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"Antiques Roadshow" Appraiser Nick Dawes
44 Plays2 years ago
Nick Dawes knows as much about antiques as probably anyone alive. With more than one hundred appearances on “Antiques Roadshow” since its US edition debuted in 1996, Dawes has sifted through thousands, perhaps millions, of family heirlooms in the thirty to sixty seconds allotted for each supplicant by the busy TV production schedule. Talking antiques, Dawes reminisces about “the ones that got away,” and the time he discovered a ceramic vase painted by Picasso that sold for $400,000. Word to the wise: if you ever hear the phrase “this is a very interesting object . . .” brace yourself—your curio is probably worthless.
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Transcript
Introduction to "Curious Objects" and Nicholas Dawes
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:13
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:14
Speaker
Have you watched Antiques Roadshow?
00:00:16
Speaker
Don't answer that.
00:00:17
Speaker
Of course you have.
00:00:18
Speaker
We all know Antiques Roadshow.
00:00:19
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.
00:00:28
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.
00:00:43
Speaker
It's terrific television, exciting and suspenseful, and it really is for so many people their first encounter with the antiques industry.
00:00:51
Speaker
But what we see on TV is just the tip of the iceberg of what actually happens at the roadshow.
00:00:56
Speaker
And today, I want to take you behind the scenes.
00:01:00
Speaker
Unfortunately, I have the perfect guest to do just that.
Nicholas Dawes' Background and Expertise
00:01:03
Speaker
I'm speaking with Nicholas Dawes, who has appeared on the roadshow starting with its second ever broadcast here in the U.S.,
00:01:09
Speaker
He's a specialist and really the authority on the extraordinary works of glass by René Lalique.
00:01:15
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.
00:01:24
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.
00:01:33
Speaker
Before we get started, just a reminder that you can see images of the objects we talk about at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
00:01:40
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.
00:01:50
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.
Quick Fire Questions with Nicholas Dawes
00:01:59
Speaker
With that said, let's start with some rapid fire questions.
00:02:01
Speaker
Nick, are you ready?
00:02:03
Speaker
I am ready, Ben.
00:02:03
Speaker
Thank you.
00:02:05
Speaker
What's the oldest object you personally own?
00:02:08
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.
00:02:18
Speaker
I've always been fascinated with ancient Egypt.
00:02:20
Speaker
I have an Egyptian shabti.
00:02:23
Speaker
It's probably the oldest thing I own.
00:02:24
Speaker
How old is that?
00:02:27
Speaker
It's sort of late dynastic, perhaps 3,000 years old.
00:02:32
Speaker
There's an asteroid headed for Earth, and you are, of course, on the escape pod.
00:02:36
Speaker
What one object or artwork are you bringing?
00:02:39
Speaker
Well, first of all, I'm happy to be on the escape pod.
00:02:41
Speaker
Hope you're there too, Ben.
00:02:43
Speaker
I doubt that very much.
00:02:46
Speaker
I bring something small, but...
00:02:49
Speaker
You know, for me, it would have to be an object that's very dear to my heart.
00:02:54
Speaker
I grew up in the West Midlands of England.
00:02:57
Speaker
It's an object made in the Staffordshire potteries.
00:02:59
Speaker
It's a teapot, and it has no real commercial value, but a lot of sentimental value to me.
00:03:06
Speaker
It's a...
00:03:07
Speaker
It's in the form of a soccer ball, a football.
00:03:09
Speaker
And it was made to celebrate my team winning the FA Cup in
The Value of Decorative Arts
00:03:16
Speaker
the 1940s.
00:03:16
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.
00:03:29
Speaker
My Wolverhampton Wanderers teapot, I would take with me.
00:03:33
Speaker
I love that soccer is the thing that we're going to preserve in the post-apocalypse.
00:03:37
Speaker
What's the most valuable object or artwork that you've ever touched?
00:03:40
Speaker
Well, that's a good question.
00:03:41
Speaker
I went to see the Salvatore Mundi at Christie's like lots of people, went and paid homage.
00:03:47
Speaker
I can't remember if I touched it, if you were allowed to or not.
