Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller.
Speaker: Have you watched Antiques Roadshow?
Speaker: Don't answer that.
Speaker: Of course you have.
Speaker: We all know Antiques Roadshow.
Speaker: It's the single most important cultural touchstone for the world of antiques, and it's been running for nearly 50 years now in the UK and around 25 in the US.
Speaker: So I know you've seen the shock on people's faces when they find out that their grandmother's dusty old oil painting is a masterpiece, or when the dollar signs pop up and they realize that little collectible they bought for $100 is worth 100 times that.
Speaker: It's terrific television, exciting and suspenseful, and it really is for so many people their first encounter with the antiques industry.
Speaker: But what we see on TV is just the tip of the iceberg of what actually happens at the roadshow.
Speaker: And today, I want to take you behind the scenes.
Speaker: Unfortunately, I have the perfect guest to do just that.
Speaker: I'm speaking with Nicholas Dawes, who has appeared on the roadshow starting with its second ever broadcast here in the U.S.,
Speaker: He's a specialist and really the authority on the extraordinary works of glass by René Lalique.
Speaker: But beyond that, he's knowledgeable about a wide range of decorative arts, having led departments at Phillips and Sotheby's, now senior vice president of heritage auctions.
Speaker: He's also the former chairman and CEO of the Salma Gundy Club, the oldest artist club in New York, and the author of numerous books on decorative arts.
Speaker: Before we get started, just a reminder that you can see images of the objects we talk about at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: And if you'd like to get in touch directly, you can email me at curiousobjectspodcast at gmail.com or find me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: And I am as always eternally grateful to those of you who support Curious Objects by leaving a rating or a review on your podcast app.
Speaker: With that said, let's start with some rapid fire questions.
Speaker: Nick, are you ready?
Speaker: I am ready, Ben.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: What's the oldest object you personally own?
Speaker: Well, if you discount rocks and minerals, which are not really objects, the oldest designed objects I own, I own a couple of things from the ancient world.
Speaker: I've always been fascinated with ancient Egypt.
Speaker: I have an Egyptian shabti.
Speaker: It's probably the oldest thing I own.
Speaker: How old is that?
Speaker: It's sort of late dynastic, perhaps 3,000 years old.
Speaker: There's an asteroid headed for Earth, and you are, of course, on the escape pod.
Speaker: What one object or artwork are you bringing?
Speaker: Well, first of all, I'm happy to be on the escape pod.
Speaker: Hope you're there too, Ben.
Speaker: I doubt that very much.
Speaker: I bring something small, but...
Speaker: You know, for me, it would have to be an object that's very dear to my heart.
Speaker: I grew up in the West Midlands of England.
Speaker: It's an object made in the Staffordshire potteries.
Speaker: It's a teapot, and it has no real commercial value, but a lot of sentimental value to me.
Speaker: It's a...
Speaker: It's in the form of a soccer ball, a football.
Speaker: And it was made to celebrate my team winning the FA Cup in the 1940s.
Speaker: It's sort of an Art Deco teapot shaped like a football with a football player as the handle and the FA Cup as the knop on the top.
Speaker: My Wolverhampton Wanderers teapot, I would take with me.
Speaker: I love that soccer is the thing that we're going to preserve in the post-apocalypse.
Speaker: What's the most valuable object or artwork that you've ever touched?
Speaker: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker: I went to see the Salvatore Mundi at Christie's like lots of people, went and paid homage.
Speaker: I can't remember if I touched it, if you were allowed to or not.
Speaker: I go to a lot of the great painting exhibitions at Sotheby's and Christie's in particular.
Speaker: I did touch a Monet at Sotheby's last year that sold for 100 million.
Speaker: So that's probably it.
Speaker: You're now banned inexplicably from your current specialty, Lalique and Art Glass, and you have to pick a new one.
Speaker: What's it going to be?
Speaker: Oh, that's easy for me.
Speaker: It would be arms and armor.
Speaker: I've always been drawn to particularly armor, and I think the great objects are so fabulous.
Speaker: I like helmets in particular.
Speaker: I think I'd want to be a collector of helmets back to the earliest ones from the ancient world and up to, I don't know, a modern Kevlar helmet.
Speaker: I'd love to have a whole chronology of them.
Speaker: That's fascinating.
Speaker: We've actually had arms and armor on Curious Objects before.
