Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

This sculpture came out of Coconut Grove in Miami, Florida. My father bought the house about 1959 at auction. And the people, apparently, that owned the house on Hibiscus didn't have any family, and as a result, I think it went to the church. The church didn't need the house, they sold it at auction, and Father bought it, and it had all these European antiques in it. This was one of them.

APPRAISER

So he bought it lock, stock and barrel, and antiques.

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

And you have this album that documents the house.

GUEST

Yes, sir.

APPRAISER

And this sculpture here is in the living room right there. The sculpture itself is Italian. It's by an artist named Emilio Fiaschi, who was born in the 1850s and lived until 1941. He worked primarily in Florence, and Florence had a tradition of having sculptors work there. What's interesting about the way marble sculpture was made in the 19th century was that the artist would make a clay model, and then he would give that model to a workshop of craftsmen who actually did the carving. So the sculptor did not do the carving himself. At this time, in the middle of the 19th century, it was considered manual labor because of the physical activity of hammering away with a chisel. You might think that, oh, it's marble and it's hand carved, that it would be unique, when in fact, they really made numerous, numerous copies of them. And many of these were made for tourists who wanted to bring back a sculpture. This piece was probably made in the 1890s or maybe around 1900. And what you see here is this very sensitively shown and beautiful interaction between the mother and child. And the detail is really extraordinary. And in fact, in these workshops, there were people who specialized in doing fingers, there were people who specialized in doing hair. It was a group effort. I guess it takes a village to make a sculpture. His work comes up quite a bit, nothing of this scale. In a retail setting, this is a piece that would probably be about $7,500.

GUEST

Mmm. Nice, very nice.