Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

Well, it's an Oriental rug, uh, from my grandmother. She lived in China in the '20s. Um, she was adopted when she was about ten by a missionary and they went all over the world. They spent most of their time in China and while they were there, they picked up numerous items.

APPRAISER

Terrific. Well, that makes perfect sense. What I find uniquely fascinating about this is, it's a saddle blanket but the size and the scale of it... It's a child's saddle blanket so this would have been used on top of a pony saddle, most likely a wooden saddle and it would have sat right on the top of the saddle to soften the sitting position, obviously. It is in very good condition, probably woven about 1900 maybe even the late part of the 19th century. It has very little wear around the edges where you'd expect to see the wear as a saddle blanket and very little wear on the actual pile of the blanket itself. I would assume that it wasn't used that much and that it might have had a very special purpose or sort of a more ceremonial purpose for the child. I've seen several of the larger ones and this is one of the few smaller ones that I've seen and because of its scale and its age and its condition, my value...At auction, I believe it would fetch somewhere between $700 and $900 maybe as much as $1,000 but a collector would really want something like this to round out their collection.

GUEST

Yeah, well, thank you very much!