tv FOX 45 News at 500 FOX September 20, 2013 5:00pm-5:30pm EDT
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we have some more pieces of jewelry which i'm assuming she made. yes, yes. she made all of them. and they're particularly lovely, particularly to the color-- vibrant, strong. purples, greens. that's right. and it's quite a strong message on the front of the casket as well. and these colors were associated, of course, with the suffragette movement. so i've learnt, and that's quite interesting because her elder sister was very much involved in the suffragette movement. mm-mm. so, possibly, the influences come from...? possibly she might have suggested... she may indeed. yes, definitely, because of course people say that the colors green, white, and violet were associated with giving women the vote. that's right. and so, consequently, there's a hidden message... ...as there often is in a lot of jewelry, you know, whether it be romantic or, in this aspect, a political nature. yes. i had never known that before today. ( laughing ) excellent. so, really pretty, made with enamels, silver, opal,
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little amethysts, and some white seed pearls-- very delicate in that respect. and it's a great reflection of how the arts and crafts movement was working at the time, from about 1890 into the early part of the 20th century, using very basic materials to bring a handcrafted look back to jewelry, which is excellent and very much led by makers such as arthur gaskin and influenced by burne-jones. but there's another necklace which i think is absolutely exquisite. and do you wear this at all? yes, i wear it a lot. yes, yeah. and my mother explained that they had to make every single little bit of gold chain themselves... exactly. ...and all those little wheels and things. well, part of the arts and crafts movement was that you were making everything by hand, but what's interesting about this piece is, of course, it's with gold, and normally, it's more of the art nouveau period, working alongside the arts and crafts period, that was working with gold and finer-quality pieces, so, it's absolutely amazing
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how delicate all these tiny little links are, and the patience that she must have had to produce the pieces of jewelry is quite fabulous, indeed. um, a lovely selection. obviously, sentimentally, it's worth a huge amount to you, and really something that would work exceptionally well within a museum. if we were to put a value on it, then i think, as a collection, if it was sold at auction, you'd perhaps be looking at something between £1,500 and 2,000. oh, good gracious! well, she would have been amazed. i'm sure. she lived until she was 96... ...but she wouldn't have had any idea about that at all. no, no. ( gong resounds ) the mysterious sound of the far east. what a fabulous gong! where did you get it from? well, it's been in the family since we were children. it belonged to my grandmother, and we've always lived with it, but apart from that, i know absolutely nothing. and a real spider trap, yeah, and a dust trap. definitely! yes, definitely! but do you like it? i do.
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it's very bizarre, but, yes, i love it. well, i can tell you where it's from because it actually says on the back. i never noticed! i'm glad i've got a job. yeah, it's signed "klier & co., rangoon." really?! klier & co. would be not the makers, but the retailers, and rangoon, of course, is in burma. gosh! yep. but i knew it was burmese, because look at how lively the carving is. it's made of teakwood, and the gong is obviously bronze. but it's so active. of course, the piece is centered by this beautifully carved, crisp, opening lotus blossom, the very symbol of buddhism, the symbol of the buddha, and of course the burmese practiced a type of buddhism, theravada buddhism, which was, of course, rolled into their local interest in the natural spirits of the forest and the landscape. i've always been intrigued by the paintings, or the images. it's lovely. now, these are spirits, or divas, as they were called, and you would find figures like this
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in palace carvings, around the doorways of buddhist temples or palace complex^ it--it's almost certainly made for the tourist market, in and around 1890, 1900. gosh. it's a beauty. um... value... my own thought, a very healthy £500 worth of carving. oh, right. yeah, well, and thanks so much for bringing it here. it's been a pleasure. we've enjoyed seeing your gong go. thank you. thank you very much. thank you. so, you fished this out of your safe deposit to bring it to me. now, what did you think it might be? well, i thought it might be a faberge. yes. well, it comes from russia, but the real rub is that it's not by faberge. oh, isn't it? no. oh, dang! dear me! yes, i know. suddenly, the pennies didn't fall out of the slot machine. no, no. but that's not really why you brought it,
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because it's a most beautiful piece of russian cloisonné enamel. cloisonné enamel is a very ancient russian technique. it was made in the 17th century, and at about the turn of the century... ...there's a huge revival for it. yes. "cloisonné" because a cloisonné means a honeybee cell, and it's a french word, really, to evoke separation. each color is separated with a tiny wire, a silver wire soldered onto there. but what is utterly exceptional about your piece, and i really do love it, is that it's a sort of 17th-century style beaker that's gone through the sort of mangle of the art nouveau movement. it seems to owe something to german art nouveau here, jugenstil, and then, i can't think how cloisonné enamel could be more beautiful in a way than this sort of mad kind of sizewell "b" hydrangea here. it's a sort of mutant ninja hydrangea. i love it. and, um, so, what's it mean to you? was it a gift? yes, i had a few things from a lady i used to work, you know, years, years ago. a russian lady? no, she wasn't.
