today's market would be looking at around about 800 to a thousand pounds because the quality of the stones the beautiful pearls and also the name yeah so lovely collection of jewellery thank you very much for bringing them along lovely thank you it's a pear case watch in gold you've got this beautiful rapuse design they actually form the pattern from the inside so they use various punches and designs and quite skilled work to punch it out but on the back is when the watch really comes alive you've got this wonderful scene of what appears to be a courting couple and then someone's just been hiding eavesdropping around the back which is quite fun considering the watch was 1730s it's in immaculate condition it hasn't been used if it was to come up in auction it would be 900 to a thousand really a friend of the family had been in the army during the second world war as a signaler and he had given it to my father when he was d mobbed beautifully we have provenance now your signaller was a guy called corporal vincent smith the knife and scabbard were taken by him in his glider to arnhem and we've all seen the film a bridge too far and we know that they dropped onto the bridge at arnhem too far away that to fight their way towards the bridge and then hold off all of those german attacks for 10 days and this was there a humble little boy scout knife somewhere between 250 and 300 pounds [Music] in 1879 just five years after work had started developing the gardens here at bodine another part of north wales was being transformed but it was to prove very controversial to supply the city of liverpool with fresh water it was decided to flood the head of the vernary valley to create a reservoir in the process the entire village of clan within was submerged lisa lloyd heard from a descendant of one of the villagers forced to leave their home well what an amazing volume you've brought in here as it says on the front liverpool corporation waterworks session 1880 but this is a real welsh story isn't it what can you tell me about it it was bought by my grandmother along with a number of other books from the briganton hall library or when that was been broken up that was the library of lord harlech and i know there was a very big sale in the 1950s basically to pay death duties she bought it because we had relatives who were actually living prior to the dam being flooded in the village so her family were originally from the lost village yeah i think it was my great great grandparents actually lived on the farm which is now believe underwater the liverpool corporation of course had been looking for a site for many years where they could build a reservoir to enable the city of liverpool which at the time was growing enormously and you know they had all sorts of health problems because it needed clean water and of course the source of that water was to come from wales which um did mean at the time of course is that they flooded a whole valley and displaced about 450 people i believe and even though this was in the 1880s this is still something that is almost fresh in some family's minds am i right to say that yes i i agree i think you know the displacement and the complete loss of a village even back then was a dreadful thing but obviously it was for the good of the people of liverpool so if we look at the frontiers piece it explains exactly what it is so as the liverpool corporation waterworks plans and sections the intended new works and this is basically is all the plans and diagrams which were presented to lord harlief presumably he was one of the landowners whose land was used for the project um because at the time he owned a large portion of north wales and if we turn over to the next page it actually shows um this engraving which is then hand colored so it's the parish of asanovin and all the farmsteads and the village that was actually flooded as i understand it it took nearly a year to fill the reservoir it is so vast and of course the lake now is an rspb site it's a nature reserve and you can go boat in and water skiing and so forth on the lake so it has become a little bit of a tourist attraction for the area but it's amazing to think that even you know 100 and nearly 140 years later it's still something that's quite fresh in the memories of a lot of people for that part of wales very much so although i do recognize it as an engineering feed and it was one of the biggest engineering projects that had ever been undertaken even in europe at the time probably if it were to come up for auction you're probably looking at somewhere in the region of three to five hundred pounds okay that's a lot more than i thought actually thank you so much for bringing it along thank you appreciate it whether happy or sad or feeling a little bit under the weather we all know children are comforted by their favorite toy and this pastel on paper depicts a very sweet little girl holding on to her favorite doll and it's almost she's a little bit listless she's convalescing can you tell me a little bit of your family history behind it well i've known the painting since i was a child and it hung in the apartment of my father's cousin and her american husband edward clark streeter he'd inherited it from his father edward clark streeter senior who was a medical historian and i believe had bought the painting in paris so tell me a little bit more about streeter senior he was a medical historian yes from new york and they had an apartment in paris from 1921 for several years if i look at the signature i can decipher the pas which is short for pascal and then it signed dania which is pascal dania bouvere a parisian artist and he was known as one of the great naturalist artists very very good painter it has been through the wars a little bit there are tears which are actually very difficult to restore properly but i think the whole picture is rather divine and now we're coming to value i certainly think even with the damage four to six thousand pounds it's a really lovely picture and without the damage probably six to eight thousand pounds well very pleased to hear that and i'd really love to keep the painting well here we are in a welsh landscape with a huge chinese landscape