Antiques Roadshow

CORAL PEA: "Antiques Roadshow" is at Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens, where there's something to discover in every direction.

APPRAISER: The light just hits that center stone and makes you go, "Whoa!"

Are you kidding?

Holy cow!

PEA: Stan Hywet is Akron, Ohio's, oldest national historic landmark.

Built in 1915 by F.A.

Seiberling, a rubber industry leader, the house and grounds were a regular gathering place for F.A.

's very large extended family.

It was also the center of elite social life in a city whose reputation as a tire production hub made it the rubber capital of the world in the early 20th century.

The crest and motto of Stan Hywet above the front door is "non nobis solum," or "not for us alone."

Keeping to the family motto, Stan Hywet transformed from a private grand home to an historic estate museum open to the public in 1957.

Today, Stan Hywet welcomes "Antiques Roadshow" and thousands of our guests.

I brought with me a gift that I got from my uncle back in 1998.

He owned his own company, and so kind of what he did was party planning and promotional events.

He worked and had a contract for Fox, and this was a promotion for their Saturday morning cartoons.

At the completion of that project, he gave me this lovely art collection.

Very cool-- so were you yourself a Fox Kid when it came to the cartoons?

Absolutely.

Fox Kids was the kids' programming, uh, block for the Fox network, which, it was, like, a religion to follow.

Every Saturday morning, you'd get the new cartoons.

If you were a '90s kid, you grew up watching Fox Kids.

Absolutely.

And when it came to this promotional print set, or set of spoof-on-lithographs, we'll call it, it is a pastiche-- a complete spoof of some of the greatest canonized artists throughout art history.

Which is why, when I saw this, my mind was just exploding with excitement.

Because you have the perfect cross-pollination of pop culture with fine art.

This was released by Fox in 1995.

This would have actually came in this whole crate.

Ah, cool.

And when you look at the branding, how we look at the portfolio holder here, you say, "Muse du Renard des Enfants," which is simply, "The Museum of Fox Kids."

Okay.

Now, I pulled out some personal favorites here, but you have the complete set.

What I really love, closest to you there, we have, uh...

Right.

...Pablo Picasso's "The Ladies of Avignon."

But instead of having five ladies, we have the five Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.

Okay.

Grant Woods' "American Gothic," but instead of the iconic husband and wife... (laughing): ...we have the crazy mask from "Goosebumps."

(laughing): Yeah.

And then this one, my personal favorite from growing up watching Fox is, we have the Masked Rider acting as a subject to what would be one of Frederic Remington's iconic, uh, Western paintings.

Yeah.

Frederic Remington, master of 19th-century... Mm-hmm.

...American Western art.

And when we look at the image of Amazing Spider-Man, it's drawing on the aesthetic of Roy Lichtenstein.

And then one of my other favorites, you have Botticelli's "Birth of Venus."

1995, this was the peak of when Fox Kids was hot.

For fine art collectors that are also coincidentally, a lot of times, pop culture collectors, this hits them right in the sweet spot.

The fact that these have never been framed, they're in their original holder, just makes it perfect for a works-on-paper collector.

Oh, good, mm-hmm.

There's no sun fading, there's no damage.

Right.

While they are editioned of 500, very few have actually surfaced in the market.

And a complete set has never been seen to sell at auction within the past ten years.

Oh, okay.

I would say, conservatively at auction for the set, with the fact that you have it in the original Fox Kids-branded portfolio, I'd say it would easily be a $4,000 to $6,000 set of prints today.

Are you kidding?

Holy cow!

Okay.

It was just literally sittin' in a drawer.

(laughs) So... Yeah, no, I'm not kidding.

Fox Kids... Oh, my God!

Fox Kids is now big business today.

Yeah.

Okay.

So they're not child's play.

Holy cow-- okay.

Holy cow!

Yay, I'm so excited!

(both laughing) Oh, my gosh, no way.

That makes 'em so worth me keepin' 'em in a drawer for so long.

I literally didn't get 'em out for anybody.

(sniffles): That's awesome.

I brought a salesman's sampler of a furnace.

And it's a Wolverine, it's from the turn of the century.

It's also called an octopus furnace, because it has eight of these things here.

Well, this tray, uh, it's an oil painting, um, on a material that I'm really anxious to find out what it is.

It was at my grandparents' house.

And when they passed away, I was able to get one piece from their house.

And this is what I picked, because I hung out with this dog, uh, in, in this particular room all the time.

And I was fascinated with it.

So there's a piece that's, uh, certainly in the style of George Ohr.

Right.

And a piece by Frederick Rhead-- and you got this where?

Uh, I was at a country auction and it was sitting on a stepladder.

And I bought it with a little coffee pot for six dollars.

Very nice.

About 30-- about 30 years ago.

How did you acquire that one?

A friend of mine, he had contacted me.

He had an antique shop, and, um, somebody had brought in a box of pottery, and he didn't deal in pottery, and...

So how many pieces were in the lot that you bought?

Probably about ten pieces or so, give or take.

And you paid how much for the ten pieces?

Think about $300.

This piece was there, and I thought, "Well, I'll, I'll hang on to that."

Essentially, I have negative amount of money in this.

