Antiques Roadshow

GUEST

It was at a charity auction at my office and I was lucky enough to get it. I paid about sixty dollars for it. It's of London, as you can see, of St. Paul Cathedral. I was actually born in England so when it came up for auction, I really thought it was very cool and wanted to get it for sure.

APPRAISER

It's a great London scene. Everyone recognizes St. Paul, I'm English too, hence the name Nigel. So I recognize it. But you didn't know who the artist was? You didn't recognize the signature? And it's an unusual, very open, looping signature. So who is this artist? This artist's name is Luigi Kasimir. He was an Austrian-Hungarian artist and he lived until 1962 and he did a lot of series of European capitals, attractive cities and these are done in etching and aquatint. Aquatint is a way of etching a copper plate to hold color.

GUEST

So it's not water color at all?

APPRAISER

No, this is printed, it's like a sand and it creates a pitted surface in the copper plate so you can hold color or black, or grey. You can do gradations, solid areas of color. So the etch lines are the hard edge lines and then the broader areas of color, like the brown in the chimney, the reds in the bus, that's the color aquatint.

GUEST

Okay, that's very cool.

APPRAISER

This is one of his best known subjects and it's a large color play for him. You have St. Paul's and the busy, fleet street. He's an artist who was very popular in the 30s and 40s. And his prints were sold in London and Europe. Not such a big name today but I recognized it right away as a Luigi Kasimir. And something like this, do you have any idea what it might bring at auction?

GUEST

Oh I have absolutely no idea, not a clue in the world.

APPRAISER

Well, you did well. At auction today, this might bring between 800 and 1,200 dollars.

GUEST

Wow, that's way more than sixty dollars. That's fabulous.

APPRAISER

You did very well.

GUEST

Thank you very much, I love it, it's a great scene.