Antiques Roadshow’s Best Finds
[*]The comforting and familiar nature of the Antiques Roadshow has been compared to “the feeling of a warm bath”. Since its inception in 1977, the show has delved into the possessions of others, with guests telling us stories of current owners, previous owners, and beyond. Usually the item can be worth a few hundred or thousands of pounds, but rarely, and most excitingly, is a real gem discovered.
[*]The Halt in the Desert – a painting by Richard Dadd
[*]In 1987 a couple from Barnstaple, North Devon attended an exhibition with a painting. Unknown to them, the painting was actually The holt in the desert of Richard Dadd, a national treasure that had been missing for over 100 years. After authentication, the painting was valued at £100,000.
[*]In the watercolor, a camp is seen on the shore of the Dead Sea with Dadd himself on the far right. The scene was painted from memory by Dadd from a mental institution, for after returning home from the expedition to Greece, Turkey, Palestine and Egypt, he murdered his own father ‘supposedly at the behest of the Egyptian god Osiris’.[*].
[*]Cobweb Bottle – by William Burges
[*]A guest brought a small brown bottle that his father had picked up in 1950 at the Antiques Roadshow in Skegness. The expert was delighted to reveal that the bottle was in fact an original by William Burges, the renowned Victorian designer, which had been lost for most of the 20th century. The bottle was engraved with a silver, enamel, moonstone and pearl spider web design and was valued at £20,000 – £30,000.
[*]Collection of silver drinking glasses
[*]After inheriting a collection of silver drinking vessels, a young man from Crawley took them to the Antiques Roadshow for examination. In an astonishing discovery, each piece that emerged seemed to be more valuable than the last. The loot was valued at a remarkable £100,000 and later sold at auction for £78,000, requiring some serious antiquities insurance cover.
[*]fabergé brooch
[*]A lady who loves jewelery brought a bag full of brooches to the expert Geoffrey Munn of Chatsworth House. The guest had bought the bag at auction for just £30 and was shocked when the expert pulled out each of the brooches and valued them in succession at £125 – £150. That was until he saw the real gem, a genuine pink Fabergé brooch. , valued at £10,000.
[*]Lalique Vase
[*]Possibly one of the shrewdest buys to appear on Antiques Roadshow was this 1929 work by celebrated designer Rene Lalique, which later sold at auction for £32,450. The owner had bought it at a car sale in the south of Scotland for just £1.