I sold the other stuff for more than what I paid for everything.

It's probably been ten or 12 years...

Okay.

...I've had that.

These two potters were two of the top three potters in America during the art pottery era, which is the first quarter of the 20th century, but diametrically opposed.

Uh, Frederick Rhead was an Englishman who was m, almost a graphic designer, more than a potter.

Came to America and then traveled, eventually, across the country.

What's interesting is that Rhead, in a way, followed or took the Arts and Crafts Movement with him as it started in England, came to the Eastern U.S., and traveled across until it ended in California.

Ohr was the Mad Potter of Biloxi-- totally different.

He was as, as unbuttoned as Rhead was buttoned up.

And so I, I like the fact that you have two examples by two of the luminaries-- if they're real, of course-- two of the luminaries, but they're so vastly different from one another.

Let's start with the Rhead piece, and this is real.

Not a lot of Rhead has been faked.

This is from his Santa Barbara studio.

It would have been Rhead and his wife and a small studio in the artist colony that was Santa Barbara from about 1914 to about 1916.

And this is his famous squeeze bag decoration.

At 19 years old in Staffordshire, at Wardle, he was the head of the department, the artistic director, and they were already using this squeeze bag technique, also called slip trail, where you outline a decoration in relief, squeezing slip as though a baker were decorating a cake.

Okay.

And then Rhead augmented it by putting enamel colors inside the squeeze bag areas to give it very sharp distinction.

Nice matte-glazed, three-color squeeze bag piece.

It's dirty, it needs to be cleaned.

Okay.

This was used as a bulb pot, which is really what its function was.

Right, right.

Consequently, over the years, there are calcium deposits inside the bowl.

There are things that can take those out.

The work is extremely rare.

Especially to know that you have a piece that was done from start to finish and decorated by the master... Ah.

...it's a really good thing.

Now, George Ohr, working f, f, roughly from the 1880s until...

The last known dated pot was 1907.

The problem with Ohr is that he's the most inimitable of the potters of, of any era in this country, and yet he was the guy that was most often faked.

Okay.

So how do we know if a piece is fake or not in George Ohr?

The mark is an indication.

Although these block stamp marks, like on this piece, people have replicated those using printer's type.

The quality of the throwing, if it's a piece from the ground up, is something you look for: paper-thin, perfectly thrown.

Dirty bottom-- Ohr was not a clean potter.

He, he was not fastidious, I should say.

So the bottoms of his pots often look like this.

And the main thing for me with George Ohr is, uh, do I recognize the glaze?

Okay.

Because I've seen fakes that were so good, that if I didn't recognize the glaze from other pots that I've seen over the last 50 years, then it probably isn't right.

Fortunately, I've seen this glaze.

Okay?

This is a real piece of George Ohr.

Ah!

Wow.

(chuckles) Okay?

And I would date this to about 1898, 1899.

The George Ohr piece, at auction, would bring somewhere between $2,000 and $3,000.

Oh, my goodness.

The Rhead piece at auction, it depends on how well this cleans up.

Okay.

For now, I would say between $7,500 and $10,000.

(exhales) If it really cleaned up well, in the right auction, it's between $10,000 and $20,000.

Oh, my God.

(laughing): Oh, wow!

And both have a, at least a brief association with Ohio.

Rhead decorated at Roseville and Weller in Zanesville.

Okay.

And Ohr, before he started potter, potting, toured potteries to see how other companies were making pots.

Mm-hmm.

So both of them have at least a loose association with Ohio, the pottery state.

And that's where we are now.

GUEST: I brought a, a, a very old book, which is, uh, an essay on clockmaking that I found in an antique mall.

My main interest is in, uh, collecting watches, but the watches I'm particularly interested in are those that pertain to navigation, and sort of tool watches that have to do with te, telling time in flight.

I saw this book.

What caught my eye was "Essai d'Horloge," on the outside cover, which is French for "An Essay on Clockmaking."

So I opened it up, and then I couldn't believe what I found inside.

Mm.

It's handwritten by Ferdinand Berthoud, who was a famous Parisian clockmaker who was involved in making the first marine chronometers.

And this is really important for our entire history of navigation.

Right.

Because there wasn't a way to determine longitude on a moving ship... That's right.

...in a way that we now take it for granted that we know we're going through time zones, and so on.

And I know... No GPS.

Yes, no GPS.

(chuckles) And you know more about the subject matter than I do.

There was a contest?

I think it was King George put out a longitude prize, because, uh, an English fleet had actually shipwrecked, led to a massive loss of life.

So he put out a prize, uh, to see who could solve the problem of determining longitude at sea so this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

And I think in the day, it was about �17,000, which is about $3 million in today's... Yeah.

It was a big deal.

Yeah.

And it was a, a British watchmaker who figured it out.

Right, John Harrison was the person.

John Harrison.

And this is such a, an unusual book, because it is written by hand.

It is not a printed book.

There's also a handwritten title page that has Berthoud's cipher, and this book is from 1792.

This book has two parts in one volume.

The first part is, the title page is dated 1791, and the second part is dated 1792.

And there is original material, like these drawings, inside.

This is a very unusual occurrence, because we do sometimes find manuscript versions of printed books, but as far as I can tell, I cannot find a printed version of this book.