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no, english, yes. and just a collector, and it's a lovely thing to be given, and we've got to consider who it might be by if it's not by faberge, and happily it's spelled out here, in cyrillic, and it's made by a man with a rather wonderfully russian-sounding name. he's called ivan khlebnikov. couldn't sound any more russian than that, could it? and he's a very, very, um... famous firm of silversmiths competing with faberge in moscow, and competing to him at a very, very high level indeed, because we see above the signature here what looks like a sort of funny little star, but in actual fact, it's the romanov eagle, which signifies that the czar and the czarina, the last czar and czarina, were customers of theirs. and there's another indication that this is a very, very high-caliber object indeed, because it has the silver standard 91. it's slightly above the standard for russian silver, which more often than not was 84 parts silver in a hundred. this is 91, so it is a high-status object. and they are very, very sought after,
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and in a way, when it was given to you, it was really only worth maybe tens, twenties of pounds, but today... today, it's much, much more because of the russian interest, and i love it quite beyond its price, really, but i'm going to stick £2,000 on it. oh, very good, yes. ( both chuckle ) worth bringing it. thank you very much, yes, thank you. thank you very much. brilliant. well, you've brought me two really interesting objects here. the first is a book, the gwineddion: or an account of the royal denbigh eisteddfod, held in september, 1828. yes. now, you're talking to an englishman in wales. i see. i take it you're a welshman. very much so, yes. so you're going to have to tell me a little bit about what the eisteddfod is, or what the eisteddfod was. well, the eisteddfod as an institution is the most important thing in the welsh life, and the culture encompasses
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literature, art, music, drama, all that sort of thing, and, periodically, eisteddfodau are held. they are gatherings of people who compete. right. it's an annual thing which takes place every august. right. is it something that goes back a very long way? a very long time. the earliest eisteddfod was in the 12th century. so this gathering in 1828, in denbigh, was part of a very, very long tradition. oh, indeed. the other thing you've brought here is a medal, which i'm assuming must be one of the prizes won at the eisteddfod in 1828. of course, i don't read welsh, but i can make out the words "eisteddfod" and "dinbych." yes. how would i pronounce that? "dinbych"? "dynbych" is the welsh word for "denbigh," yes. this particular medal was awarded for a particular form of poetry called an "englyn." an englyn is a 4-lined stanza.
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in this instance, the title was awyren. awyren in present-day terms means an "aeroplane." 1828? of course there were no aeroplanes at that time, but it referred then to a balloon. it's a beautiful object in its own right, and turning it over, there's this really breathtaking image. i-i think it's so beautiful. i guess i'm hoping that the account of the royal denbigh eisteddfod will have a copy of the poem in it. does it contain the poem itself? yes. i wonder if you'd do us the honor of reading it to us. certainly. ( reading in welsh ) of course, this medal must be entirely unique.