00:03:52
Speaker
I go to a lot of the great painting exhibitions at Sotheby's and Christie's in particular.
00:03:57
Speaker
I did touch a Monet at Sotheby's last year that sold for 100 million.
00:04:03
Speaker
So that's probably it.
00:04:04
Speaker
You're now banned inexplicably from your current specialty, Lalique and Art Glass, and you have to pick a new one.
00:04:10
Speaker
What's it going to be?
00:04:11
Speaker
Oh, that's easy for me.
00:04:12
Speaker
It would be arms and armor.
00:04:14
Speaker
I've always been drawn to particularly armor, and I think the great objects are so fabulous.
00:04:23
Speaker
I like helmets in particular.
00:04:25
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.
00:04:35
Speaker
I'd love to have a whole chronology of them.
00:04:38
Speaker
That's fascinating.
00:04:39
Speaker
We've actually had arms and armor on Curious Objects before.
00:04:42
Speaker
I had a really fun conversation with Chassica Feliz about a great set of Saxon armors.
00:04:47
Speaker
What's your favorite museum to visit?
00:04:51
Speaker
Well, that's a good question.
00:04:52
Speaker
I think I'd have to go sort of romantic history again, in my case.
00:04:57
Speaker
There are lots of fabulous museums.
00:04:59
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.
00:05:09
Speaker
The old one was fabulous.
00:05:11
Speaker
But there's a museum in the English Midlands in Shropshire, a museum of tiles, Victorian tiles set in a Victorian tile factory.
00:05:19
Speaker
And I met my wife in that factory or very near to it.
00:05:23
Speaker
And it's a fabulous museum.
00:05:25
Speaker
So that's what I think is my favorite museum.
00:05:28
Speaker
Well, it's hard to compete with the place where you met your wife.
00:05:31
Speaker
What's one misconception that people have about your field that you'd like to correct?
00:05:38
Speaker
Well, if you consider my field of decorative arts,
00:05:42
Speaker
Decorative arts are looked down on by many people.
00:05:44
Speaker
The French call them les arts mineurs, you know, the minor arts.
00:05:48
Speaker
I've always thought that's unfair.
00:05:50
Speaker
The Bauhaus really taught us that decorative arts are perhaps superior in many ways to just about anything else.
00:05:57
Speaker
So I think it's a branding issue.
00:06:00
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.
First Art Love and Emotional Impact of Art
00:06:09
Speaker
Well, you're preaching to the choir, but I appreciate that.
00:06:11
Speaker
What artist or crafts person, living or dead, would you invite to dinner?
00:06:18
Speaker
Oh, that's easy.
00:06:19
Speaker
It'd be René Lalique.
00:06:21
Speaker
He did die in 1945, but to me, he's a great hero of mine.
00:06:27
Speaker
And I'd love to pick his brain.
00:06:28
Speaker
Ideally, I'd like to have him with his friend and another outstanding design genius of the 20th century together.
00:06:38
Speaker
That would be Ettore Bugatti.
00:06:40
Speaker
So the two of them, they were friends, by the way, and did have dinner together.
00:06:43
Speaker
But I'd love to be in on that one.
00:06:45
Speaker
Well, please invite me.
00:06:46
Speaker
I would love to be a fly on the wall for that.
00:06:48
Speaker
What's the first object or artwork that you remember falling in love with?
00:06:54
Speaker
Hmm.
00:06:57
Speaker
I think it's when I was in high school, grammar school in England, doing A-level art.
00:07:01
Speaker
I was probably 15 studying art history, and there was a Pompeian fresco painting.
00:07:10
Speaker
It's a girl holding a flower sort of viewed from behind.
00:07:14
Speaker
It's a spectacular vertical emphasis image.
00:07:18
Speaker
And it was right there in my E.H.
00:07:20
Speaker
Gombrich story of art.
00:07:22
Speaker
And I just was riveted by it for some reason.
00:07:25
Speaker
And I saw it for the first time a couple of years ago when I visited Naples.
00:07:30
Speaker
It's in the archaeological museum there.