(chuckles) And you have had a similar result, yes.

(murmurs) There is still a firm in Switzerland with, bearing his name from his family, and they still make watches all by hand.

And they have a bibliography, and they do not mention a work of this name at all... (chuckles) ...anywhere that I can find, which is, again, very unusual.

I also looked in library catalogues-- I can't find it.

It looks to be, for all intents and purposes, something that he is directly working on.

And there are different hands at the end, where it definitely looks like working notes, which is extraordinary!

(chuckling) What was the price they were asking for this?

Uh, I bargained them t, down to 200 Canadian dollars.

There's a lot of interest in this collecting area.

If this were to come up at auction, I would say the estimate range should be $40,000 to $60,000.

(chuckling): Wow.

Wow, I, I had no idea what it's worth, it's... (chuckles) I think the, the thing that I am enjoying about this is that you did recognize what it was when you saw it, and you picked it up, so it got to the right...

It got to the right home.

It pulls to my heartstrings.

You should probably insure it for at least $80,000.

Honestly thought $2,000 to $5,000.

(people talking in background) We believe we know it's a Swedish bonad from, we hope, 1820 to 1840.

It's a folk art painting of the life of Christ.

Where'd you get it?

GUEST 2: An antique store in St. Louis.

GUEST 1: Yeah, we paid $200.

APPRAISER: Yeah, you paid $200?

GUEST: Yeah.

It's not period.

GUEST 2: Okay.

That's what we were wondering.

So it's contemporary, but it's of a style that would have been the same size...

GUEST 2: Right.

...and the same height, with the same color tones.

Yes.

But it would have been made 200, 300 years ago.

GUEST 1: Right.

This is a tabako-bon... Mm-hmm.

...which has been in my family since 1960.

It was a gift to my grandmother.

She got it from Mr. And Mrs. Furukawa.

Her husband was president of Goodrich, and Goodrich had a business partnership with Yokohama Tire.

And I believe that it was given as sort of a diplomatic gesture in the, uh, in the business world.

Mm-hmm.

Yokohama Tire opened up to Western trade early in the 1900s.

Mm-hmm.

And I believe one of their first partners was with Goodrich Tire here in the U.S. And my grandfather started working for the company in the 1920s.

So he had a lot of business relations with Japanese companies, and Yokohama Tire was one of them.

I like to say my family is sort of a merging of, uh, rubber empires.

Um, my father's family was connected to the Seiberling family.

My mother's family, um, was connected to the Goodrich family.

(laughing): The tabako-bon is from the Goodrich side.

It came down my maternal side.

So what you brought with you today is a beautiful Meiji period Japanese lacquer tabako-bon that uses copper, silvered copper, and gilt copper elements.

Hm.

The Meiji period was 1868 to 1912.

Likely, this was produced right around 1900.

A tabako-bon is a smoking box, and there are spaces for everything that you need if you were a tobacco smoker.

You have drawers, you have your kisuki, your pipe.

It's really just a single draw, is what you would have, maybe two.

It's covered with these gorgeous little silver elements.

Cranes with cherry blossoms.

Cranes are auspicious animals.

They're related to the imperial family, and cherry blossoms are indicative of new life.

Mm.

Which is ironic for a pipe.

(laughs) Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

It's decorated throughout with bamboo and sparrows flying.

Bamboo is an incredibly resilient plant, and it represents that strength-- a gentleman, a lady's strength to bend but not break... Mm-hmm.

...under pressure.

There is some damage on the corners... Hm.

...where the handle comes down-- that shows that it was used.

And not all of the elements want to function as fully as they should.

It's difficult to pull this guy out.

(laughs): So we won't push.

Yeah, I, I don't open the drawers very often.

We won't push.

Yeah.

We know the history, because you happen to have these wonderful documents with you.

There's a newspaper article, which I translated, and the newspaper article does say that this was in fact a gift from Jujun Furukawa for a retirement.

Oh, okay.

And we can see on the business card his name, Jujun Furukawa, C.E.O.

of Furukawa Company that owned Yokohama Tire.

And then in the photo, we have Jujun with your grandfather.

On your grandfather's left is Gerald Alexander, who had been the head of marketing for the Goodrich Tire Company and was being announced as your grandfather's replacement.

This letter, where did this come from?

It was always inside the, the drawer.

So I assumed it was typed up by the person who presented it.

It says it was the original property of the Empress Shoken Kotaigo.

And as you said, this was a gift not to your grandfather...

But to my grandma, who... ...but to your grandmother.

Yeah, which I thought was kind of neat, but as I read this story, I realized that it went through the maternal line in Japan, from empress to empress, and I was touched by that, in that it went from her to me!

(laughing): So, um, it touched me in a deep, emotional way.

(laughing) In that, um, respect.

Provenance is important.

It dates it back to Empress Shoken, who was the Meiji emperor's chief consort.

Now, that's a very difficult thing to prove.

Right.

I understand.

(laughs) Furukawa was a very powerful man in Japan.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I found reference to him as a baron.

It's possible that he was related to the imperial family, but I can't say for sure.

Of course, it's a family heirloom, but what would you think it would sell for?

My brother and I were debating.

