RECUT: Newport, Part 5

♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: There's good news for Roadshow guests in Newport, Rhode Island.

(laughs): Wow.

Thanks, Granddad.

(laughs) PEÑA: Stay tuned for these moments and more.

It's part five of "Antiques Roadshow Recut: Rosecliff."

♪ ♪ PEÑA: Rosecliff, one of several spectacular mansions in Newport, was the lavish setting for our Roadshow event back in 2017.

Take a look at the treasures that came to Roadshow at Rosecliff.

WOMAN: Well, my late mother-in-law invited my husband and I about 20 years ago to her parents' house after they passed away, saying, "Would you like to come through?"

She knew we liked to see art, antiques, collectibles.

She said, "Come on through, and see if there's anything you like."

So we went into Bryn Mawr, and we found this old wooden barrel in the basement, sealed up, and we opened it up and found these in hay and wood chips, and all nine of them were together and intact.

Okay, and has anybody ever looked at them?

No.

All righty.

Well, these were made in 1928 by Frederick Carder.

And Frederick Carder was a genius in glass.

These are not marked, but there's no question that they're Steuben, and they are opalescent glass, and then there's Cintra here.

Okay.

This is what makes them extremely rare for stemware, because Cintra is a very, very rare color to have.

That's what I like most about them.

It is, it is-- they really stand out.

Glass is a little bit down in price, as many things are.

But because they have such a modern shape, everybody's after modern, so you have two different markets that you can... Well, it's a great martini glass.

Great martini glass.

And I would say that these would be worth-- and this would be all nine of them-- in a retail market, you're looking at $2,000 to $3,000.

Great, that's great.

So you'll enjoy those.

Well, they make a pretty cocktail.

They certainly do.

♪ ♪ WOMAN: It was in the home of an old family friend.

When she passed on, I was able to have it.

That's all I know.

The combination for the Holy Grail in signatures is to have Gehrig and Ruth on the same ball.

Ah.

People want this combination.

But having Bob Smith on here, who was basically a journeyman player...

Right.

As was Hank Gowdy... Yep.

This actually takes away a little bit from the value.

Yeah, yeah.

So value-wise, you're still looking at probably somewhere between $8,000 and $10,000.

Oh, yes, I'll take it, I'll take it.

Awesome, thank you!

I can say nice catch.

(laughs) Awesome.

♪ ♪ MAN: It's been in the family as long as I can remember.

We always thought this sword was from the Civil War until, recently, my mom did some research, and we believe it might be even older.

Actually, it is.

What was your ancestor's name?

Thomas Noyes.

Thomas Noyes.

Mm-hmm.

He's from Newbury, Massachusetts.

And he was a lieutenant colonel in the militia.

He died about 1730.

But right here, we have "T.N."

for Thomas Noyes.

One of the other things I noticed, as soon as I looked at it... ...was right here, we have a little touchmark.

And it says, "Hurd."

Jacob Hurd was a silversmith from Boston whose dates were 1702 to 1758.

There are a few issues with some rust on the blade.

Right.

And some pitting on the blade.

But the silver hilt is in wonderful condition.

Over here, that's the original silver hook that would go on the scabbard, so you slide it into the frog and hold it in place.

This is what's called a small sword.

It was a gentleman's sword, and they would use it as a badge of rank.

Not a fighting sword, necessarily.

So it would have a very thin blade.

You knew he was an officer because he was wearing this formal sword.

What is this made out of?

It's steel, iron-- steel.

Iron.

Yep, it's early, it's got all the proper touchmarks.

It's got two stories-- the story of Thomas Noyes and of Jacob Hurd as a silversmith.

I took it around to some of the silver experts and Americana experts, and we all agreed that given how early it is, and with the two provenances to the maker and your ancestor, that at auction, it would probably be in the $8,000 to $12,000 range.

Wow.

(laughs): Wow.

If it didn't have initials or that touchmark on it, it would be around $800 to $1,200.

Okay.

So, yeah, you've got a great sword here.

Awesome.

WOMAN: They belonged to my neighbor growing up.

She was an older woman, and my father helped take care of her.

And when she passed away, we received a lot of the things in her home, and she knew that I liked fashion, so she wanted me to have them.

They were designed by Henry Creange, who worked for the Cheney Silk Company.

And he was an artist who studied under Rodin in Paris.

