Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

We just did a live appraisal about this piece. But one thing I've talked about for years, doing my appraisals for Antiques Roadshow, is how much better certain pieces look if they're clean. And I felt that this was a perfect candidate.

GUEST

Yes.

APPRAISER

It's a glorious piece. And you said this got dirty how?

GUEST

My mother was a chain smoker for all of my life and before.

APPRAISER

And she smoked where?

GUEST

In the kitchen, and this was in the dining room next to the kitchen.

APPRAISER

So we have decades of cooking grease and nicotine and particulate matter floating, wafting from the kitchen to the dining room, settling on this vase. The bottom of the piece is fairly clean. The dust and the dirt and the grime tends to settle on the shoulder of the piece up here. And furthermore, because of the modeling or carving that Henrietta Bailey did to get this effect on the vase, she creates all these little nooks and crannys for the dirt to settle. You said that the color you liked the most was at the top?

GUEST

Cobalt blue, yes that's my favorite.

APPRAISER

We use that as a bellwether to see how successful we are. I'm never 100% right about these things, but I have a feeling this is gonna clean up pretty well. I'm gonna use the general purpose cleaner. You see right here what's happening?

GUEST

Yes, look at the paper.

APPRAISER

Yeah, look at the paper.

GUEST

It's brown.

APPRAISER

That's nicotine. By and large, nicotine.

GUEST

Wow, the blue is really showing up. I thought it looked pretty clean for just sitting there for years. For me not cleaning it.

APPRAISER

So now that shine that we saw, look at the cobalt blue on top of this thing.

GUEST

Yes.

APPRAISER

How much it's really come to life. How much brighter the yellow is in the flowers, even the grooves inside of the poppy pods are clear. So it'll clean up even more, this is a quick job. This thing soaked would look even better, but we have a pretty good indication of how dirty this piece was. Even the yellow rim has a glow to it. That was probably 50 years of accumulated grime

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

And that's all that came off of it, so it wasn't that dirty, but it doesn't take much. So what I recommend is that you don't bother cleaning it a whole lot if you hang onto this, but every 5 years or so, I would ideally put it in a sink put towels at the bottom of the sink so if it slips out of your hands it won't break.

GUEST

Right.

APPRAISER

Clean it in the sink, buff it dry and then just really enjoy it.

GUEST

Okay, thank you.

APPRAISER

You got a smokin' piece of Newcomb right there, you really do. That's a sweet pot.