RECUT: Treasure Fever, Part 2

♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: Get ready for a second dose of "Antiques Roadshow Recut."

My mother decided that it would look a lot better if she spray-painted it with gold spray paint.

Right.

You're taking my breath away!

CORAL PEÑA: It's "Antiques Roadshow Recut: Treasure Fever, Part 2."

♪ ♪ CORAL PEÑA: Feeling like you need more medical marvels to dissect?

Turns out the only prescription is another half-hour of "Antiques Roadshow Recut" and maybe this item with alleged healing powers.

Check it out.

I was living in Brazil, and I saw this at an antique show, and it was presented to me as being some kind of a Chinese game or something.

I thought, "That can't be a Chinese game.

It has all these different gems inside."

I said, "It must be, like, an energy battery."

There are many people that believe you can use crystals to do healing and curing, and I, I really felt that that's what it was.

So I purchased the thing, $500.

And I took it home and I started examining it, and I discovered a tiny, tiny signature that it was made in Boucheron in Paris, 1884.

Several years later, we were in Paris, and I went to Boucheron, and I showed them the piece, and they thought it was beautiful, but they said, "We don't have the ledger on it."

So it was probably a special order.

The date absolutely fits, Boucheron being formed in 1858.

Boucheron, a French jeweler of, of renowned name.

Right.

He was certainly one of the innovators of different types of motifs and styles.

And you have these little florets.

Then over here, you'll see a peony, and then we have a fan.

(chuckling): Right.

And then, if, if we roll it over...

There's even a little teapot.

There's...

Exactly, a little teapot.

Again, here's that repeating pattern.

We have some ferns around the edge, there's some bamboo.

So there's a lot of different loosely interpreted Asian motifs going on.

This metal is sterling silver.

It's nicely oxidized to this nice hue.

This is all hand-pierced.

They lay it out and they engrave it lightly.

And then they'll sit down and pierce all these sections out.

Amazing.

And then, after they're done piercing it, they go back and engrave everything.

This is very typical of the work that Boucheron would have done on a woman's nécessaire.

I think this is a healing nécessaire.

Now we have to open it up.

We're gonna push this in.

The stones that are here, I looked up.

Amethyst is a very calming effect.

People use it for meditation.

Crystal can remove bad or negative energy.

Once you put these all back in here, and you would put the cover back on, if you go to the other side, this side doesn't let them go down into the cylinder.

You put the crystal or the stone of your choice-- let's say right now you want to be calm.

You put the amethyst here.

You flip the cover.

That's right.

And now you can hold the device.

You know, that's something that I hadn't thought about.

You can see on the rims over here, it's signed "Boucheron, Paris."

My feeling is also with you on that this was most definitely a special order.

At auction today, something like this could be $10,000 to $12,000.

Good, good.

That sounds great-- that's great.

WOMAN: It's been in my family.

My great-aunt owned it, and she lived in Palm Springs-L.A. area.

What I've been told about it is that her daughter was ill and in the hospital, and that her doctor gave her this photograph as a gift.

And then I was at a floral shop and I saw the image on a greeting card.

So I bought the greeting card, took it home, and looked at the back of the greeting card, and it mentioned a gallery.

On the internet, I found a book that was pictures from the showing that was at the gallery, and this photograph was in the book.

And it's actually on the cover of the book.

Yes.

The name of the photographer is Dain Tasker.

He was a physician, a radiologist, at the Wilshire Hospital in Los Angeles.

Mm-hmm.

He became interested in photography in the 1920s.

And so here he is in his day job, using X-rays, and he has a kind of ah-hah moment, that "I'm going to look at flowers as the subject matter of my pictures."

He'd already been photographing for about ten years.

The X-ray becomes his art form.

Apparently, Dr. Tasker enjoyed gifting his photographs to nurses, to patients, to other physicians.

Mm.

And then he met a photographer in L.A. whose name was Will Connell.

And Will Connell was 25 years younger than Tasker, a very prominent fine art photographer, and he encourages the doctor to look at his work more seriously.

And he crosses over from being an amateur photographer to a professional.

At auction today, a preliminary estimate would be $6,000 to $9,000.

Oh, wow, that's great.

MAN: This is my third or fourth great-grandfather, William Perry, who sailed as surgeon's mate with Captain Cook in the Endeavour on his first voyage around the world, from 1768 to 1771.