00:07:32
Speaker
And I just stood in front of it for 10 minutes and stared at
Discovering a Valuable Picasso Ceramic
00:07:36
Speaker
it.
00:07:36
Speaker
It had a real effect on me.
00:07:38
Speaker
Wow.
00:07:39
Speaker
What is the coolest art or decorative artist discovery that you've made?
00:07:47
Speaker
Over my rather long career, I've made a lot of them.
00:07:52
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.
00:08:02
Speaker
And there in the corner of the apartment, rather unassuming apartment, was a big tall vase, pottery vase full of tennis balls.
00:08:12
Speaker
They'd just been sort of left there.
00:08:13
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.
00:08:21
Speaker
We sold it for, I think it was close
Regrets Over Letting Valuable Pieces Go
00:08:23
Speaker
to $400,000.
00:08:23
Speaker
That was a good find.
00:08:27
Speaker
Why tennis balls, of all things?
00:08:29
Speaker
That's what they kept in it.
00:08:31
Speaker
I guess you have to put them somewhere.
00:08:34
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?
00:08:44
Speaker
Well, you learn from your mistakes, don't you?
00:08:48
Speaker
I would say the biggest mistake was not keeping things.
00:08:52
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.
00:09:02
Speaker
So just about anything and everything I had at any one time was for sale and was sold, but not keeping enough.
00:09:09
Speaker
There were a few great things I've had in my hands that I've sold that I wish
Impactful Artworks: From Frescoes to Lalique
00:09:15
Speaker
I had back.
00:09:15
Speaker
That's...
00:09:17
Speaker
That's my biggest regret.
00:09:19
Speaker
What was the most recent object or artwork you've seen that sent shivers up your spine?
00:09:29
Speaker
You know, I might say that Pompeian fresco painting that I saw in Naples.
00:09:34
Speaker
I mean, it just did it for, I don't know why, it just did it for me.
00:09:38
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.
00:09:48
Speaker
Or something just outstanding I see in a museum that will do it for me.
00:09:55
Speaker
But I think it was that.
00:09:56
Speaker
I go back to that fresco painting.
Behind the Scenes of "Antiques Roadshow"
00:09:59
Speaker
Well, Nicholas Dawes, are you ready to talk about the Antiques Roadshow?
00:10:05
Speaker
Always ready to talk about that.
00:10:06
Speaker
One of my favorite subjects.
00:10:07
Speaker
Fantastic.
00:10:08
Speaker
So I mentioned that you've been on the show since almost the very beginning.
00:10:12
Speaker
How did you first get involved?
00:10:15
Speaker
That's a good question.
00:10:17
Speaker
I have an old friend, Eric Knowles, who's been on the British show since the beginning, pretty much.
00:10:24
Speaker
As you said, it's been around for about five decades.
00:10:28
Speaker
That, by the way, makes it one of the
00:10:31
Speaker
most successful and longest running shows in the history of television.
00:10:36
Speaker
We've been in this country on PBS under WGBH from Boston as producers.
00:10:43
Speaker
We've been around, I think this is our 27th year.
00:10:47
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.
00:10:56
Speaker
So I did.
00:10:58
Speaker
This was pre-production and they pretty much took me on right away as one of the appraisers.
00:11:06
Speaker
In the early days, there were only a handful of appraisers who toured and I was lucky to be one of them.
00:11:11
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.
00:11:20
Speaker
And I think that was 27 years ago.
00:11:22
Speaker
Wow.
00:11:23
Speaker
So talk me through a roadshow weekend from the perspective of an appraiser, an expert.
00:11:29
Speaker
What does your schedule actually look like?
00:11:34
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.
00:11:46
Speaker
We tape all day on one day.
00:11:50
Speaker
It used to be a Saturday.
00:11:52
Speaker
In recent years, it's been a Tuesday, typically.
00:11:55
Speaker
But we will typically get there the day before, and we have meetings on the evening before 5 p.m.
00:12:03
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.
00:12:12
Speaker
as a group of appraisers.
00:12:15
Speaker
And these meetings can be very interesting.
00:12:17
Speaker
You know, we were in Anchorage, Alaska, for instance, a couple of months ago.