Speaker: I had a really fun conversation with Chassica Feliz about a great set of Saxon armors.
Speaker: What's your favorite museum to visit?
Speaker: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker: I think I'd have to go sort of romantic history again, in my case.
Speaker: There are lots of fabulous museums.
Speaker: If you'd asked me that 10, 20 years ago, I'd have said the Imperial War Museum in London, but I don't really like what they've done to it in recent years.
Speaker: The old one was fabulous.
Speaker: But there's a museum in the English Midlands in Shropshire, a museum of tiles, Victorian tiles set in a Victorian tile factory.
Speaker: And I met my wife in that factory or very near to it.
Speaker: And it's a fabulous museum.
Speaker: So that's what I think is my favorite museum.
Speaker: Well, it's hard to compete with the place where you met your wife.
Speaker: What's one misconception that people have about your field that you'd like to correct?
Speaker: Well, if you consider my field of decorative arts,
Speaker: Decorative arts are looked down on by many people.
Speaker: The French call them les arts mineurs, you know, the minor arts.
Speaker: I've always thought that's unfair.
Speaker: The Bauhaus really taught us that decorative arts are perhaps superior in many ways to just about anything else.
Speaker: So I think it's a branding issue.
Speaker: Decorative arts, as far as I'm concerned, are equally, if not more important to the fine arts or any other branch of the arts, for that matter.
Speaker: Well, you're preaching to the choir, but I appreciate that.
Speaker: What artist or crafts person, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?
Speaker: Oh, that's easy.
Speaker: It'd be René Lalique.
Speaker: He did die in 1945, but to me, he's a great hero of mine.
Speaker: And I'd love to pick his brain.
Speaker: Ideally, I'd like to have him with his friend and another outstanding design genius of the 20th century together.
Speaker: That would be Ettore Bugatti.
Speaker: So the two of them, they were friends, by the way, and did have dinner together.
Speaker: But I'd love to be in on that one.
Speaker: Well, please invite me.
Speaker: I would love to be a fly on the wall for that.
Speaker: What's the first object or artwork that you remember falling in love with?
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: I think it's when I was in high school, grammar school in England, doing A-level art.
Speaker: I was probably 15 studying art history, and there was a Pompeian fresco painting.
Speaker: It's a girl holding a flower sort of viewed from behind.
Speaker: It's a spectacular vertical emphasis image.
Speaker: And it was right there in my E.H.
Speaker: Gombrich story of art.
Speaker: And I just was riveted by it for some reason.
Speaker: And I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago when I visited Naples.
Speaker: It's in the archaeological museum there.
Speaker: And I just stood in front of it for 10 minutes and stared at it.
Speaker: It had a real effect on me.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: What is the coolest art or decorative artist discovery that you've made?
Speaker: Over my rather long career, I've made a lot of them.
Speaker: I think I'd have to say it was about three years ago, I went on what I assumed would be a fairly routine house call on the west side of Manhattan.
Speaker: And there in the corner of the apartment, rather unassuming apartment, was a big tall vase, pottery vase full of tennis balls.
Speaker: They'd just been sort of left there.
Speaker: And it turned out to be a Picasso ceramic, one of the largest ones, those big ones with the figure painted all the way down.
Speaker: We sold it for, I think it was close to $400,000.
Speaker: That was a good find.
Speaker: Why tennis balls, of all things?
Speaker: That's what they kept in it.
Speaker: I guess you have to put them somewhere.
Speaker: What is a mistake that you've made in the art or decorative arts realm that you regret or that you perhaps learned something from?
Speaker: Well, you learn from your mistakes, don't you?
Speaker: I would say the biggest mistake was not keeping things.
Speaker: I was a dealer for much of my career and I had three sons and they, you know, three sons go to college, they're expensive.
Speaker: So just about anything and everything I had at any one time was for sale and was sold, but not keeping enough.
Speaker: There were a few great things I've had in my hands that I've sold that I wish I had back.
Speaker: That's...
Speaker: That's my biggest regret.
Speaker: What was the most recent object or artwork you've seen that sent shivers up your spine?
Speaker: You know, I might say that Pompeian fresco painting that I saw in Naples.
Speaker: I mean, it just did it for, I don't know why, it just did it for me.
Speaker: But it's not unusual that I see something, could be a new object by René Lalique that I've not seen, which doesn't happen very often, but it does.