Their mission was to sail to Tahiti and to observe the transit of Venus across the sun.

Then they were to sail on and verify the existence of the Australian continent.

So you can see here that the Endeavour is in the background.

He was the surgeon's mate, but what happened?

Well, the surgeon, Mr. Monkhouse, died, and William became the, the surgeon.

He took over towards the end of the voyage.

1770, I think, Monkhouse died, correct?

That's right.

What I find remarkable about this is that your great-great-great- grandfather was part of one of the first long-distance voyages where scurvy was not a problem.

Scurvy was a terrible vitamin deficiency that afflicted sailors at sea.

Cook apparently was a big believer in feeding people fresh food, and he was involved with this, keeping the crew healthy.

The painting itself, I think, is also interesting, because it bears many semblances to the work of an early Chinese artist.

Now, we don't know much about this particular artist-- his name was Spoilum-- but he was known as the first Chinese artist in Canton to paint European subjects on canvas.

This particular painting is on wood, but this is very much in the style of Spoilum's paintings.

Of course, he wasn't in China on the Endeavour expedition, but he sailed on four or five other ships, and I would bet that he, he was in Canton at some point.

You assume that to be the Endeavour because he sailed on the Endeavour.

Ah.

But it could be one of his other four or five ships that he was on.

True.

The other thing that we have here are these great pistols by William Bond.

And you can see "Bond," with his London address, is stamped on the tops of the barrels of these pistols.

Bond is about as good as you can get for a British pistol maker.

Very desirable.

We assume that these are the pistols that he carried with him.

Yes.

You also brought this little powder flask; it contained shot and wadding and that sort of thing.

So it's a nice package.

Let's start with the painting.

In that present condition, it's probably an $8,000 to $10,000 painting.

The frame has been repainted.

That's hurt it.

My mother decided that it would look a lot better if she spray-painted it...

Right.

...with gold spray paint.

(laughs) The pistols themselves are worth about $2,500 to $3,500.

But since they're associated with this individual, we can, I think, bump the estimate up a little bit, to maybe $5,000.

So we're looking at a value of somewhere between $13,000 and $15,000 for an auction estimate for the package here.

It's a great story.

Thank you, I'm-- I'm very glad to know that.

WOMAN: My great-grandparents immigrated from Norway and settled in Wisconsin.

It's not from Wisconsin.

It's not?

It's from Arizona.

Arizona?

And it's made by the Apache Indians.

This is a medicine pouch, a very, very special bag.

It also happens to be very large.

I think it would sell for about $3,500.

Okay.

WOMAN: It's been in our family for so long.

I mean, generation after generation, and it's been at all of our drug stores that our family's owned, so... 1690, in this condition, you're probably talking in the $500 range.

Oh!

Okay.

Although probably half the medicines would kill you.

(laughs) BOY: It's for in case you get, like, a snakebite or something.

APPRAISER: Yeah, and who did it belong to?

My great-grandfather.

You know what's good about this kit?

Is that it's really complete.

It's even got the original directions on how to use it.

These are medical collectibles and they've become very, very popular.

Will you be surprised if I tell you it's worth about $100?

I don't know that.

No?

Isn't that great?

Yeah.

When I was younger, I used to always have an eye for looking for collectibles.

Mm-hmm.

And I, I saw these posters, and I knew that they were something.

I didn't know what they were-- I didn't know the movie, I didn't know the actors-- but I knew that they were African American movies.

So, that's the reason why I kept them.

I probably had it framed about 25 years ago.

Mm-hmm.

And so everybody just looks at it, and it's just like a piece of the furniture.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, hardly anybody asks any questions.

They, if someone new comes to the house, they, they're curious.

And, but, you know, I haven't been able to tell them a whole lot, except they see that, you know, "all colored cast," and that says a lot.

So, this is from a very, from a very interesting sub-genre of movies-- we'll just call them race films.

And they were specifically films that were created for an African American audience, and they were popular between about 1915 to about 1950 or so.

As a poster, it's interesting, but the art in it isn't terribly great.

It's only printed in two colors.

Whereas, for most other popular films of the time, they'd be full-color posters with fantastic art.

But these films were created on a very modest budget, and advertising was probably where they spent the least amount of money.

Right.

This is from the 1940 movie "Am I Guilty?

", which was re-released by Toddy Pictures as "Racket Doctor."

Yeah.