He was the representative of the United States at the French Exposition in Paris in 1925.

These fabrics were designed for the 1930 collection, these patterns on the fabric.

And he called the collection "Staccato," because he felt there was so much rhythm and movement in the fabrics.

He was inspired by Picasso, Chagall, all the contemporary art of that period.

It was a time when everything was changing, becoming much more vibrant, hemlines were going up.

The one right next to you with the lawn chair and the one here at the top right, where she's in her bathing costume with the anchor on the front, they're sort of absolutely perfect for Newport.

Yes.

It's very "Great Gatsby."

Yeah.

I would put a retail price on these of $100 to $150 each.

And you have 46 more in the book, so I would value them between $5,000 and $7,500 for the group.

Wow.

They're beautiful, I love them.

♪ ♪ (waves crashing) WOMAN: The captain of the ship the Mary Ann, he was my great-great-great- grandfather.

And we're just really interested in finding out a little bit more about what we have.

One of the pieces has James Madison's signature, so that was something that we thought might be of value.

Well, basically the ship was a China trade ship.

And much of the wealth of New England was going to China, picking up goods, exotic goods, whatever they could get... Mm-hmm.

Bringing them back, trading them, sometimes even trading them along the way.

The crew, they'd sometimes be out a couple of years at a time, but when they got back safely, the captain would get paid very well, the merchants who owned the ship made a huge amount of money, and the crew were paid.

Mm-hmm.

Now, this is the sort of invoice book for the whole ship.

Mm-hmm.

And it tells everything they got, everything they picked up, where they got it, where they brought it to, and the sums, the amounts, the weights.

And so it's a very interesting item of what a China trade ship was doing.

Yeah.

This document, which is the one signed by Madison, this is basically the passport.

The passport is for the captain.

And the last document, which I really like for the engraving at the top...

I do, too.

It's a bill of passage.

And it was sort of a safe passage to Canton, China, and without that, they could get stopped.

Okay.

And the War of 1812 was just at the end, and they needed to make sure they could get there.

Now, this pitcher-- actually, it's a beautiful pitcher.

It's United States on this side.

Mm-hmm.

It was done in Liverpool, and these are relatively common, but the real thing that helps is the ship.

The name, okay.

I mean, that's what brings it all together.

What you have as a group would probably be in the value of $2,000 to $3,000.

Okay.

In a retail market.

Mm-hmm.

♪ ♪ PEÑA: The era's trendy interior decorating firm Allard and Sons executed the captivating stucco relief and painted canvas ceiling in the ballroom.

In a nod to the Grand Trianon of Versailles, the model for Rosecliff, the drifting clouds in a bright blue sky motif is based on late-17th-century French decor.

WOMAN: I have a sterling silver Asian teapot.

It was my mother's.

MAN: What do you know about it?

Nothing-- that's why I'm here.

(laughs) These are plastic.

You know, two dollars and two dollars.

Several companies in Spain made these.

These are a little more collectible.

I've seen these for $35, $45.

Okay.

It's a mezzotint, which is a type of print.

And this particular one is made after a painting by William Beechey.

In the late 19th, early 20th century, it was quite valuable.

Their appeal has gone down.

Okay.

And it's probably worth about $150, $200 now.

That's great.

I think I paid a dollar, so, yippee!

APPRAISER: I'd like to start off by asking a really important question: How do you pronounce your father's name?

"Tay-uh," Tage Frid.

Tage Frid-- it's Danish.

Exactly.

And your father came here in 1948?

Exactly.

It's so unusual to find a single piece of your father's work, it's so rare.

You've got four.

Please tell us what you know about these pieces.

Well, I inherited them from my father.

And he got the idea sitting at a horse show, watching my brother and I.

And he was noticing where his cheekbones were sitting on the fence.

And he decided that three-legged stools always seemed to be kind of clunky, and they would fall over a lot, so he wanted something a little bit more refined.

Your father's production was limited compared to other people who designed 20th-century furniture because your father was a teacher.

Yes.

So he came first to work at Alfred?

Alfred University in New York, and then he went to R.I.T.

's School for American Craftsmen, and then in 1962, we moved here, and he was, started kind of the RISD furniture design.

At Rhode Island School of Design.

Exactly.

Started the first college-level furniture design course in America.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

My understanding is, your father had students make the stools, because everything they needed to know about woodworking was manifest in this form.