His guess was in the $5,000 to $10,000 range, and I said, "But it's got such a great provenance, I'm going to go higher."

So that's kind of where we left our guess.

It does have some damage, which you don't like on lacquer.

In today's market, something like this would likely sell for around $3,000 to $5,000.

Okay.

Wo, oh, wonderful.

(laughs) Let's say that we could prove that this was Empress Shoken's-- five, ten times in value.

PEA: What's a great manor house without a secret passageway?

In the library, this bookcase opens to reveal a hidden door and a short secret passage to the great hall.

GUEST: I brought a map that's been in my family for three generations.

My third great-grandfather's brother drew it for his father, 1832, of the village of Cleveland.

I think it's a very cool map.

1832 is four years before Cleveland was incorporated as a city.

Mm-hmm.

It was founded in 1796.

A unique manuscript map.

Mm.

It's also unusual, which makes it a little hard to situate yourself on it, is, south is at the top.

The city was developed from the water out, so they're starting at the bottom and moving, moving out.

Individual homeowners' names along here.

Mm-hmm.

And the Public Square, in the center, which is still the center of the city.

Mm-hmm.

The map shows the Cuyahoga River as it leads into Lake Erie.

It's just got a lot of really interesting detail.

The town was only about 1,200 people in 1832.

Hm.

And it's got this really neat inscription on the back, which... And what does that inscription say?

It says "To Dr. John Anders from his affectionate son J.W.," in 1832, mm-hmm.

1832, yeah, no, that's, that's a really neat touch.

Yes, it is.

You must have, uh, kept it out of light.

Yes.

Because these kinds of things are, they're not air-sensitive or time-sensitive, but they're very light-sensitive.

Yes.

That brown ink could just fade away to, to nothing...

Right.

...if it didn't get proper...

Right, it's in an interior hallway in my house.

Then, then, then you're good.

It's both interesting from a map point of view, from an historical point of view, and also, to a degree, it's a piece of folk art.

Mm-hmm.

For insurance purposes... Mm-hmm.

...you're looking at $25,000.

Wow, wow.

Okay.

Now, I'm assuming you weren't ever planning to sell it, anyway.

No, it's-- oh...

I'd be drawn and quartered if I tried to.

(laughs) It's very special, very unique to all of us in my family.

My dad, when he was a little kid, he, uh, grew up on a farm not too far from here, and they didn't have a trash service, so they threw all their trash into a pit.

He went over and he dug some stuff up, and he found these old antique Coca-Cola and soda bottles that, some of them say that they were patented in the 1920s.

I thought they were cool, and I decided to bring them in just to see and learn a little more about them.

This is a sculpture by Manuel Carbonell, a Cuban sculptor.

He's also a designer.

And he, he migrated to the United States back in the '30s.

I acquired this at a auction about a year ago.

I got it for $100.

The piece is called "Mother With Child on Shoulder."

This was made by my great- grandfather George Burden in Sandusky, Ohio, which is a port city on Lake Erie.

And this diorama is of the American Eagle, which, my great-grandfather worked on this steamer, one of many that ran along Lake Erie.

In 1894, he carved this.

I got this from my grandmother in 1988.

(laughs): And it's stayed in the same place ever since.

This steamer was designed to be an icebreaker on Lake Erie, and would break up up to 24 inches of ice.

It was also a passenger boat.

It ran passengers to ports along Lake Erie that are Vacationland, in, uh, Marblehead and Lakeside and Sandusky.

As you see, in this photograph, there are people riding their bikes on the ice.

That photograph is from the Great Lakes Historical Society.

Okay.

It's made out of a half a butter bowl.

That's what I was going to say-- look at the shape of it.

What you call a butter bowl I call a dough bowl.

Okay.

And then the mixed media I would cover with, it's got paint, it's got carved wood.

The ice that is broken up here are pieces of glass that have some kind of frosting on the top of them.

Yes.

I love the steam coming out of the stack there.

That's l, what is that, like a ball of cotton or somethin'?

It, I think so, yes.

You had it in the box, and I saw that eagle and those flags stickin' up on there, and my eyeballs kind of went, you know?

(laughs) My glasses started shaking on my nose.

And then I saw the eagles on either side.

I love the scene, but to me, one of the best things about it are the eagles.

Uh-huh.

As a folk art person.

And this is a very unusual diorama scene.

Most dioramas just have a ship on a swelling sea with a couple of birds flyin' in the background.

This photograph is fabulous.

I'm so glad you brought that.

As you said, it's, it's a copy of one that's at the museum.

Its value is more important to document the fact that this ship existed, and you had...

Right.

You had it out there workin', breakin' the ice.

Right.

We talked a lot at the folk art table about the visual presence of this, and the fact that it's such a, an important regional thing.

And we feel like a good retail price on this would be in the $3,000 to $4,000 range.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, very good.

Probably priceless for your family.

Yes, yes, definitely.

GUEST: My father was a violinist, a concert violinist, and he lived down in Florida.

And one time, he s, said he bought a wonderful violin, something better than he had, and he paid $175 for it.

Uh-huh.

And he took it home.

Oh, and when was this?

In 1990-- early '90s.

Early '90s.