It's about a young African American man who goes to, tries to start a clinic in Harlem.

Well, this is actually one of the few cases where the star was actually a star.

This fellow, Ralph Cooper, was the original emcee at the Apollo Theater.

Oh, see, I didn't know that.

Toddy Pictures bought up a lot of the rights to a lot of these race films and re-released them under different names... Ah, I see.

...to try to make a few extra nickels out of it... All right.

...without spending any more money on actors.

Okay.

And the collectibility of posters and items related to these films... Mm-hmm.

...has gone up dramatically in the last few years.

In this condition, we would estimate at auction, this would be a $400 to $600 poster.

Ah, okay, okay, okay.

I had no idea.

It's just been sitting on my wall in a frame, and...

So, I probably should get the other one framed, as well.

Yes, you should.

(laughs) WOMAN: My husband and I were in the liquor business many years ago, and one of his customers came in one day and said that her uncle had passed away and he was an MD, and that he had liquor at an estate sale that was from Prohibition.

So I went over, and among other things, purchased this liquor.

And for years, it has been put away, and it's never been opened.

How many bottles did you buy at the estate sale?

At the time, I think I had about 18.

Wow.

Yes.

And do you still have the others, as well?

I do, yeah.

And are they all different brands, as these are here?

Um, the ones I have now are the same brands.

Uh-huh.

I just bought-- I brought you one of each.

And how much did you pay for these?

It couldn't have been more than maybe ten or $20 for all of them.

What a great find... Well, this was probably at least 35 years ago.

Right.

We all know about the Prohibition.

It was a long dry spell for America.

Right.

It went from the year 1920 to 1933.

And there were a few select makers that were allowed to continue the production of liquor throughout Prohibition.

Oh, I didn't know that.

And first of all, you have the words "Bottled in Bond," which means that they were bottled according to the U.S. government standards.

Right.

But then also on some of these, you see where they're made for medicinal use, it says.

Right.

In the Prohibition era, you could go in to your physician, and it usually cost you about three dollars.

You could have bronchitis, or you could say you had bronchitis.

(chuckles) Right here, we have the Tom Hardy Whiskey Company.

Here, we have the Frankfort Distillery.

Over here, you have the Old Thompson by the H. Barton Company.

On the end, we have the special Old Reserve.

That's got to be the good stuff there.

And then back here, this wonderful red and green, which is from Old Taylor, which is a renowned brand that went back into the 19th century.

This one, in... for instance, has the original label on it.

It says 1917 is when it was made, and then 1933 is when it was bottled.

It has evaporated a little bit.

And what it is is, there's not a super-tight seal on the cap.

These are very, very rare.

I've been in the business since I was 11... Really?

...and I've never seen any.

And recently, there was a write-up on some bottles which sold at auction which had all this Prohibition, "for medicinal use" on them.

Initially, I was thinking a lower value, but in talking to experts who have read some of these reports that have come out in the market lately, I believe a retail value on them would be $3,000 to $4,000 in today's market.

For the five of them?

For the five.

Yeah.

And you have 18?

Yeah.

Wow.

I am very, very surprised.

(both laughing) And pleased-- thank you.

I actually moved here from Philadelphia, where I grew up, and this painting came into my family through my grandparents.

My grandfather was a surgeon in Philadelphia, and one of his patients was named Fern Coppedge, and I believe that this painting was something that Fern gave my grandfather in, in gratitude for the surgery that he performed on her.

Then my parents had it for some time, and then it came to me.

You know, I have a theory that doctors actually have the best art collections, because so many impoverished artists end up paying their bills with paintings.

(chuckles) We have another Fern Coppedge that my sister has.

It's much smaller.

The only thing that I know about this painting that my parents told me was that it was a scene in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, near where I grew up.

And that it was called "Goat Hill."

Well, Fern Coppedge is, she was originally from Illinois, and then studied in Chicago, and then moved to Philadelphia, where she had a studio.

She's best known, though, for her work done around New Hope, where she moved in 1920.

And she's associated with a group of artists known as the Pennsylvania Impressionists.

And of that group, she's probably the best known of the women artists.

She studied with Daniel Garber, who was probably the best known of them, along with Edward Redfield.

She was an en plein air painter-- she worked outside.

Mm-hmm.

And she could be seen in New Hope, in the area, in the back of her car with her easel, sitting, doing these wonderful winter landscapes.