Now, these are signed.

Mm-hmm.

But a lot of these were made by his students, because he wanted them to make them to show that they learned the skills he was teaching them.

Mm-hmm.

And to not have provenance, and to not have a mark, means it could be by anybody.

At auction today, I would say the stools are worth between $7,500 and $10,000 each.

Oh, that's really nice.

Okay, so I think you've got about $30,000 to $40,000 worth of stools here.

Oh, that's great-- thanks, that's super.

You're welcome.

(laughs): Wow, thanks.

WOMAN: This is a watch that my grandfather had acquired during World War II, we believe around 1944, 1945.

He was stationed in some of the islands in outer Japan, and he somehow acquired this and mailed it back to his wife, my Grandma Janet, in Chicago.

It still runs time.

That's all I know about it.

We have a Japanese watch.

We see it has the characters on the back, and they're numerals.

The maker of this is Seikosha.

This was a very well-made timepiece.

It is a World War II Japanese pilot's watch.

We know that it is navy, and among the symbols, there is an anchor.

This particular style of watch is specific to the Japanese navy.

The Japanese naval aviators were the elite.

They are generally more highly regarded than their army pilots.

There are reproductions of pilot's watches being made.

The style tends to be going to bigger and bigger watches, so there's a fashion component to that, too, that's helping to drive that market.

It is a rare piece.

It is one of the rarest World War II pilot's watches, because Japanese naval aviators, their standards of training were very, very strict coming into World War II, so there weren't as many of them at the start of the war.

And then they did not have a high rate of survival.

You should expect a retail value between $8,000 and $10,000.

I love it.

My grandpa was an incredible man, and I'm lucky he was my grandfather.

MAN: I acquired the painting at a local auction in West Bay of Rhode Island.

That was, I think, about ten years ago, and I paid $12,000 for it.

I know you know about the artist.

What can you tell me about him?

Well, I can tell you that he's a Rhode Island artist.

Right.

Edward Bannister.

He was one of the founders of the Providence Art Club.

Mm-hmm.

And I'm not sure if it's true, but I've heard the story that he was awarded a prize at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, and when they stepped up to receive the prize, they said, "Oh, no, we're looking for Edward Bannister," because he was a black artist, and people didn't believe that a black artist could have won the prize.

Well, that's right.

He really was the first African-American artist to gain any kind of national recognition, and it was an award, a bronze medal, at the, at the Centennial.

But I understand that that story is true.

Certainly, he is one of the 19th-century African-American artists of note, the first being Joshua Johnston, and then Robert Duncanson from Cincinnati, and then later, Henry O. Tanner.

So he certainly was in very good company.

He was born in New Brunswick, Canada.

While he was a young boy, he had the luxury of being able to learn and study art, and finally comes to Boston around 1848, and he had a career as a barber for a while in the Boston area.

Wow.

He had the fortune to marry a wealthy businesswoman from New York, and because of that, he could spend his career painting.

And so he was able to set up a studio early on.

Hmm.

And I believe they lived in the Boston area until they moved to Providence sometime by 1870.

So in your painting, we see a very moody, churning sea with a break of sunlight there in the center, which adds a little bit of drama to it.

He was a sailor, and he would sail off the coast of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts and make sketches.

Hmm.

So most likely, he would've made sketches for a painting like this on one of his trips.

The market for African-American art has soared in the... since...

Certainly since 2000, if not before.

As a result, the market has become much more frenzied.

Wow.

So if this painting were for sale in a gallery in New York, I believe that it could be sold in the range of $45,000.

(no audio) (laughs) Wow.

That's amazing.

It's, it's a stunning piece, and it's just very special, and his work is special, and the seascape is a rare subject.

Wow.

So I think that makes it quite interesting.

Wow.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

(laughing): That is amazing.

♪ ♪ PEÑA: The Rosecliff library, paneled in antiqued English oak, was originally a billiards room created for the mansion's first man of the house, shipping magnate Hermann Oelrichs.

♪ ♪ APPRAISER: This is an ancestor of yours, correct?

WOMAN: Yes, my great-great-great-grandfather was born in 1844.

This is probably done sometime in the 1840s, is what you're telling me.

Yes.

Yeah, and I would've dated it, based upon this subject matter, in that, in that sort of....