Speaker: Or something just outstanding I see in a museum that will do it for me.
Speaker: But I think it was that.
Speaker: I go back to that fresco painting.
Speaker: Well, Nicholas Dawes, are you ready to talk about the Antiques Roadshow?
Speaker: Always ready to talk about that.
Speaker: One of my favorite subjects.
Speaker: Fantastic.
Speaker: So I mentioned that you've been on the show since almost the very beginning.
Speaker: How did you first get involved?
Speaker: That's a good question.
Speaker: I have an old friend, Eric Knowles, who's been on the British show since the beginning, pretty much.
Speaker: As you said, it's been around for about five decades.
Speaker: That, by the way, makes it one of the
Speaker: most successful and longest running shows in the history of television.
Speaker: We've been in this country on PBS under WGBH from Boston as producers.
Speaker: We've been around, I think this is our 27th year.
Speaker: I got involved through a phone call from Eric Knowles in London who said, you know, there are some people here from Boston looking at the show and you should talk to them.
Speaker: So I did.
Speaker: This was pre-production and they pretty much took me on right away as one of the appraisers.
Speaker: In the early days, there were only a handful of appraisers who toured and I was lucky to be one of them.
Speaker: I was invited to the very first show but didn't go for some reason, so I went to the second taping ever in Philadelphia.
Speaker: And I think that was 27 years ago.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So talk me through a roadshow weekend from the perspective of an appraiser, an expert.
Speaker: What does your schedule actually look like?
Speaker: Well, it's pretty much the same each taping because they've got – WGBH has it down to very precise science, if you like.
Speaker: We tape all day on one day.
Speaker: It used to be a Saturday.
Speaker: In recent years, it's been a Tuesday, typically.
Speaker: But we will typically get there the day before, and we have meetings on the evening before 5 p.m.
Speaker: We'll have meetings going over what we need to know for the specific city or anything in particular that we need to catch up with.
Speaker: as a group of appraisers.
Speaker: And these meetings can be very interesting.
Speaker: You know, we were in Anchorage, Alaska, for instance, a couple of months ago.
Speaker: We heard from tribal leaders about the various issues related to native Alaskans and Alaskan natives, who are two very different groups, by the way.
Speaker: But we learned a great deal of what to say and for that matter what not to say about that.
Speaker: So we get there the day before and we tape all day.
Speaker: We're there at 7.30 in the morning and we leave perhaps 7 o'clock in the evening.
Speaker: And then most of us go home the following day because we're busy.
Speaker: Depending on where we're going, we might make a trip of it.
Speaker: I spent three days in Alaska.
Speaker: If it's an interesting place, a place we want to go, make a vacation out of it, we might spend a week.
Speaker: But typically, we get there the day before in the morning, leave the day after the taping in the morning.
Speaker: So how much time overall are you spending meeting people and looking at the things they've brought versus prepping for filming and filming itself?
Speaker: There's very little time spent prepping for filming and or filming itself, certainly compared to how much time you spend talking to people.
Speaker: In the old days of the show, this is pre-pandemic,
Speaker: we would have up to 7,000 or 8,000 people come, each with two items.
Speaker: So that was a lot of items.
Speaker: And each guest was allowed between 30 and 60 seconds with an appraiser.
Speaker: So you're there at 7, 7.30 in the morning.
Speaker: There's a line of people with bags.
Speaker: And I sit typically at the ceramics table or the decorative arts table or sometimes the silver table.
Speaker: These are all very, very busy tables.
Speaker: So it's nonstop.
Speaker: You just have people all day bringing you things and you do your very best to make them happy within a short period of time.
Speaker: And sometimes, by the way, that's all you do.
Speaker: It's not unknown or uncommon that you'll go to this place, you'll sit there all day and nothing comes along.
Speaker: that ultimately is taped or is even suitable for taping.
Speaker: So that can happen.
Speaker: But it's typical that you tape perhaps once or twice.
Speaker: You rarely tape more than twice in a day, on a Saturday.
Speaker: And the taping itself takes
Speaker: you know, maybe five to ten minutes.
Speaker: And the preparation, if you like, is very minimal.
Speaker: It's often next to nothing.
Speaker: You know, someone will come along and you'll...