00:12:22
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.
00:12:35
Speaker
But we learned a great deal of what to say and for that matter what not to say about that.
00:12:42
Speaker
So we get there the day before and we tape all day.
00:12:45
Speaker
We're there at 7.30 in the morning and we leave perhaps 7 o'clock in the evening.
00:12:52
Speaker
And then most of us go home the following day because we're busy.
00:12:56
Speaker
Depending on where we're going, we might make a trip of it.
00:13:00
Speaker
I spent three days in Alaska.
00:13:03
Speaker
If it's an interesting place, a place we want to go, make a vacation out of it, we might spend a week.
00:13:09
Speaker
But typically, we get there the day before in the morning, leave the day after the taping in the morning.
00:13:16
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?
Evaluating and Selecting Items for TV
00:13:28
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.
00:13:38
Speaker
In the old days of the show, this is pre-pandemic,
00:13:41
Speaker
we would have up to 7,000 or 8,000 people come, each with two items.
00:13:49
Speaker
So that was a lot of items.
00:13:51
Speaker
And each guest was allowed between 30 and 60 seconds with an appraiser.
00:13:58
Speaker
So you're there at 7, 7.30 in the morning.
00:14:01
Speaker
There's a line of people with bags.
00:14:03
Speaker
And I sit typically at the ceramics table or the decorative arts table or sometimes the silver table.
00:14:09
Speaker
These are all very, very busy tables.
00:14:13
Speaker
So it's nonstop.
00:14:14
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.
00:14:22
Speaker
And sometimes, by the way, that's all you do.
00:14:26
Speaker
It's not unknown or uncommon that you'll go to this place, you'll sit there all day and nothing comes along.
00:14:33
Speaker
that ultimately is taped or is even suitable for taping.
00:14:38
Speaker
So that can happen.
00:14:40
Speaker
But it's typical that you tape perhaps once or twice.
00:14:45
Speaker
You rarely tape more than twice in a day, on a Saturday.
00:14:49
Speaker
And the taping itself takes
00:14:52
Speaker
you know, maybe five to ten minutes.
00:14:55
Speaker
And the preparation, if you like, is very minimal.
00:15:00
Speaker
It's often next to nothing.
00:15:03
Speaker
You know, someone will come along and you'll...
00:15:06
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?
00:15:13
Speaker
And they'll say, well, I'd like to know whatever.
00:15:16
Speaker
They often want to know how old it is.
00:15:18
Speaker
So, you know, could it have come with Great Aunt Mary from Ireland in 1870 kind of thing?
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker
And you give them an idea of what it is and where it's from and how old it is.
00:15:29
Speaker
And often that's all they want to know.
00:15:31
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.
00:15:37
Speaker
And a lot of things I see, ceramic objects have sentimental value but very little monetary value.
00:15:47
Speaker
Very occasionally, something comes along and it's put in front of you and you think, oh, this could be a TV thing.
00:15:53
Speaker
And we make that judgment based on a combination of things.
00:16:00
Speaker
It could be high value.
00:16:02
Speaker
It could be something of great local interest or something just of great sort of visual impact.
00:16:09
Speaker
Or perhaps the guest themselves has a great story about it that you want to
00:16:15
Speaker
bring to television.
00:16:17
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?
00:16:27
Speaker
I see.
00:16:27
Speaker
So you don't want to spoil it.
00:16:30
Speaker
Not at all.
00:16:31
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.
00:16:43
Speaker
Well, as you said in your opening, who hasn't watched Antiques Rocha?
00:16:46
Speaker
We get, by the way, 10 million viewers a week still after 27 years.
00:16:53
Speaker
Everyone's seen it.
00:16:54
Speaker
Everyone knows it.
00:16:55
Speaker
And yes, they suspect something.
00:16:58
Speaker
But you can get on TV for lots of different reasons.
00:17:02
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.
00:17:10
Speaker
Sometimes it is.
00:17:11
Speaker
But...
00:17:12
Speaker
Commonly, it isn't.
00:17:14
Speaker
But yes, they have a suspicion.
