Appraisals: Comedian Jay Leno | Celebrity Edition, Hour 1 | ANTIQUES ROADSHOW | PBS

right now we're headed north to newport rhode island and a 16 000 square foot estate the vacation home of comedy legend jay leno well we're in newport rhode island this is a house called seafair the name was here when i got here and i kept the name i'm not one of those and i deem it seafarer we live in los angeles i was born in new rochelle new york about eight and a half nine years old we moved to andover massachusetts we had a great life i mean my dad was a prize fighter as a young man and he became a salesman because he said being a prize fighter even on his best day at work he still got punched in the face i went to emerson college in boston i got into comedy and it was a good place to break in and sort of learn your craft excuse me can i have the key to the washroom yeah it is done this big ring and don't try to steal it hey thank you very much [Applause] jay not only learned his craft some would say he perfected it leno the pelican faced comedian eventually earning himself a lucrative gig hosting nbc's tonight show for 22 seasons and the type of success that gets somebody a house like this i got this home about uh four years ago my wife and i were driving past it and my wife said look at that house that's unbelievable that's the greatest house i've ever seen i thought you like it you want it she goes no we live in california i said i don't know let's go see her i mean how often do you get your girl a castle you know it's the main entrance although the house was built in 1936 it seems much older it seems like a house from the early 1900s this painting was here i bought the house fully furnished and it was already here and you can't even see the numbers where the colors went you know so that's always a good sign you bought a good painting when you can't see the numbers for the different colors so i walked in i walked around and i said can you get the owner on the phone and i said would you sell it as is with all the furniture in it and just you know salt and the salt shaker and this ketchup in the refrigerator that's all i need i go sure so we came up with the price and i bought it nice fireplace little elephants and knickknacks and all kinds of things in here it's all nicely done it's not stuff i would probably buy i would have like motorcycle engines and everything like that in the house so i i'm not sure what goes with where with which one i i don't know that's why the appraiser is here we'll find out here to help jay find out about the treasures included in the purchase of his newport mansion our appraisers karen keane and michael grogan i'm feeling good about what might be in there wow wow wow wow oh my gosh welcome welcome you see we have the the outdoor urinal always a very very classy item come on inside i'll show you around thank you so much thank you thank you [Music] i guess this is a foyer i know foyer or for you what do you say i think foyer fourier yeah four yeah i mean we're in a very fancy house so well i'm almost an antique myself so enjoy yourself and feel free to poke around thanks you guys thanks jay have fun gosh look at this fantastic pretty i i'm distracted by the ocean but i'm going to focus on the antiques you said you're going to take it off and see if i can learn anything from the back let's just hold it for you yeah sure [Music] those antique rocho yahoos are in the house right now am i going to count the silver after they leave you bet i am it's fitting a beach house would have a ship model model of the revenue cutter surprise 1815 by bill hitchcock of new york it's very cool it's kind of like the race car of its day on the water auction estimate uh i would probably say in the two to three thousand dollar range jay leno's revenue cutter may you know you'd put a premium on it for sure that provenance um i would say maybe three times that the paintings here i mean it's a giant painting as you walk in i don't know 15 feet long and so i i don't know how it's it's enormous so i'm curious to see what the history is on that and what that's worth appraiser michael grogan has the answers to all of jay leno's questions jay this is one of my favorite paintings in your house i mean it's absolutely spectacular and not just because of the size which is immense do you know this artist i do her name is blanche camus okay she was born in france 1884. died died in 1968 had a pretty prolific life was called a neo-impressionist style kind of like a revival of the impressionist style the colors are remarkable the colors are remarkable that it really does pop when you walk in it totally yeah here they are they're harvesting grapes because they're dress is spectacular uh you got the children in the background this was probably painted about 1940 or so just think of the cost of the frame alone right right i mean it probably cost you 20 000 to frame a painting like this her auction record just two years ago was eighty thousand dollars this is probably worth more i think it's worth about 100 to 150 000 at auction today if jay leno wants to sell this painting and it came to an auction gallery and we could put the provenance from the jay leno collection yeah the jay little collection of fine art yes it could be double it really could be that would be dogs with big eyes playing poker that would be [Music] well the number of asian items