Speaker: What normally happens is they bring out the object, you look at it, and I will say to them, well, what would you like to know?
Speaker: And they'll say, well, I'd like to know whatever.
Speaker: They often want to know how old it is.
Speaker: So, you know, could it have come with Great Aunt Mary from Ireland in 1870 kind of thing?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you give them an idea of what it is and where it's from and how old it is.
Speaker: And often that's all they want to know.
Speaker: We also give them a value which some people do want to know, but more and more I find they're less interested in that.
Speaker: And a lot of things I see, ceramic objects have sentimental value but very little monetary value.
Speaker: Very occasionally, something comes along and it's put in front of you and you think, oh, this could be a TV thing.
Speaker: And we make that judgment based on a combination of things.
Speaker: It could be high value.
Speaker: It could be something of great local interest or something just of great sort of visual impact.
Speaker: Or perhaps the guest themselves has a great story about it that you want to
Speaker: bring to television.
Speaker: And in that case, you don't say anything to the guests other than, well, would you be interested in talking about this on TV rather than talking about it here?
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: So you don't want to spoil it.
Speaker: Not at all.
Speaker: But they must suspect sometime if you are telling them that their piece might be a candidate for TV, they must suspect that there is something special going on with it.
Speaker: Well, as you said in your opening, who hasn't watched Antiques Rocha?
Speaker: We get, by the way, 10 million viewers a week still after 27 years.
Speaker: Everyone's seen it.
Speaker: Everyone knows it.
Speaker: And yes, they suspect something.
Speaker: But you can get on TV for lots of different reasons.
Speaker: It could be... I think they secretly suspect that it's worth a lot of money or they hope it's worth a lot of money.
Speaker: Sometimes it is.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: Commonly, it isn't.
Speaker: But yes, they have a suspicion.
Speaker: But once you've got to that point, you keep the people quiet.
Speaker: You wrap up the object.
Speaker: They're not allowed to talk to anyone.
Speaker: They sit in a quiet place.
Speaker: The producer comes along and talks to the guest.
Speaker: And they make the final decision as to whether or not it should go to taping.
Speaker: And that can depend on various factors that the producers who are television experts make a decision on.
Speaker: And if it does go to taping, the guest takes the object into the green room and they sit there quietly and they don't talk to anyone.
Speaker: And the appraiser who has seen it, bear in mind for a minute maybe,
Speaker: has a second opportunity to go and look at it again, perhaps.
Speaker: We also have to discuss it with at least one other colleague.
Speaker: So we'll say, you know, what do you think of this?
Speaker: But unless you know it as an appraiser, unless you really nailed it,
Speaker: you're really discouraged to take it to television if you think it's something but you're not sure you can't really take it to television but you just you know you know ben i mean if it's a silver object you know what it is and you know everything you need to say about it you can read every read the mark read this you know and and it's like that you we know it oh yeah that's a so-and-so so-and-so and we and we know the values
Speaker: So we talk to other people to get maybe a different perspective on it, something you didn't know that's interesting and you get the full story.
Speaker: But by the time you've seen it for 30 seconds or a minute, you know everything you're going to say, typically.
Speaker: So it's not like you're hitting the books in between seeing the object and going on TV with it.
Speaker: There's no sort of extensive research and consultation process that happens behind the scenes.
Speaker: Not for me.
Speaker: Yes, you'll check some things.
Speaker: You know, if you're talking about a particular factory and you're not sure the exact date that they were founded or the exact date, you know, you look up stuff like that.
Speaker: Or you might look up the name of an individual who you want to talk about.
Speaker: to get a little more color on it that you weren't aware of.
Speaker: Or something topical might come up by looking at it quickly or talking to a colleague.
Speaker: But no, there's very, very little.
Speaker: I think some of the other appraisers in different categories, paintings or books and manuscripts, things like that, they maybe have to do a little more homework.
Speaker: But in the decorative arts, we don't do much.
Speaker: All of the appraisers appear by invitation.
Speaker: We are volunteers.
Speaker: We do not get paid for this.
Speaker: In fact, we pay our own everything, our own airfare, travel, hotel meals and everything else.
Speaker: So there's no compensation.
Speaker: It is public television.
Speaker: And we sign an agreement with WGBH that we will not do any commercial activity associated with the show.
Speaker: So it's very, if you like, clean.
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Speaker: So I'm curious, you see so many different objects.