Appraisers' Expertise and Volunteer Work
00:17:19
Speaker
But once you've got to that point, you keep the people quiet.
00:17:23
Speaker
You wrap up the object.
00:17:25
Speaker
They're not allowed to talk to anyone.
00:17:26
Speaker
They sit in a quiet place.
00:17:27
Speaker
The producer comes along and talks to the guest.
00:17:32
Speaker
And they make the final decision as to whether or not it should go to taping.
00:17:38
Speaker
And that can depend on various factors that the producers who are television experts make a decision on.
00:17:45
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.
00:17:53
Speaker
And the appraiser who has seen it, bear in mind for a minute maybe,
00:17:58
Speaker
has a second opportunity to go and look at it again, perhaps.
00:18:02
Speaker
We also have to discuss it with at least one other colleague.
00:18:06
Speaker
So we'll say, you know, what do you think of this?
00:18:09
Speaker
But unless you know it as an appraiser, unless you really nailed it,
00:18:15
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
00:18:41
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.
00:18:50
Speaker
But by the time you've seen it for 30 seconds or a minute, you know everything you're going to say, typically.
00:18:56
Speaker
So it's not like you're hitting the books in between seeing the object and going on TV with it.
00:19:01
Speaker
There's no sort of extensive research and consultation process that happens behind the scenes.
00:19:10
Speaker
Not for me.
00:19:12
Speaker
Yes, you'll check some things.
00:19:13
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.
00:19:24
Speaker
Or you might look up the name of an individual who you want to talk about.
00:19:29
Speaker
to get a little more color on it that you weren't aware of.
00:19:34
Speaker
Or something topical might come up by looking at it quickly or talking to a colleague.
00:19:40
Speaker
But no, there's very, very little.
00:19:42
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.
00:19:53
Speaker
But in the decorative arts, we don't do much.
00:19:57
Speaker
All of the appraisers appear by invitation.
00:19:59
Speaker
We are volunteers.
00:20:02
Speaker
We do not get paid for this.
00:20:05
Speaker
In fact, we pay our own everything, our own airfare, travel, hotel meals and everything else.
00:20:12
Speaker
So there's no compensation.
00:20:14
Speaker
It is public television.
00:20:16
Speaker
And we sign an agreement with WGBH that we will not do any commercial activity associated with the show.
00:20:26
Speaker
So it's very, if you like, clean.
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00:20:57
Speaker
Gambling problem?
00:20:58
Speaker
Call 1-800-GAMBLER.
00:20:59
Speaker
So I'm curious, you see so many different objects.
00:21:03
Speaker
It sounds like you might look at hundreds in the course of a day.
00:21:06
Speaker
How often do you encounter an object of a type that you've just literally never seen before?
00:21:15
Speaker
Almost never.
00:21:16
Speaker
Almost never.
00:21:17
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.
00:21:32
Speaker
So to come up with something that none of us know what it is or have seen it before is extremely unusual.
Handling Unknown Objects on the Show
00:21:40
Speaker
It almost never happens.
00:21:44
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.
00:21:54
Speaker
But that's about the closest we get.
00:21:57
Speaker
Have you ever been just completely stumped by an object that came to you on the roadshow?
00:22:04
Speaker
Yes.
00:22:05
Speaker
I've sometimes, at the decorative arts table, I've sometimes been stumped by what an object is.
00:22:12
Speaker
Now, I always like to know what is it before I go any further.
00:22:16
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?
00:22:29
Speaker
And
00:22:30
Speaker
Nine times out of 10, you'll get a very good answer from one of your colleagues.
00:22:34
Speaker
So it does happen occasionally, just, you know, what is this thing?
00:22:40
Speaker
But we'll, as I said, collectively, we'll have an answer.
00:22:45
Speaker
Do any examples come to mind of something that was particularly difficult to figure out?
00:22:50
Speaker
Well, this year, this season, this summer, I taped something at Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts.
00:22:59
Speaker
I taped...
00:23:02
Speaker
An object that I didn't know what it was when it came to my table originally.
00:23:06
Speaker
I looked at it and the owner didn't really know what it was either.