That whole market is very much in demand, and has been for some time.

Really?

She was very much someone who plowed her own furrow.

She was her own woman, and I really admire her for that.

Her sense of color was just extraordinary.

She was basically a Fauve painter, and very adventurous in the way that she chose to work and to portray the area.

Quite variable in terms of her output.

And I think this is an absolute gem.

It's actually 30 by 36, which is unusual for her.

Really?

She often did 18 by 18, or she did 20 by 24.

The largest I've seen is 38 by 40.

And sometimes she'd work as small as 12 by 12.

I've never actually handled a 30-by-36 painting.

I have to ask you about the frame.

This doesn't quite go with the panting, in my view.

No.

I replaced the frame years ago.

The frame that was on it had pieces that were glued on, and many of them had broken off, and so I didn't think it was suitable to keep a damaged frame with it, and I don't know if that affected the value in any way, but...

It may well have originally had a frame by either Harer or Badura, who were the two leading frame makers in that area, and she often used those for her works.

It's maybe not the frame I would've chosen, but it looks after the painting and it presents it well.

The other thing I wanted to mention is the composition itself.

It really does lead your eye in here, with the road, and then over this bridge, and then up the hill.

I've seen her using this device before.

It's very charming; it's...

It's a wonderful compositional way of pulling the viewer into the painting.

Now, I've handled a lot of work by this artist.

And as I mentioned earlier, I think this is a particularly good example.

At auction, I'd feel very comfortable with an estimate of $120,000 to $180,000.

(gasps) How much?!

What did... And actually... $120,000 to $180,000.

Oh, my goodness.

(chuckles) I could actually easily see it making over $200,000.

You're taking my breath away!

You seem surprised.

I'm stunned, I'm totally stunned.

I didn't even think about bringing this.

This was a last-minute... "Oh, well, why don't we take this one, too?"

You chose well.

Oh, thank you so much.

Not at all.

Thank you so much.

The cane was passed down to me after my grandfather passed away.

Yeah.

It was given to him by his mother, and it was given to, I believe, my great-great-grandfather... Mm-hmm.

From Dr. Mudd.

Dr. Mudd set Booth's leg after he assassinated Lincoln.

Yeah.

And what's the connection between Mudd and your family?

He gave it to his cousin, I believe.

Yeah.

It's Sarah Mudd.

Mm-hmm.

Who would have been...

I'm not sure how far back to the grandparents' side... Yeah, that's all right.

Yeah.

But our family, I guess, is somewhere linked to the Mudd family.

Henry Clark, who is, I believe, my great-great-grandfather, he did some legal work for Dr. Mudd after he was incarcerated, and that was given in appreciation for it.

Because he set his leg, therefore he aided and abetted a criminal.

Right.

And was tried in military court, and was sent to prison.

Yes.

And that was actually mentioned on this here.

It says "To Henry A. Clark from Dr. S.A.

Mudd."

And this says Dry Tortugas, which is where the prison, Fort Jefferson, was.

Right.

Which is on, off the coast of Florida, and the date is 1869.

While he was imprisoned for aiding and abetting Booth, he was in a carpentry shop.

Oh, okay.

He spent a lot of time, in addition to being a doctor, carving and turning wooden objects.

And he gave some of them to his guards.

Mm-hmm.

And he gave them to other people as a gesture of thanks.

And when there was a huge yellow fever epidemic in the prison, the prison doctor died.

And because he was a doctor, he volunteered his services to help and save so many people's lives.

Mm-hmm.

And actually, some of the soldiers wrote letters to the president... Wow.

...to say, "You really should pardon this person, he's done wonderful things."

And he was pardoned by President Johnson in 1869, which is the date on the edge of the cane.

(chuckles) Interesting.

Now, if I just saw this cane, which was a very typical gift in the 19th century-- it's, you know, lovely tropical hardwood-- you'd probably be looking at maybe $150.

Okay.

But with the Booth connection, with the Mudd connection, you've got this fantastic artifact of a time for someone who had such an important role and still an enduring sort of question in U.S. history.

Value-wise, you're probably looking at $5,000... Wow.

...to $7,000.

It could easily fetch $10,000, perhaps, at auction.

(chuckles) Because of the Lincoln connection.

This is a case where the story makes, gives it the value.

♪ ♪ PEÑA: Thanks for watching.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of "Antiques Roadshow Recut."