Yes.

And did he play this violin then?

He played it a little bit, but he went back to the violin that he played for 50 years because he liked its tone.

But then why did he...

But he always said that this was a better violin than his.

(chuckles) When I first opened the, the case and looked at it, I immediately recognized what it was.

So the maker of this violin is Ernst Heinrich Roth, and it's dated 1926.

The other thing that's unusual about it for an Ernst Heinrich Roth is, it's an Amati copy.

They didn't make very many Amati copies.

So by an Amati copy, we mean the, the shape of the instrument, the outline here, the shape of the f-holes, the scroll, all those were in the style of Amati, who was a famous Italian violin maker.

Ernst Heinrich Roth had this violin establishment in Markneukirchen, Germany, and he went into business with another violin maker.

They produced these violins in different qualities, and this was a very high-quality instrument for the Roth Company at that time.

It has a label on the inside, uh, with his name on it.

It says it's an Amati copy of, I believe it was 1640.

Hm.

He also branded the instruments.

Oh.

And it says "Ernst Heinrich Roth, Markneukirchen."

And then there's a, a letter A and a, and a number.

The A stands for Amati.

You'll notice it had a one-, a beautiful, one-piece back, it's an oil-based varnish, and very typical of Ernst Heinrich Roth, kind of reddish, reddish-brown.

And then it faded into this very beautiful golden color.

Ah.

And then the tops were made out of Italian spruce.

Hm.

And those instruments that were made between 1920 and 1930... Mm-hmm.

...were the most desirable of the Roth instruments.

Mm-hmm.

Unfortunately, this bow, you can see, it was not a very expensive bow, and, and bugs have gotten to the hair.

Ah, mm-hmm.

The bow, as it is there, really has no value.

Okay, it may not have been the same bow that was...

He gave me about four different bows, so... Oh, really?

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

I would expect a bow that would have gone with this instrument would have been much more expensive.

Ah.

The case doesn't really have any value.

The real value is completely in the violin.

I would put a retail value on that of $10,000.

Oh, my... Oh, my goodness.

$10,000?

$10,000.

Oh, my goodness.

What did you expect?

Oh, my... What...

I, I had no idea.

Oh, my goodness, that's wonderful.

Well, thank you...

He would have been thrilled.

PEA: The American master blacksmith and metal designer Samuel Yellin was commissioned to design the door handles and hinges on the first and second floors of the 1915 manor house, the massive front gates, and the home's hefty front door.

GUEST: This is a print that my father acquired in 1975, and he had it in our home for all of my childhood.

And about 15 years ago, he gave it to me.

And we had it for a while, and then it just quite wasn't our style.

So we put it in our barn, and it's been in the barn with the chickens, um, for 15 years or so.

And my son just graduated from Akron U in graphic design, pulled it out of the barn and loved it.

And I saw it, and I said, "I'm gonna bring it today to 'Antiques Roadshow.'"

Do you have any idea what it was that drew your father to it in the first place?

He was an industrial designer, and he was very into graphic arts and lines and things like that, and he just loved the print.

It's a poster for the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico.

And if you look very carefully in between all the lines, you can see how this really exceptional graphic image was created around the five Olympic rings.

So the poster was designed by three people.

The, the chief designer for the entire look of the 1968 Mexico Olympics was the American designer Lance Wyman.

He was helped by Pedro Ramirez Vazquez, who was not only an architect, but also the president of the organizing committee of the Olympics, and Eduardo Terrazas, who was a founding member of the contemporary art scene in Mexico.

Not only was this sort of a psychedelic hippie motif, which was totally of the moment in 1968, but even more importantly, the designs echoed some of the Indigenous designs created by the Huichol peoples of Latin America.

So this really had a connection to the old world and the contemporary world, which helped make it this universal symbol for the games.

And they used the Olympic rings and, and they used the 68 number, and they built this op art image.

And op art, not pop art, but op art, which is short for optical art, Mm-hmm.

was basically this art form that played with fine lines and almost optical illusions, and the idea was to make it sort of shimmer and move as we look at it.

And I think it really accomplishes that.

Mm-hmm.

The 1968 Summer Games were famous for several reasons.

It was the first Olympic Games held in Latin America.

Mm-hmm.

Mexico City is at such an incredible elevation, uh, that athletes had to come before the games to train at such a high altitude.

Wow.

And then, perhaps the most famous event that happened at the 1968 Summer Olympics was when, after the 200-meter dash and during the award ceremony, when the American runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who'd won the gold medal and the bronze medal, respectively, were up on the podium, and they gave the Black Power salute, which is just a powerful image that resonated all across the world.

Absolutely.

If you could go back in time, say, to 2012, and you tried to sell this, you'd be able to sell it for about $600.

Hmm.

I'm very familiar with this image, and I've seen it in books, and I've seen it on the Internet.

I've never seen it in person before.

Oh.

And what struck me about it was how large it was.

Mm-hmm.

And 25,000 copies of this poster were printed.

Really?

Which seems like a tremendous amount.

But as they were distributed all across the world, many people chose not to keep them.

Uh, it still is very rare today.

If this were to come up at auction, it would fetch between $3,000 and $4,000.

Wow, really?

Oh, my.

