Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER: Tell me how you came to acquire these very large and heavy pieces.

GUEST: We took possession of the Farwell Building in 2015, 100 years after it was built.

The three main lobby glass tile domes were Louis Tiffany.

They were in severe disrepair, they were not restorable.

So we ended up removing all those domes and rebuilding them completely.

Um, the building had been vacant for 35 years or so.

Um, lots of things were destroyed and stolen.

So we rebuilt the ceilings completely.

And these are the remnants of, of what was there.

APPRAISER: Well, I can tell you that Tiffany was so proud of this that they even published an ad stating that they had just done the work in the Farwell Building.

So it, this was something that, uh, Tiffany wanted to advertise prominently.

And the building did open in March of 1915.

And Tiffany decorated the first-floor corridors with these wonderful barrel-vaulted ceilings with rib vaults.

These are the cornices that were beneath where the rib vaults started.

We're looking at these upside down, but if these were turned around, you can see these classical-designed vases holding these stylized curlicues and flowers in the middle here and leading up to the bottom of the festoons that continue into the rib vaults.

Most of the work was actually done at Tiffany's studios and then it was...

GUEST: Shipped over.

APPRAISER: Yes, which is quite remarkable.

What I love about these in particular is, with the Tiffany glass that you see, it's not just an opalescent or an opaque glass.

You also have some gold iridescent glass, and you even have some textured glass that you would see in some of the lamps, which is unusual for a mosaic installation like this.

You have any idea of value?

GUEST: We have some vague notions without much basis.

(chuckling) APPRAISER: Well, at retail, I would say probably $15,000 to $25,000 on these two.

This one, I would say more like $15,000 to $20,000.

This one, I would say $30,000 to $40,000.

GUEST: Wow, that's incredible.

APPRAISER: $30,000 to $40,000 on that.

And I would say $30,000 to $40,000 on that.

And that's the top-end price...

GUEST: Sure.

APPRAISER: ...were they to be sold.

GUEST: Excellent.

Wow.

That's great, that's great news.