Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

In my world, this has now become a really important icon of the 20th century. There's examples in the Metropolitan Museum, in the LA County Museum, in every museum that has a good design collection, they all aspire to having one of these as really sort of a highlight of 20th century design. We were in a valley just a few years ago for this type of design. It reached a peak in about the year 2000. I actually sold a similar version to this for $71,000 in July of 2000 and that's still the world record for this model. That was a little bit better condition, it had a few more bells and whistles. When I sold that example for $71,000 in the year 2000, this one would've been worth about $25,000 but we're heading right back up to that level. And I wouldn't be surprised that this example could bring that kind of peak price again. There's some people who are waiting and waiting for a great example, this is it.

INTERVIEWER

I think we have a great picture of you from last season throwing your arms around an orange Eames chair, do you remember that?

APPRAISER

Yeah, I'm prone to affection to these types of objects. I don't have children and maybe, you know I'm a huge fan of Charles Eames. He and his wife, Ray, settled in Los Angeles in the early '40s and really made their mark on the design community based in Los Angeles. I'm from Los Angeles, as a young dealer, I just happened to find a lot of it and I got curious about it. He really was not only the most important American furniture designer of the 20th century, I claim that he's one of the most important furniture designers in the history of America. What he did and how he transformed the industry, almost single-handedly, it never happened before.

INTERVIEWER

Have you ever made a ROADSHOW guest cry before?

APPRAISER

No, yeah, I mean I've been on for about 14 seasons now, including this year, that was my first. My first one, you know, she starts to well up and I was like, come on, come on, give it to me. Let it build and it was really sweet. Very emotional, she was really excited to learn more and I was excited to learn about how she came across it. I was getting emotional myself.