(laughs) How exciting.

Oh... (laughing) A gold medal for you for that one.

Yay.

(laughing) Thank you.

GUEST: It belonged to my great-grandfather.

He acquired it back in the '30s.

I really have enjoyed this painting.

I actually asked my mother for the painting.

It was something I wanted to add to my collection of art.

So the painting depicts three moths.

The painting is an oil on panel.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1834 to 1903.

Arguably, the most important American artist who settled in Europe of the 19th century.

He was born in Massachusetts, but ultimately, by the 1850s, settled abroad.

A bit of a bon vivant in his day, he was friendly with other artists-- Degas, Courbet, Fantin-Latour; also critics and authors Charles Baudelaire, John Ruskin.

The interest in pattern and color became paramount in his work.

This composition would represent a lot more solidity, the kind of thing that one would associate with an earlier part of Whistler's career.

It says "Whistler" and what I read as "'59," which would be 1859.

Do we know where it was acquired?

Do we know how much was paid for it?

I do not know.

It could have possibly, uh, come from, uh, the Randolph H-Hearst collection.

My grandfather had purchased, uh, several pieces from that collection back in the, the '30s.

Okay.

To be able to purchase works from that collection in the '30s, one would need to be a person of some means, I would think.

He was very wealthy.

Uh, he was a inventor, entrepreneur.

I was not aware of, nor could I find, anything in the artist's oeuvre which really is similar to this.

That I could not find this work led me to question a little bit what we're looking at.

'59 was when Whistler moved to London.

He never went back to America after the 1850s.

I am not entirely convinced, in fact, have some doubts, regrettably, that this is the work of Whistler.

We have a painting that I could not find in the online catalogue raisonn.

Also, I'm not aware of this subject matter having been treated by Whistler.

The signature is not entirely consistent with other Whistler signatures with which I have familiarity.

Kind of a game of inches, but there's something about it that just doesn't seem to necessarily ring true, although, aesthetically, it's a wonderful painting.

An artist as important as Whistler requires authentication.

As with the case of most artists from the 19th and 20th century, there is one leading authority.

We would suggest the leading expert, Margaret MacDonald in Scotland, be the final word.

If not by Whistler, who created it?

I'm not certain.

Today at auction, I think you're probably talking about $1,000 to $1,500.

Okay.

And if it were to turn out to actually be, do you have any idea?

I had a feeling you were going to ask me then.

I think we're probably talking about a painting that, on the conservative end, could be $300,000 to $500,000 at auction today.

Maybe even more.

GUEST: I picked this up at an auction.

I was actually really sick with COVID probably a year ago.

This was my present to myself for, for making it through, basically.

(laughs) I believe I paid $800 for this guy.

You've gotta have one really strong shoulder and, uh, one... one really deaf ear.

He's deaf in that ear, yeah.

APPRAISER: Do you collect these?

GUEST: I do.

Okay.

I currently have about 30 of them.

APPRAISER: This is a JVC RC-M90.

And this is, what, 1981, 1982... Something like that, yeah.

And this was the largest of their boom boxes.

Mm-hmm.

Everyone wanted to have the biggest and the loudest and what have you.

Biggest and the loudest, yeah.

And they were advertised by the Harlem Globetrotters.

It was in all your magazines, all your comic books.

We all wanted one.

Yeah.

And everyone's chasing that now.

You can regularly find these at retail for around $2,000...

Okay.

maybe $3,000.

Oh, wow, yeah.

Can I try it?

Yeah, sure.

How heavy is this... oh, my God.

There you go, yeah.

Back in the day, I was cool.

They belonged to my mother-in-law.

I think in the book, it says she got them when she was eight years old.

And they lived on, on a little bench in her front room for as long as I can remember.

And then after she passed, we got them.

You have a Raggedy Ann, Andy, and Beloved Belindy In the early 1900s, Johnny Gruelle created the Raggedy Ann doll.

So he was an illustrator, and he wrote these books.

If you look at the condition of Ann and Andy, you can tell that they have been well loved.

The cloth is worn, and that makes sense because these two dolls were the earliest ones made by the Volland Company, and that was around 1918, 1919.

Because Ann... Raggedy Ann was so popular, they created Raggedy Andy as a companion brother, and then they created Belindy to be the caretaker of both of them in the nursery.

In the "Beloved Belindy" book, Raggedy Ann and Andy and Belindy are dolls, but they come to life when the parents and adults weren't around.

I love seeing your dolls, all three of them.

But especially I love seeing Beloved Belindy.

I've never seen her in person.

But when I look at her, it's a little tough because she was supposed to be the mammy to Raggedy Ann and Andy.

In the 1920s, when she was made, she was a product of her time.

And we look at it now, and we think it's racist.

The book was written and the dolls were made for predominantly white children to read and play with.

We can acknowledge what happened in the past, but we can look back on it now and appreciate how far we've come.

There's still a lot of work to do, but we have come so far.

And her growing up, she loved her doll.

Because she moved around so much and went to 26 different schools... Mm.

...these were the only friends she had.

I'm sure they were in her bed with her every night and brought her a lot of love and joy, too.

The books themselves don't have a lot of value.

They're about $25 each.

