Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

My very first ANTIQUES ROADSHOW was in Philadelphia and I remember I was a little bit nervous about doing it. The whole production, there's people running everywhere and lots of activity and action and I'm thinking oh my goodness I'm just a little country boy, I'm not sure how this is all gonna work for me. I look up the line and I see this lady holding this chair. She's holding it like a rifle and it's kind of sticking out the end and I look at that chair and I think holy cow, that's a Charles Rohlfs chair and a damn good one.

GUEST

My mother found it in my grandmother's house in Dayton, Ohio back in around the 1960s when they were settling up their estate. It was up in the attic, nobody else knew it was there.

APPRAISER

Do you know who did this chair?

GUEST

Haven't a clue. I've never seen anything like it and that's why I brought it here.

APPRAISER

Alright, great. Well let me show you on the back of the chair, we have a mark and it's an R with a vertical saw. That's the maker's mark for a very famous arts and crafts maker named Charles Rohlfs.

GUEST

No kidding.

APPRAISER

And Charles Rohlfs was a very eccentric man. Unlike a lot of the arts and crafts other makers, he worked only in a studio with himself and a few apprentices. He made all kinds of unusual things and he really pushed the boundaries of arts and crafts. The whole design is very radical. It was the thought of furniture as sculpture and this chair as you can see really goes a long ways in blurring those boundaries between furniture and art. It captures the essence of the arts and crafts movement and what it does it adds a creativity and a sense of beauty and artistic license to arts and crafts that Gustav Stickley and a lot of other people just don't have. Most time Charles Rohlfs worked in oak. This chair is mahogany, what makes it very interesting also. Charles Rohlfs' furniture is very rare and it's absolutely, absolutely sought-after by the best collectors in America. There's not much of it out there, a lot of it's in institutions, um, and so when a great piece, especially a piece that's sort of virgin to the to the marketplace comes up, I mean it is really big news and it's really important. this chair is worth between $80,000 and $120,000 at auction.

GUEST

You're kidding?

APPRAISER

I am not kidding. I am not, I am not kidding.

GUEST

That's unbelievable.

APPRAISER

Yeah.

GUEST

Absolutely unbelievable.

APPRAISER

Congratulations, a fantastic chair. There's like one of four known in America. You have one of them.

GUEST

That's absolutely amazing

APPRAISER

They've got several other people's opinions about value of the chair, cause I didn't want to say something too high or too low.

GUEST

And you remember what I said.

APPRAISER

What did you say?

GUEST

"You gotta be kidding."

APPRAISER

(laughs) I remember that. Yes I do.

GUEST

Because it was worth so much money, um, Mom's financial advisors were advising her that she should sell it. He persisted and Mom decided to sell it at auction.

APPRAISER

I think if something's worth $500 or $1,000 there's not a burden to families, but something as valuable as Nancy's chair becomes a burden. You have to worry about insurance, you have to worry about locking the front door, you have to worry about who's sitting in the chair. In the auction business, parents wanted to avoid their children fighting over things is one of the main, and honest truth, main reasons that people can sign things to auction.

GUEST

I'm sure all of that was in the back of the mind of the financial adviser. All of those things, because mom couldn't afford to insure something so valuable. We sat through the auction and kept track of everything and we're hoping very much that they would do well. They had promised to sell it for quite a lot. We kept hoping it'd go higher (laughs). Aren't I awful? Very greedy. But it it sold for a $180,000 plus buyer's premium, which put it over I guess two and a quarter, which was great. and we were And we were sad to see it go. Mom's still living today, she's 96 and so it has helped her out, so in that sense it was a good thing.

APPRAISER

Yeah, yeah.

GUEST

I'd love to know who's got it and that's their policy, they don't let you know. The whole process was fun, took us out of our normal humdrum life.

APPRAISER

It all started from a Saturday afternoon at the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.

GUEST

Absolutely, absolutely.

APPRAISER

Yeah, it's perfect. As far as furniture goes, and as far as the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW goes, it was certainly the best thing I have ever seen. We've seen a lot of great stuff since, but that still, it's my very first and my very favorite.