on this desk tell me about the history of this uh well i inherited it from my father and he was given it at work he was in the 1950s made a director of the company and he announced that he wanted a new desk his boss offered him an old desk from home which my father wasn't very pleased about but he said well if you don't like it throw it away and this is the desk that turned up i was told it was the canadian ambassador to china's desk and my father's boss bought it in 1945 for a hundred pounds a hundred pounds in 1945 that's quite a lot of money yes this strikes me as being a piece of the late 1920s 1930s it's not our deco but it has that sort of proportion here's the clincher the hairdos are quite sort of balloon shaped and again that to me in chinese porcelain certainly that denotes 1920s 30s right these scenes could be lifted straight out of the uh the famous willowpat norm on english pottery um what they oh look at this this this eye is that's fiendish the keyhole actually is concealed within this little panel of sliding pine tree and then below here we've got these guardian figures there are two at the front and two on the other side and they are standing with hands clasped holding a tablet this is something which any official or ambassador coming into the presence of the emperor was required to hold which supposedly ensured that he wasn't about to assassinate the emperor because his hands were too busy with this tablet but they're rather nice these i would certainly put the carving style as southern chinese so do you use it i use it every day you do yes not the chair there's no lumber support on the chair the chair is a bit of a beast isn't it you need a cushion on the back as well but it matches in all respects do you like it i love it i've loved it since a child good good excellent and it's useful because you can sit two people at it can't you the drawers come out the side and they come up the other side it's almost a partner's desk almost yes yes the question when you're valuing something is who is likely to buy it i can see that the chinese diaspora would be interested in a piece like this i can easily sit making between a thousand and two thousand pounds easily yeah and i'm i'm including the chair in in that valuation thank you very much it's opened my eyes to it because i've been sitting in front of my desk all this time and not really looking closely at it the silver lining to finding the valuation is that my wife's not going to divorce me when i refuse to sell it for a fortune usually on the roadshow people just turn up with their items out of the blue but this year we've been in touch with our visitors beforehand including someone with an intriguing literary artifact that's wet the appetite of our book specialist clive farahar well i have an idea that there's a letter coming in from one of the great authors of the 20th century and here's a hint it's got runes in it linguists amongst you will know runes were part of an ancient alphabet that fell out of use hundreds of years ago but they also inspired one of britain's best loved fantasy authors when i first saw this letter i recognized the handwriting and so i think would probably thousands of other people anybody who's actually read the hobbit and had a look at the end papers the handwriting is exactly the same it's a tolkien letter and it's addressed to dear charles which is yourself it is and um i want to know how you got it i got it as a reply to a letter i sent to professor tolkien when i was 14 yes having read the hobbit and translated the roon words in the cover i wrote to him in room letters and this is a reply he sent to me this wonderful handwriting we've got a copy of the hobbit here the map that he drew this is all in his handwriting isn't it it is and it is what i was delighted to see when i saw the letter that the writing on the map is not conjured up especially for the book no it wasn't done but it wasn't done by an illustrator or anything like that it was done by tolkien himself it was anyway let's get down to the letter he writes dear charles thank you for your letter i'm glad to hear that you enjoyed the ring books so you've read the lord of the ring as well yes after the hobbit it's rather a difficult read isn't it well it's certainly not as as easy a ride as the hobbit is no absolutely your runic letter was correct and readable but the runes used in the hobbit are not my invention just as the language of the time was turned into english so were the ruins of the day absolutely lovely so he goes on and it's on the other side as well this gorgeous gorgeous lettering of course the runes were properly used to spell by sound and they do not fit modern english very well and then he signs it as possibly only gandalf could have signed really this side j.r.r tolkien here with the most lovely lovely letter it really is quite extraordinary may the 3rd 1957. and you've got the original envelope yeah you didn't throw that away oh no oh no tell the sample 14 in a letter from tolkien i wasn't throwing anything away and tolkien died in the 70s 1970s and he's still never out of print and he's incredibly popular well now we have to come to price he did write a lot to his fans but to find a letter like this which is completely handwritten and with this wonderful wonderful signature and to explain the runes too is incredible so i think it is the top of tolkien debtors it's extremely good it's worth about ten thousand pounds good lord i'm astonished next question what are you going to do now i regard it as a family treasure since it's addressed to me and has my name on it i would not dream literally of selling it it's a sort of my precious oh very much so yeah well we've had all kinds of welsh weather here at boden that's for sure but despite that we found wonderful finds as per usual and look the roses have managed to withstand the rain as have we from barden gardens until next time bye-bye [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: Antiques Roadshow 2021

Views: 39,713

Rating: 4.8490567 out of 5

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Id: PywzP4Vf1iU

Length: 59min 47sec (3587 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 25 2021