Antiques Roadshow

APPRAISER

Towards the end of the day, a lady came in with a screen, folded up, that was not in very good condition, opened it up and my jaw dropped. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was extraordinary. Dee.

GUEST

Hi.

APPRAISER

Hi. Tell me about this.

GUEST

My husband had this when we were first going together.

APPRAISER

Mm-hm

GUEST

It didn't fit in our home anymore, and so we stored it and quite regretfully, it got damaged and I wanna know it's worth any value or if it's something to just kind of discard and say too bad, it's gone.

APPRAISER

Now Chinese painting is done in a narrative fashion, so you have the same figure represented in different poses. And this is the figure of a woman named Xiwangmu. She was sort of the leader of the immortals, which is this heavenly band of deities in Chinese mythology.

GUEST

Really?

APPRAISER

And they lived on an island called Penglai-Shan, which is the island of the immortals. We know that it has eight panels. First question I have is whether it's supposed to have more than eight or not. If you look at the far side over there, you see there's a cloud boarder. At the boarder that's behind us here, you'll see that there isn't. Anyone that could've afforded this screen lived in a tremendously large compound. This was something that was meant for the very highest tiers of Chinese society. I think that the value of this has to be in the $30,000 to $50,000 range, as it is now.

GUEST

(laughing) Oh, my goodness. And I-- I was wondering whether I should...

APPRAISER

What were you wondering you were going to do?

GUEST

(laughing) I didn't know whether it should be saved or not. Oh, my goodness. Thank you! (laughing)

APPRAISER

We ended up speaking with Dee, she said "I'd like to sell this."

GUEST

I said "I've got to get rid of this screen, it's just sitting there." And my daughter said "well that's not hard" and she got on her computer and she emailed him and a half hour later, Lark called.

APPRAISER

We prepared it for auction, promoted it to all of our Chinese clients and had it advertised everywhere and everybody is going "what a terrific Chinese screen." And then the auction day comes.

GUEST

The day of the auction, I was on the way to a doctors appointment, and my daughter texts "$60,000" and I thought "wow." And I'm at this appointment and my phone's keeping going "bing, bing, bing," and I said my kids must be trying to figure out how they can get that money away from me and split it. And after I was done, I got a hold of my daughter and she says, "Come on! It's still going on!"

APPRAISER

People that are participating are Chinese, and they start bidding enthusiastically and then they drop out and they're supplanted by, all these bidders from Korea.

GUEST

When it got higher, my son had texted he was in California and he had texted "Mom gave Lark a hug at $30,000 to $50,000, what's she going to do now?" (laughs). And it was just a joke, it was just a joke Lark (laughs).

APPRAISER

It passed $100,000 and then it was in a race card at $200,000 and then $300,000 came and went and then we're over $400,000, and we're going, oh my gosh. It kept going and ended up over $540,000 and we were really puzzled. Why were the Korean bidders so interested in this partial screen? Something's, we're missing something. It was the realization that it was actually not incomplete, it was just not a Chinese screen. It was a Korean screen, and it was a Korean screen that was purposely created to copy a Chinese screen. This is an important, important object It really shocked me, it shocked the audience of Chinese bidders who were bidding, it shocked my staff, it shocked, all of us were surprised.

GUEST

I just, to this day, I can't really comprehend that much money for a screen.

APPRAISER

Particularly a moldy screen.

GUEST

A moldy one that I was going to burn.