Speaker: It sounds like you might look at hundreds in the course of a day.
Speaker: How often do you encounter an object of a type that you've just literally never seen before?
Speaker: Almost never.
Speaker: Almost never.
Speaker: And I'm using the collective you here because I'm sitting with two or three colleagues who are equally expert in perhaps different areas of ceramics, decorative arts, silver than I might be.
Speaker: So to come up with something that none of us know what it is or have seen it before is extremely unusual.
Speaker: It almost never happens.
Speaker: You know, we'll see something that's clearly a piece of fairly modern studio ceramic made by somebody we've never heard of, what we call kind of a side of the road pottery.
Speaker: But that's about the closest we get.
Speaker: Have you ever been just completely stumped by an object that came to you on the roadshow?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I've sometimes, at the decorative arts table, I've sometimes been stumped by what an object is.
Speaker: Now, I always like to know what is it before I go any further.
Speaker: And that's where it's great to have 50 colleagues sitting around the room who you can wander over to and show them this thing and say, what do you think this is?
Speaker: And
Speaker: Nine times out of 10, you'll get a very good answer from one of your colleagues.
Speaker: So it does happen occasionally, just, you know, what is this thing?
Speaker: But we'll, as I said, collectively, we'll have an answer.
Speaker: Do any examples come to mind of something that was particularly difficult to figure out?
Speaker: Well, this year, this season, this summer, I taped something at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.
Speaker: I taped...
Speaker: An object that I didn't know what it was when it came to my table originally.
Speaker: I looked at it and the owner didn't really know what it was either.
Speaker: And I showed it.
Speaker: It was a fabulous object.
Speaker: Beautifully made, superb craftsmanship.
Speaker: I thought I knew what it was.
Speaker: I thought it was something to do with beekeeping.
Speaker: And I showed it to a colleague of mine who I know is a beekeeper.
Speaker: His family keeps bees and he confirmed what it was.
Speaker: It's what we call a B-box.
Speaker: And I ultimately learned a great deal about it within the course of the 30 minutes I had between looking at it and going on camera with the thing.
Speaker: So I became something of an expert on this object in a very short time.
Speaker: And in the end, I was very proud of the appraisal.
Speaker: I haven't seen it yet.
Speaker: It'll be taped.
Speaker: It'll be aired next year.
Speaker: But that's a good example of something.
Speaker: I guarantee Ben, if I showed it to you, you'd say, this is a spectacular thing.
Speaker: What the heck is it?
Speaker: You know?
Speaker: So, of course, what everyone...
Speaker: either secretly or openly watches the roadshow for is that magical moment when the number pops up and you find out just how valuable this object is.
Speaker: And I wonder when you're arriving at that value, what does that actually mean?
Speaker: And how does that number that comes up on the screen, how does that compare to what the owner might actually get if they choose to sell it?
Speaker: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker: And if you carefully, we always put the value into some sort of context.
Speaker: We don't just say, oh, this is worth $1,000.
Speaker: We say, if this was at auction, it could be expected to sell for $1,000.
Speaker: if this was in a retail shop, you would expect a $1,000 price tag on it.
Speaker: Or if you wanted to insure it, you should insure it for $1,000.
Speaker: And these three values have different contexts.
Speaker: So we always put it in context.
Speaker: It's not uncommon that the owner is surprised at how high it is, and that may be why it's chosen.
Speaker: And that's part of the job, really, of the producer when they interview the owner.
Speaker: They'll ask the owner, you know, have you ever had it valued, and do you have any idea of the appraisal value?
Speaker: And if they say, oh, yeah, we had it valued last week, and...
Speaker: by a top appraiser, we know it's worth $10,000.
Speaker: That may actually prevent the thing being taped because if the owner knows everything about it, including the value, it takes away some of the impact.
Speaker: There's no theater to that.
Speaker: There's less theater.
Speaker: So that's sort of fairly carefully considered.
Speaker: But no, it's not unusual.
Speaker: And you've seen these great occasions when
Speaker: the owner is bowled over by the value.
Speaker: It works the other way too.
Speaker: There are owners who think that their thing is very valuable and for one reason or another it isn't.
Speaker: Either it's a fake or it's not authentic or it's damaged and restored or it's just not as valuable as they think.