scattered about the house i don't know actually i know nothing about them nice enough i've had a terrific time touring jay's house looking at his asian art looking at his furniture looking at the paintings and i'm really struck by this pair of japanese meiji bronze elephants we're looking at one of them right here the castings is just terrific the large scale and to have these rock crystal very massive rock crystal obelisks right on the back a pair of these at auction today probably bring twenty to thirty thousand dollars they're really spectacular they'd be highly sought after in any international auction [Music] jay leno's newport mansion has all the creature comforts inside plus some interesting creatures outside jay we're in the garden and there's even antiques out here right right tell me tell me about the weather vein well i was hoping you could tell me something about the weather vein i i've been up on the roof but never examined it up close i don't know if it's a one-off if somebody made it specifically for this house or i don't know anything about it i don't believe that it's a 19th century weather veins which is most of the ones that we see in america the antique ones i think this is a custom made piece from the probably 2000 to not very long ago you can get these weather veins done in the 15 000 range and then they start going up this is a mermaid form right and she's got a shell that she's holding which is a rarer uh form for the 19th century we see them much more in the 20th and 21st it just seems to be one of those symbols that that people love this one is particularly beautifully made if you look at the directionals i mean that's always a nice sign for the quality of a weather vein but i would say probably in the 15 to 25 000 range to buy it new right if you had to to have it fabricated did you notice the peacock out on the i saw that in 1947 the lady bought this house and redid it after being devastated in 38. and she had that in the garden basically right out here as a centerpiece then there was a huge hurricane water came and swept it out to sea and that was the end of that then 10 years later she sold the house then 20 years later she comes to visit the new owners sometime in the 90s and she sees the peacock out on the lawn again and she says to them and it's hers it's a bit battered and beat up and she says where'd that come from they said oh we had a huge storm one day and the peacock just showed up on the lawn the next day so apparently got swept out to sea stayed out there for a couple of decades and then was swept back in again oh my gosh at least it came back so that's that's good so maybe it's maybe it's a homing uh peacock so the peacock is a symbol of many many things and one of the symbols is resurrection because they lose these tail feathers right and then they grow back again so there's biblical references um to the peacock so that's kind of cool so this is sort of a resurrection this thing left and then it came back again kind of like my career i work for nbc so that they're simple as a peacock and so there you go oh wow i mean it's a great complicated story so any idea of its value i have no idea i have no idea of its value i mean i think the story makes it valuable so i think it's more in the providence almost than in the actual value of the statue i think it's a pretty cool thing yeah and i think there is a vibrant market in garden statuary right um maybe an auction estimate of ten to fifteen thousand dollars you know um and i think it would do better than that yeah it's it's a really pretty i love the tail right drapes down you just don't know it's gonna run off again you know it's like runaway bride it's one of those things that shows up and it disappears for decades and it comes [Music] i want to back in on two things that are painted by artists right here in newport okay okay this is a william tross richard american uh artist in the late 19th century painted mostly around newport and all around rhode island this is a pencil drawing probably worth about eight to twelve hundred dollars not a fortune but local artists right this is different this is uh not a professional artist it's a professional diplomat bill mittendorf is his name he was a a secretary of the navy under nixon and ford okay ambassador to the european union ambassador of the netherlands a distinguished diplomat right he's in his 90s and he's a weekend painter oh you've got one of his paintings and michael jordan also played baseball yeah i got them far yeah you like the bus ride so it's one of those deals one of those deals probably worth in the 500 range at auction today it's very nice it's very nice local newport local yeah right okay it's nice to have something right here at home well i appreciate it well thank you i mean i really wanted to talk to you about the gilded chair oh yeah we'll talk about that next time thanks guys appreciate it thank you so much thank you god those people are nosy geez you

Channel: Antiques Roadshow PBS

Views: 2,137,616

Keywords: antiques roadshow, antique roadshow, appraisal, pbs, jay leno, the tonight show, late night comedy, stand up comedy, leno, newport, newport ri, bonus content, home decor, Blanche-Augustine Camus, belle camus, antique painting, oil painting, art history, weathervane

Id: INPb-kBVUCo

Length: 11min 19sec (679 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021