00:23:08
Speaker
And I showed it.
00:23:09
Speaker
It was a fabulous object.
00:23:11
Speaker
Beautifully made, superb craftsmanship.
00:23:14
Speaker
I thought I knew what it was.
00:23:15
Speaker
I thought it was something to do with beekeeping.
00:23:18
Speaker
And I showed it to a colleague of mine who I know is a beekeeper.
00:23:22
Speaker
His family keeps bees and he confirmed what it was.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's what we call a B-box.
00:23:27
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.
00:23:38
Speaker
So I became something of an expert on this object in a very short time.
00:23:43
Speaker
And in the end, I was very proud of the appraisal.
00:23:46
Speaker
I haven't seen it yet.
00:23:47
Speaker
It'll be taped.
00:23:48
Speaker
It'll be aired next year.
Guest Interactions and Valuation Impact
00:23:51
Speaker
But that's a good example of something.
00:23:54
Speaker
I guarantee Ben, if I showed it to you, you'd say, this is a spectacular thing.
00:23:58
Speaker
What the heck is it?
00:24:00
Speaker
You know?
00:24:04
Speaker
So, of course, what everyone...
00:24:07
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.
00:24:18
Speaker
And I wonder when you're arriving at that value, what does that actually mean?
00:24:25
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?
00:24:35
Speaker
Well, that's a good question.
00:24:35
Speaker
And if you carefully, we always put the value into some sort of context.
00:24:41
Speaker
We don't just say, oh, this is worth $1,000.
00:24:44
Speaker
We say, if this was at auction, it could be expected to sell for $1,000.
00:24:51
Speaker
if this was in a retail shop, you would expect a $1,000 price tag on it.
00:24:56
Speaker
Or if you wanted to insure it, you should insure it for $1,000.
00:25:00
Speaker
And these three values have different contexts.
00:25:05
Speaker
So we always put it in context.
00:25:08
Speaker
It's not uncommon that the owner is surprised at how high it is, and that may be why it's chosen.
00:25:18
Speaker
And that's part of the job, really, of the producer when they interview the owner.
00:25:23
Speaker
They'll ask the owner, you know, have you ever had it valued, and do you have any idea of the appraisal value?
00:25:28
Speaker
And if they say, oh, yeah, we had it valued last week, and...
00:25:32
Speaker
by a top appraiser, we know it's worth $10,000.
00:25:35
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.
00:25:46
Speaker
There's no theater to that.
00:25:49
Speaker
There's less theater.
00:25:51
Speaker
So that's sort of fairly carefully considered.
00:25:55
Speaker
But no, it's not unusual.
00:25:57
Speaker
And you've seen these great occasions when
00:26:02
Speaker
the owner is bowled over by the value.
00:26:06
Speaker
It works the other way too.
00:26:08
Speaker
There are owners who think that their thing is very valuable and for one reason or another it isn't.
00:26:14
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.
00:26:21
Speaker
We will sometimes tape that because of the lessons to be learned
00:26:27
Speaker
And that can have the opposite effect on the owner.
00:26:30
Speaker
They can get quite, you know, not exactly upset, but they can get dismayed about it.
00:26:39
Speaker
So the value is an important part of the show.
00:26:43
Speaker
But if you're watching it, just watch it in context.
00:26:48
Speaker
I like, my favorite one is when you know the history of the object in terms of its value.
00:26:56
Speaker
And, you know, yes, what's the story?
00:26:58
Speaker
Well, I bought this at a thrift shop and I paid $3 for it.
00:27:03
Speaker
And, you know, if it's worth anything more than, let's say, $500, they're going to be thrilled.
00:27:09
Speaker
So that's always a good start.
00:27:13
Speaker
What do you say on average that people underestimate or overestimate the value of the pieces that they bring?
00:27:20
Speaker
I'd say they overestimate it typically.
00:27:23
Speaker
People tend to think that anything old is valuable by virtue of being old.
00:27:28
Speaker
And we know this is not true.
00:27:32
Speaker
Um,
00:27:33
Speaker
You know, value, and we'll often point this out at the show, comes from two things, supply and demand.