Speaker: We will sometimes tape that because of the lessons to be learned
Speaker: And that can have the opposite effect on the owner.
Speaker: They can get quite, you know, not exactly upset, but they can get dismayed about it.
Speaker: So the value is an important part of the show.
Speaker: But if you're watching it, just watch it in context.
Speaker: I like, my favorite one is when you know the history of the object in terms of its value.
Speaker: And, you know, yes, what's the story?
Speaker: Well, I bought this at a thrift shop and I paid $3 for it.
Speaker: And, you know, if it's worth anything more than, let's say, $500, they're going to be thrilled.
Speaker: So that's always a good start.
Speaker: What do you say on average that people underestimate or overestimate the value of the pieces that they bring?
Speaker: I'd say they overestimate it typically.
Speaker: People tend to think that anything old is valuable by virtue of being old.
Speaker: And we know this is not true.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: You know, value, and we'll often point this out at the show, comes from two things, supply and demand.
Speaker: And people will bring you things that are in pretty big supply with limited demand, or maybe in small supply, but with no demand, you know?
Speaker: So there's a lot of that.
Speaker: We don't see a great deal of things that are in limited supply with very high demand.
Speaker: Do you have a good story about someone being shocked at how valuable their item turned out to be?
Speaker: Well, you know, at the ceramics table, you don't see a lot of big money.
Speaker: As you know, the decorative arts are in the shallow end of the pool in terms of value.
Speaker: The big money is usually in paintings or sometimes in Chinese objects, you know, Chinese objects.
Speaker: Because, I mean, it doesn't look like much and it's a million dollars.
Speaker: And we've had a few of them.
Speaker: Yeah, I've had a couple.
Speaker: I had one...
Speaker: Just this season again, actually, this summer, a gentleman had bought something for $1,200.
Speaker: It was a big vase.
Speaker: It turned out to be an exhibition piece, an American exhibition piece made in the early 20th century.
Speaker: Quite a special object.
Speaker: Well documented, but sort of lost to history, and he'd owned it.
Speaker: He didn't really know the value, and we valued it at over $25,000.
Speaker: And he paid, as they say, $1,200 for it.
Speaker: He was very happy.
Speaker: And it's rare at my table at Pottery and Porcelain or Decorative Arts in general, it goes beyond that.
Speaker: So that's a big hit for us.
Speaker: And what about the opposite?
Speaker: A story about someone who is particularly disappointed or dismayed?
Speaker: Well, most of that doesn't get to camera because the WGBH, I think, doesn't want too many of those, you know, too many downers on camera.
Speaker: We like the opposite.
Speaker: That's not really the tone of the show.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So we do a lot of that at the table and it's very often someone will come along and say, we know it's valuable because my grandmother always said this is the most valuable thing.
Speaker: We have to protect it and we keep it in a special place and all that.
Speaker: And they just want to know how many thousands and they'll show you the thing and it's not worth anything.
Speaker: And it's an old piece of broken pottery or something.
Speaker: And you say, then you have to be very diplomatic.
Speaker: And we, because frankly, most of the things I see have almost literally no monetary value.
Speaker: So we come up with different euphemisms for no monetary value.
Speaker: We all say, well, this is...
Speaker: This has a lot of sentimental value, I'm sure, or a lot of family value.
Speaker: Or you say it's interesting.
Speaker: This is a really interesting object.
Speaker: And in general, if an appraiser tells you your object is interesting, it's all over.
Speaker: There's no money in it at all.
Speaker: So we're very diplomatic.
Speaker: And as I said earlier, most people are actually less concerned about the monetary value than they are about just...
Speaker: authenticating it, identifying exactly what it is.
Speaker: And in general, we're very good at that, I think.
Speaker: What's the single most valuable object that you've encountered in your time on the show?
Speaker: I've had a couple of Lalique things worth over 30,000.
Speaker: I had a
Speaker: perfume bottle.
Speaker: This was a long time ago.
Speaker: A woman had collected a bunch of perfume bottles and she had a dozen of them and she spread them all out on the table.
Speaker: And most of them, I was going through them and I said, well, this one's worth like $40 and
Speaker: this one's worth maybe a hundred and this one's $75.
Speaker: And I went through the whole list.
Speaker: And then at the end I put the La Lique one and I said, this one's worth about $30,000.
Speaker: And she couldn't believe it.
Speaker: It's on camera.
