Antiques Roadshow

GUEST: My father, at the age of five years old, went to the Chicago World's Fair in 1933.

They saw a crowd of people gathered around on a corner, and my father worked his way up to the front of the crowd and he saw the artist, Barney Nelson.

Barney had no arms, and Barney was creating the artwork with, using just his feet.

APPRAISER: Mm.

GUEST: Barney had announced to the crowd that, "The first person who could guess what I'm about to draw next will win the drawing."

And when he first began to sketch it, he started off with the tail.

And my father spoke up and said, "It's a squirrel."

APPRAISER: Hm.

GUEST: And my father won, won this beautiful drawing.

APPRAISER: According to the 1910 census, Barney Nelson was born in Connecticut about 1879.

The census lists him as an African American, and his occupation is listed as crayon artist.

He was known during his career as the Armless Phenomenon.

He was born armless as a, as a result of a birth defect, and he built a career out of what he was able to do, and that is become a rather accomplished, uh, artist and performing at fairs and in front of crowds.

It is crayon on paper, it's an artist's crayon.

And as you can see, he made good use of shadows and textures.

And notice how really elegant the signature is.

It has a really nice, late-19th-century calligraphic style.

If this were to be presented in an auction format...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...a, a very reasonable auction estimate for it would be in the $1,500 to $2,500 range.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: And we all, we all agree it would not surprise us if it reached $3,000, or maybe even more.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.