00:27:40
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?
00:27:49
Speaker
So there's a lot of that.
00:27:51
Speaker
We don't see a great deal of things that are in limited supply with very high demand.
00:27:57
Speaker
Do you have a good story about someone being shocked at how valuable their item turned out to be?
00:28:05
Speaker
Well, you know, at the ceramics table, you don't see a lot of big money.
00:28:09
Speaker
As you know, the decorative arts are in the shallow end of the pool in terms of value.
00:28:14
Speaker
The big money is usually in paintings or sometimes in Chinese objects, you know, Chinese objects.
00:28:23
Speaker
Because, I mean, it doesn't look like much and it's a million dollars.
00:28:26
Speaker
And we've had a few of them.
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah, I've had a couple.
00:28:30
Speaker
I had one...
00:28:32
Speaker
Just this season again, actually, this summer, a gentleman had bought something for $1,200.
00:28:38
Speaker
It was a big vase.
00:28:39
Speaker
It turned out to be an exhibition piece, an American exhibition piece made in the early 20th century.
00:28:47
Speaker
Quite a special object.
00:28:49
Speaker
Well documented, but sort of lost to history, and he'd owned it.
00:28:54
Speaker
He didn't really know the value, and we valued it at over $25,000.
00:28:57
Speaker
And he paid, as they say, $1,200 for it.
00:29:03
Speaker
He was very happy.
00:29:04
Speaker
And it's rare at my table at Pottery and Porcelain or Decorative Arts in general, it goes beyond that.
00:29:10
Speaker
So that's a big hit for us.
00:29:13
Speaker
And what about the opposite?
00:29:15
Speaker
A story about someone who is particularly disappointed or dismayed?
00:29:19
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.
00:29:28
Speaker
We like the opposite.
00:29:29
Speaker
That's not really the tone of the show.
00:29:33
Speaker
Right.
00:29:34
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.
00:29:50
Speaker
We have to protect it and we keep it in a special place and all that.
00:29:54
Speaker
And they just want to know how many thousands and they'll show you the thing and it's not worth anything.
00:30:00
Speaker
And it's an old piece of broken pottery or something.
00:30:02
Speaker
And you say, then you have to be very diplomatic.
00:30:06
Speaker
And we, because frankly, most of the things I see have almost literally no monetary value.
00:30:13
Speaker
So we come up with different euphemisms for no monetary value.
00:30:19
Speaker
We all say, well, this is...
00:30:22
Speaker
This has a lot of sentimental value, I'm sure, or a lot of family value.
00:30:28
Speaker
Or you say it's interesting.
00:30:29
Speaker
This is a really interesting object.
00:30:33
Speaker
And in general, if an appraiser tells you your object is interesting, it's all over.
00:30:38
Speaker
There's no money in it at all.
00:30:41
Speaker
So we're very diplomatic.
00:30:43
Speaker
And as I said earlier, most people are actually less concerned about the monetary value than they are about just...
00:30:51
Speaker
authenticating it, identifying exactly what it is.
00:30:54
Speaker
And in general, we're very good at that, I think.
00:30:58
Speaker
What's the single most valuable object that you've encountered in your time on the show?
00:31:06
Speaker
I've had a couple of Lalique things worth over 30,000.
00:31:10
Speaker
I had a
00:31:14
Speaker
perfume bottle.
00:31:14
Speaker
This was a long time ago.
00:31:16
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.
00:31:23
Speaker
And most of them, I was going through them and I said, well, this one's worth like $40 and
00:31:27
Speaker
this one's worth maybe a hundred and this one's $75.
00:31:30
Speaker
And I went through the whole list.
00:31:32
Speaker
And then at the end I put the La Lique one and I said, this one's worth about $30,000.
00:31:35
Speaker
And she couldn't believe it.
00:31:40
Speaker
It's on camera.
00:31:40
Speaker
It was taped.
00:31:42
Speaker
And, um, that was a good one.
00:31:45
Speaker
And I think that's, yeah, that's, and she assumed they were all the same, you know, they're all worse.