In that timeframe.

In that timeframe.

It's a great portrait.

At one time, your family must have had some money.

They did.

Because this child is holding a rattle... A silver rattle.

Silver rattle, and is wearing a silver medallion.

And just to have a portrait this scale made of your child meant that you had some money.

I love the expression of the little boy.

He's got a very sort of taciturn and almost suspicious kind of look.

So many of these paintings were painted by itinerant artists who traveled from town to town doing commissions and then would travel to the next town.

So I don't recognize the hand here.

In terms of value, an auction estimate is going to be somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000.

Nice, very nice.

And what would you put it as an insurance?

I'd probably insure it for a little bit more than $12,000-- maybe $15,000, maybe $20,000.

Okay, perfect.

That's awesome, thank you so much.

Great, it's charming-- I really love it.

Me, too.

(people talking in background) Well, I have a ring that I had inherited from my grandmother.

And other than I know it's diamonds and a sapphire, I don't know much about it.

I know that it's inscribed, Mm-hmm.

"T.J.O.D.

to A.L.O.D., December, or D-E-C, 25, 1913."

It's a nice Christmas gift.

When I asked my father what my grandfather did-- and it was actually my maternal grandfather-- he said, "Oh, he was retired."

And I said, "Retired from what?"

(laughs) He said, "He was just retired."

Okay.

He'd never had to work.

Well, in that case, they must have been of some means.

Yes.

The ring is a sapphire and diamond three-stone ring.

It is signed by Tiffany and Company.

Looking at the stones, we can do weights by formula.

Obviously, we can't unmount the stones, so by formula, that center sapphire is probably about three-and-a-half carats, and each one of those side diamonds is about one-and-a-half carats.

The side diamonds are beautiful.

They're very high-color stones, they're clean.

They're what we would call Old European cut diamonds, very typical of what you would see in 1913.

And you can also see the sapphire.

It's a nice old cut, also from the period.

Mm-hmm.

What makes this ring really special, in my opinion, is that sapphire.

In this period, Tiffany would've only used the highest-quality stones.

Country of origin is very important.

I've showed my colleagues at the jewelry table, and we feel that there is a good chance that this might be a sapphire from Burma.

Also, in this period, we would not expect any treatments.

It hasn't been heated, so it came out of the ground like that, and that is very unusual.

In the Tiffany mounting, with the three-stone setting, it's a very desirable ring.

1913, it's nice to think that it could've been here at Rosecliff at a party one day.

That's right.

I think, at auction, if we sent the stone to a lab and could determine that it was a Burma sapphire with no heat, you might be looking at a value of $25,000 to $35,000 at auction.

(laughs): Oh, wow!

Oh, my gosh.

Now, if you walked into Tiffany's and had to replace this ring, I don't think you could replace it for under $100,000.

It's a really nice ring.

Whoo!

Oh, my gosh.

Thanks, Granddad!

You made my day!

Thank you, I'm glad we did.

If this were not a Burma sapphire, I still think you would probably be looking in the $15,000 to $20,000 ballpark.

The diamonds are a significant size.

PEÑA: You're watching part five PEÑA: And now it's time for the Roadshow Feedback Booth.

We always treasured these.

These have been in the family 60, 70 years, and I was very proud of my Chinese statues that sat by our fireplace.

And we learned today that they're actually made in Italy, not China, and that they're really not worth anywhere near's what we thought.

I brought my two wooden boxes.

It turns out they're not worth all that much, but the best part of the day was that I got my picture taken with Wes Cowan, and Ken Farmer took the picture.

And this is a Civil War-era clock from my great-grandfather.

They were mass-produced, so therefore, they were affordable then, and apparently they're still very affordable now.

So I won't be buying any Newport mansions, but we're glad to be here at the Antiques Roadshow.

Awesome.

I brought two "Life" magazines from 1944, and I found out they're worth about a dollar each.

Unless we cut 'em up and put 'em into frames and sell 'em for maybe two dollars each.

We found out today that it is better than mint, and it's a beautiful N.O.S.

It's a New Old Stock watch.

Collectors will go crazy over it, and it's valued about $3,000.

I brought Great-Grandma's shawl, it was worth $1,000.

Her teapot, not so much.

PEÑA: Thanks for watching.

Tune in again for another great episode of "Antiques Roadshow Recut."