But they're important that they show the whole context.

Ann and Andy, they are worth about $200 to $400 each.

Whoa.

Okay.

Okay.

And Belindy?

What do you think she's worth?

Probably similar, maybe, a few dollars more.

She's missing her lace collar.

She's missing her apron.

And she has this spot on her sleeve, And the lace has come undone over here.

In her present condition, she's worth about $900.

(gasps) Wow.

That's amazing.

(chuckles) GUEST: It's one of several baseballs we have that Thurm signed.

He was a family friend.

We have lots of memorabilia of his.

It's all personal, since we did know him so well.

He wasn't a huge sports figure in our eyes.

He was a friend.

Thurm was in partnership on a particular development, which then my dad dedicated the street to him.

So there, there's a Munson Street in Canton, Ohio.

And, of course, the tragedy of his death is an unforgettable moment in, uh, in many, many people's lives.

I was, I was just a young kid in '79 when Thurman Munson was tragically killed in a small plane crash.

But that's one of my earliest memories, is, uh, hearing that on the news.

Yeah.

And, uh, being, being shocked by it.

But he continues to be an inspiration today and one of the most difficult signatures to get.

Thurman did not like signing autographs for most people.

No, he didn't.

Except for my father.

Well, he liked doing that, right, well, I mean, that, we're very fortunate for that.

Even in his biography, he talks about he'd much rather shake somebody's hand.

Right.

If it was a kid, it was a different story; he would sign.

Thurman Munson is considered one of the most important autographs, certainly of the last 50 years when it comes to baseball memorabilia.

Very, very rarely on a baseball by itself.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

And, and what's amazing about this ball in particular, it is not an official American League ball.

It's basically a ball you'd get at a sports store in the '70s.

And he signed it beautifully, and then it was obviously put back in the box... Mm-hmm.

...and nobody's touched it... No.

...since; it's pristine.

Today, people grade baseballs because of the boldness of the signature and the, the whiteness of the ball and things like that, the condition.

This is pretty flawless.

You have the personal connection; you have, of course, the memories of the man himself.

But this baseball, in and of itself, is a treasure.

The Yankee fandom?

I mean, you don't get much bigger than that when it comes to collectible baseballs and things.

Right.

If this was in an auction today, I think it could sell somewhere in the $20,000 to $30,000 range.

Just this one.

Oh, my.

That's unexpected.

Hmm.

He was larger than life, and he loved his family and he loved his community.

And we loved him.

I'd insure it for $40,000 to $50,000, somewhere in that range.

PEA: When Stan Hywet Hall opened in 1915, the staff consisted of over 20 people working inside the house as maids and cooks, as well as outside as gardeners, a chauffeur, a groomsman, and a mechanic.

As the 1920s progressed, the staff shrunk after F.A.

Seiberling left Goodyear in 1921 and was making less money at Seiberling Rubber Company.

GUEST: I brought in this pin.

It was in my father's safe deposit box.

And we had to open it when he passed, We actually had to, someone had to drill it open, and we found a bunch of jewelry that I had never seen before.

And this is one of the things I found.

I believe it really was my grandmother's jewelry.

My family on both sides left Germany in the '30s in a kind of a hurry.

And I believe, because of some of the other jewelry that was there, like a pocket watch, which I knew came from Germany.

I believe this was from Germany as well.

When I first saw this pin, there's something about how the light just hits that center stone and makes you go, "Whoa."

Do you know anything about what that stone might be?

My wife told me it might be a sapphire.

Your wife is correct.

It is a sapphire, and it's the kind of sapphire that, in the jewelry industry, we prize very, very much because, in my opinion, that color suggests that it's a sapphire from the Kashmir origin.

In about 1880, there was a landslide in the Himalayas that unearthed this deposit of very high-quality sapphires.

By about 1887, the mine had been depleted.

I believe the last operation of getting stones out of these mines was in the late '20s, about 1927.

So, these sapphires are quite rare.

We can't know for sure without a laboratory report, Uh-huh.

because what these labs do is they take a very high-quality, close-up, in-depth imaging of these stones, and they compare them to known samples from the area.

So they can tell you with some certainty where they're from.

However, in our experience, when you see the light hit that stone and you see that prized velvet blue, you kind of know it's probably gonna be from Kashmir.

I would date the pin to about 1915.

I think it's a classic art deco style with the Greek key and beautiful rose-cut diamonds.

It's a cushion-cut stone.

It probably, by formula, weighs about one carat.

It's framed by some fancy-cut sapphires, as well.

And I would like to point out there is one missing.

To replace that stone, it's not going to be inexpensive to do.

I can't determine where this was made because there's no marking on it that would suggest any country of manufacture.

Okay.

And we did test it: it is platinum-topped 14-karat gold.

So, to me, that suggests American manufacturer.

Okay.

So, who knows where it came from.

But I'm, I'm, I'm very glad it's here.

If we get that lab report, and it is a Kashmir sapphire, and it is about a carat, I would have no problem estimating this for auction in the $15,000 to $20,000 range.

Oh, my goodness.

I guess we're gonna have to reopen the estate.

I'm gonna have to divide this three ways.