00:31:52
Speaker
Right.
00:31:53
Speaker
I get the sense that you have a little bit of a flair for the dramatic.
00:31:58
Speaker
Well, they like that.
00:31:59
Speaker
You know, it can't be boring or why would anyone watch?
Evolution of the Antiques Business
00:32:05
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.
00:32:13
Speaker
So you mentioned that it's been 27 years now that you've been going on the Red Show.
00:32:21
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.
00:32:33
Speaker
I'm curious how the show itself has changed over that time period.
00:32:40
Speaker
It's a good question.
00:32:41
Speaker
The show is based on the historical British show, and we've kept the same format, more or less.
00:32:49
Speaker
So in terms of what you see and the way it's done, it's very traditional.
00:32:54
Speaker
And if you watched it 20 or 30 years ago, you would recognize what we do today.
00:33:03
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.
00:33:17
Speaker
Most people didn't have that, or if they did, they didn't have access to it.
00:33:21
Speaker
Certainly people over, you know, a national age.
00:33:27
Speaker
But today, everyone has that.
00:33:29
Speaker
They have it on their phone, they have it anywhere, everywhere.
00:33:32
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.
00:33:46
Speaker
But it's archived everything.
00:33:48
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.
00:34:02
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.
00:34:17
Speaker
And this is the primary impact, I think, on the project.
00:34:22
Speaker
on our world of art and artiques because it's become much more transparent, much more well-documented.
00:34:32
Speaker
than it used to be to the wide public.
00:34:37
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.
Advice for Show Participants and Conclusion
00:34:45
Speaker
They would say, oh, I didn't really look at that.
00:34:47
Speaker
Now everyone researches it to some degree before they come in.
00:34:53
Speaker
And there's only so far you can go researching a piece of...
00:34:58
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.
00:35:12
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.
00:35:23
Speaker
That's true.
00:35:24
Speaker
They are much better educated.
00:35:26
Speaker
Not all of them.
00:35:27
Speaker
And in many respects, the best guests have not done that at all.
00:35:31
Speaker
They've just found something at a flea market and brought it in and they haven't checked it or they inherited it.
00:35:38
Speaker
They found it in the attic and they thought, oh, I'll take that to the roadshow.
00:35:41
Speaker
And they've done no homework at all.
00:35:43
Speaker
And this is often what we, you know, this is what we like to see.
00:35:47
Speaker
This is the best guest.
00:35:50
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.
00:36:06
Speaker
What advice would you give to them?
00:36:08
Speaker
Well, that's simple.
00:36:09
Speaker
Bring something you know nothing about.
00:36:13
Speaker
That's what the show is for.
00:36:16
Speaker
It's to teach you about what you've got.
00:36:19
Speaker
Bring something you know nothing about.
00:36:21
Speaker
And don't be tempted just to bring the oldest thing in the house.
00:36:26
Speaker
You know, people will often bring the oldest thing in the house, which is...
00:36:30
Speaker
For a lot of families, it's a family Bible.
00:36:32
Speaker
They may well have a Bible from the 18th century, and they'll bring that thinking, oh, wow, this is real.
00:36:38
Speaker
And as you probably know, most of those Bibles have almost no monetary value.
00:36:42
Speaker
So don't just bring something that's old, but bring something you know nothing about.
00:36:48
Speaker
And on the other side of that coin, if you know everything about it, don't bring it because why bother?
00:36:54
Speaker
You know, you know all you need to know.
00:36:57
Speaker
So why come and talk to an expert about it?
00:37:02
Speaker
Well, Nicholas Daz, this has been great fun.
00:37:05
Speaker
Thanks for taking us behind the curtain of the Antiques Roadshow.
00:37:09
Speaker
Ben, it's been a pleasure, a great pleasure.
00:37:11
Speaker
At any time I am at your service.
00:37:15
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati with social media and web support by Sarah Bellotta.
00:37:21
Speaker
Sierra Holt is our digital media and editorial associate.
00:37:24
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:37:26
Speaker
And I'm Ben Miller.
00:37:48
Speaker
The Burlington Coat Event is back.
00:37:51
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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