Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

I was living in Brazil, and I saw this at an antique show, and it was presented to me as being some kind of a Chinese game or something. I thought, "That can't be a Chinese game. It has all these different gems inside." I said, "It must be, like, an energy battery." There are many people that believe you can use crystals to do healing and curing, and I, I really felt that that's what it was. So I purchased the thing, $500. And I took it home and I started examining it, and I discovered a tiny, tiny signature that it was made in Boucheron in Paris, 1884. Several years later, we were in Paris, and I went to Boucheron, and I showed them the piece, and they thought it was beautiful, but they said, "We don't have the ledger on it." So it was probably a special order.

APPRAISER

The date absolutely fits, Boucheron being formed in 1858. Boucheron, a French jeweler of, of renowned name.

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

He was certainly one of the innovators of different types of motifs and styles. And you have these little florets. Then over here, you'll see a peony, and then we have a fan.

GUEST

(chuckling) Right.

APPRAISER

And then, if, if we roll it over...

GUEST

There's even a little teapot.

APPRAISER

There's... Exactly, a little teapot. Again, here's that repeating pattern. We have some ferns around the edge, there's some bamboo. So there's a lot of different loosely interpreted Asian motifs going on. This metal is sterling silver. It's nicely oxidized to this nice hue. This is all hand-pierced. They lay it out and they engrave it lightly. And then they'll sit down and pierce all these sections out.

GUEST

Amazing.

APPRAISER

And then, after they're done piercing it, they go back and engrave everything. This is very typical of the work that Boucheron would have done on a woman's ncessaire. I think this is a healing ncessaire. Now we have to open it up. We're gonna push this in. The stones that are here, I looked up. Amethyst is a very calming effect. People use it for meditation. Crystal can remove bad or negative energy. Once you put these all back in here, and you would put the cover back on, if you go to the other side, this side doesn't let them go down into the cylinder. You put the crystal or the stone of your choice-- let's say right now you want to be calm. You put the amethyst here. You flip the cover.

GUEST

That's right.

APPRAISER

And now you can hold the device.

GUEST

You know, that's something that I hadn't thought about.

APPRAISER

You can see on the rims over here, it's signed "Boucheron, Paris." My feeling is also with you on that this was most definitely a special order. At auction today, something like this could be $10,000 to $12,000.

GUEST

Good, good. That sounds great-- that's great.