(chuckling) Well, if the sapphire is not from Kashmir, I would still say in the $5,000 to $7,000 ballpark.

I brought a hammered copper vase that I found in my grandmother's attic, like, 15 years ago.

She was pretty tightfisted with the things that she had.

So the fact that I got to have it was, uh, pretty special.

I think it's Arts and Crafts style, 1910, 1920s.

It was an estate sale find.

It lights up.

It's like ductwork.

Um, industrial.

Probably used as a display in a window or something, I don't know.

It, it's the Terminal Tower, 1930-ish.

Somebody really loved the Terminal Tower.

Probably the most recognized building in Cleveland.

I just have to get a little, uh, gorilla to climb up it.

(laughs) GUEST: I got them through my father-in-law.

My wife and I inherited them.

When he was eight years old, he went to the Philippines, uh, with his family.

They were mining engineers.

And approximately when would that have been?

This would have been mid '30s.

Okay.

The war came along, and all the civilians were taken into an inter... internment camp, Santo Tomas in, uh, Manila.

He went into the internment camp at age 15.

He and the rest of the family were there.

He and his sister, mother, father.

Everyone was liberated when the Americans came in.

Uh, he was 19, it was on... actually on his birthday.

Some of the family decided to, to go back eventually and come back to the United States.

And his mother stayed on in the Philippines for a number of years.

When it... she felt it was time to come back, apparently she collected pieces that made her feel like what she saw.

Sure.

She enjoyed living there.

Sure.

That's my understanding.

So I see both of these paintings are dated 1955.

Right.

So she would have bought them probably approximately around then, shortly after the war.

And she would have still been living there in '55.

Correct?

Right, right, and she, she came back late '50s, early '60s.

What you brought are two oil paintings, oil on board.

Right.

They are by an artist named Fernando Amorsolo, a Filipino artist, a very well-known artist of the 20th century.

You brought me a smaller example here, which is a genre subject that he favored, and he produced a wide number of examples with these subjects.

Right.

Everyday life.

This is a laundress.

While it's not titled, that subject was very popular for him.

Right.

The other and larger is a harvesting subject.

So, a wonderful, uh, impressionist landscape depicting figures harvesting, probably, the rice harvest.

And this was yet another good example that he produced over and over and over.

A lot of American soldiers came back with his work.

That's why so many surfaced here in the States and in Europe, because they were, in some sense, treated as souvenirs to bring back.

And they were a great representation of everyday life in the Philippines.

Amorsolo was often referred to as "the Grand Old Man of Philippine art."

He was born in 1892.

He passed in 1972.

For the bulk of his career, he was very prolific.

Right.

He taught at the University of the Philippines.

He worked for the Bureau of Public Works.

At the beginning of his career and middle part of his career, he was more highly regarded, probably, by outsiders or Europeans...

Right.

...or Americans.

More recently, especially in the last ten years, we've seen a big change in the market for his work.

Mm-hmm.

There's been this repatriation of Filipino artists and their work.

And in the case of Amorsolo, he was the first sort of national painter of the Philippines.

He was honored with that posthumously.

Collectors consider him to have captured sort of the essence or the soul of the Philippines with his subjects.

Hmm.

Nowadays, his work is very sought after.

Do you know how much she paid for the works?

I have not a clue.

How many paintings did she collect?

I think at least ten pieces.

Were they distributed among family members or just... did they... most of them pass to you?

Most of them passed to us.

Okay.

For both of the paintings together, I would suggest a conservative auction estimate of $120,000 to $180,000.

Hmm.

That's a bit more than I was expecting.

(chuckles) The smaller example, I would estimate in the range of $40,000 to $60,000.

I am very surprised.

(chuckles) The larger harvest scene, I would put an auction estimate of $80,000 to $120,000.

Okay.

PEA: And now it's time for the "Roadshow" feedback booth.

I brought my mid-century modern Gunlocke chair, and we also bought... (laughs) brought our mid-century modern butler chair, which, uh, were worth a couple hundred dollars each.

But either way, we had a wonderful time, and we're sitting pretty.

And we got to sit in line.

(laughs) I'm 91 years old, and I drug this old man around all day, and he didn't do one thing for me.

He's not worth hardly anything.

Not worth you dragging.

No.

Then I have an 1890 or so sewing machine that was my great-great-grandmother's um, that I got out of her cedar chest with a lot of material that I don't know what they were doing with it, but it's, I thought it was a toy, but apparently it's not.

So, it's a traveling sewing machine.

I brought what I thought was an original lithograph.

It's not.

It's a picture of a lithograph, (chuckling) Practically worthless.

We bought these at a thrift store for $7 each, and they're worth $300.

Yay!

And we found out that this is worth $100.

And he will probably be in the next, um, "Captain Marvel," the third movie, because he's Brother Voodoo.

No, "Black Panther."

Oh, "Black Panther."

Why'd I say Captain Marvel?

Black Panther.

Because I love Captain Marvel, that's why.

We found out our items aren't worth a lot today.

Well, that's okay.

It's a beautiful day.

The gardens are amazing, the property is beautiful, and we had a great time.

Spent the day with my friend.

Best friends.

Woo-hoo!

PEA: Thanks for watching.

See you next time on "Antiques Roadshow."