Speaker: It was taped.
Speaker: And, um, that was a good one.
Speaker: And I think that's, yeah, that's, and she assumed they were all the same, you know, they're all worse.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I get the sense that you have a little bit of a flair for the dramatic.
Speaker: Well, they like that.
Speaker: You know, it can't be boring or why would anyone watch?
Speaker: Not so much dramatic, but I think it's not so much how you say it, it's what you pick in the first place.
Speaker: So you mentioned that it's been 27 years now that you've been going on the Red Show.
Speaker: And obviously the antiques business has changed tremendously in that period of time, the internet being a huge transformation, but all kinds of other changes as well.
Speaker: I'm curious how the show itself has changed over that time period.
Speaker: It's a good question.
Speaker: The show is based on the historical British show, and we've kept the same format, more or less.
Speaker: So in terms of what you see and the way it's done, it's very traditional.
Speaker: And if you watched it 20 or 30 years ago, you would recognize what we do today.
Speaker: I think the fundamental difference is with the people who come to the show, because even when I started, internet was in something of its infancy, as was the concept of the personal computer.
Speaker: Most people didn't have that, or if they did, they didn't have access to it.
Speaker: Certainly people over, you know, a national age.
Speaker: But today, everyone has that.
Speaker: They have it on their phone, they have it anywhere, everywhere.
Speaker: What the internet has done, it hasn't just given you access so you can tape in and type in and see what this object is based on its mark or even just its appearance.
Speaker: But it's archived everything.
Speaker: So it's archived all the results of this thing being sold at auction, especially this works for paintings very well or it works for just about any object in the world of art and antiques.
Speaker: So you can, with a minimum of skill, figure out the history of value, the history, the record of sales of something quite easily through archived data.
Speaker: And this is the primary impact, I think, on the project.
Speaker: on our world of art and artiques because it's become much more transparent, much more well-documented.
Speaker: than it used to be to the wide public.
Speaker: When we started Roadshow, people would come in and they'd have no idea what this thing was, even though it might say on the bottom, you know, Wedgewood or something.
Speaker: They would say, oh, I didn't really look at that.
Speaker: Now everyone researches it to some degree before they come in.
Speaker: And there's only so far you can go researching a piece of...
Speaker: unmarked ceramic ware for instance, but if you've got a painting with a signature on it or just about anything that's well signed, you can research it pretty clearly before you come along with it.
Speaker: So in your experience, people are now much better equipped and much better educated about what they're bringing to the show than they were a generation ago.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: They are much better educated.
Speaker: Not all of them.
Speaker: And in many respects, the best guests have not done that at all.
Speaker: They've just found something at a flea market and brought it in and they haven't checked it or they inherited it.
Speaker: They found it in the attic and they thought, oh, I'll take that to the roadshow.
Speaker: And they've done no homework at all.
Speaker: And this is often what we, you know, this is what we like to see.
Speaker: This is the best guest.
Speaker: So if you were giving advice to someone who was thinking about bringing something to a taping, maybe they're really hoping that they end up on TV, or maybe they're just hoping to get the best information they can, or maybe they're trying to decide what piece would be best to bring.
Speaker: What advice would you give to them?
Speaker: Well, that's simple.
Speaker: Bring something you know nothing about.
Speaker: That's what the show is for.
Speaker: It's to teach you about what you've got.
Speaker: Bring something you know nothing about.
Speaker: And don't be tempted just to bring the oldest thing in the house.
Speaker: You know, people will often bring the oldest thing in the house, which is...
Speaker: For a lot of families, it's a family Bible.
Speaker: They may well have a Bible from the 18th century, and they'll bring that thinking, oh, wow, this is real.
Speaker: And as you probably know, most of those Bibles have almost no monetary value.
Speaker: So don't just bring something that's old, but bring something you know nothing about.
Speaker: And on the other side of that coin, if you know everything about it, don't bring it because why bother?
Speaker: You know, you know all you need to know.
Speaker: So why come and talk to an expert about it?
Speaker: Well, Nicholas Daz, this has been great fun.
Speaker: Thanks for taking us behind the curtain of the Antiques Roadshow.
Speaker: Ben, it's been a pleasure, a great pleasure.
Speaker: At any time I am at your service.
Speaker: Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Bellotta.
Speaker: Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: And I'm Ben Miller.
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