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oh, it is. and therefore, of course, it has to have some kind of commercial value. i wouldn't be at all surprised if these two items together brought £1,000. that's a lot more than i paid for it. i'm very pleased to hear that. it's good news. yes. a block of mahogany, a brass back and a brass front. what do you reckon that timepiece was used for? i think it was used on trains in victorian times or early 1900s. that's a reasonably good guess, but i'm glad to say it's wrong. oh, right! okay, it is, in fact... ...a mail guard's watch on a stagecoach. this fellow here, george littlewort-- and it says "maker, london," so that gives the game away slightly, was free of the clockmakers company in 1822,
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and he supplied the post office with the majority of these mail guard watches. the heyday of the english stagecoach really was the 1820s. trains came into use a couple of decades later, so i'm interested to know why it might have been of railway use. because my father was a goods agent with the railways, and he was given it supposedly as a railway piece of memorabilia. this is how he-- where he thought it had come from. right. well... there was always a key there, which is now missing, sadly, and that allowed-- oh, i see why you think it's of railway interest. we'll come to that in a minute. that allowed this back plate to slide out, and there you've got the winding, the setting of the hands, and the slow/fast. remember, the stagecoaches then were running pretty much to the minute, and, really, until the 1860s were running and carrying passengers and mail out in the provinces before the railway network stretched that far,
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and the demise of the stagecoach was thought to have started in round about 1838. and it just so happens that, on the back here, we have... "london to birmingham railway," which started as one of the first commercial passenger networks in 1838. so that's come from a stagecoach to be used on the railway, euston station no. 2. right. now, that is a wonderful bit of social history. it is. it's in slightly rough condition. it's covered in muck and filth inside, but you obviously haven't had it looked at for many a year. have you ever known it to work in your lifetime? no. okay. ( chuckles ) then you're going to be very surprised, 'cause that lump of wood is an exceptional item. i'm going to give you two valuations. go on. i'm going to give you an evaluation for if it was just a mail guard's watch. have a think what that might be,
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just as a mail guard's watch, without the railway interest. £50? mm, i think you're going to be happy. oh! ( laughs ) if that popped up at auction, just like that... ...it would fetch between £2,000 and 2,500. oh, dear! ( laughing ) and the next one, with that railway interest, "euston station no. 2," this is a railway enthusiast's dream. in the right sale, i could see that making an absolute minimum of £5,000. ( laughing ) it's a wonderful thing. i looked at this and thought, "ohh, could it be worse?" and then i thought, "well, i don't know, actually." who would come up with a color combination of duck-egg blue and this pinky color? and then to mount them with deer heads in biscuit,
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and antlers and wild boar and lurcher dogs and retrievers, and then set them on a chinese carved-wood base-- but it isn't, it's all porcelain-- gilded and picked out in black. i mean, the thing is... extraordinary, and the more you look at it, the more interesting it becomes. did you inherit these or buy them or...? i bought them about 15 years ago at an antiques fair in buxton, and i saw them and just fell in love with them. what particularly appealed to you about them? where i walk my dog, there's a deer park, and we've always had dogs... ah, right. okay. the whole combination. okay. okay. did they tell you what they were when you bought them? um... late 19th century, parisian.
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okay. half right. i go along with the parisian. i think they're pretty definitely paris porcelain, but i would put them rather earlier than late 19th century. the... the way they've picked out the details here in black was a very short-lived thing, and it's characteristically around the 1860s, and the whole thing is kicked off by queen victoria and prince albert at balmoral. you can imagine these sitting in balmoral, with the hunting and the shooting and the fishing, absolutely would fit perfectly, and that's what's going on here. now, combining biscuit porcelain-- that is, porcelain without a glaze on it--
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and glazed porcelain, here painted with flowers, can work extraordinarily well, and it does here. i think it's very, very good, and i would take a... a fair bet that these are 1862... an exhibition piece for the 1862 exhibition. really? yeah, i think that's what they are. london. if you didn't like them, you could grow to like them, i think. i've always adored them. well, i can absolutely see why. i don't normally go for this sort of thing, but these really do kind of work for me. um... what did you pay for them? uh... £3,900. right. i think if we found these in the catalogue of the exhibition, which i think we just might, you'd be looking at £4,000 to 6,000 without any trouble, so i think you did very well indeed.
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thank you. ( clears throat ) don't be tempted to break the dogs off and sell them separately. certainly not! ( laughing ) thank you. thank you, david. this is not silver. it's actually electroplated. so why am i interested in a fish serving knife with a bit of seaweed engraved on the back? well, the answer is-- turn it over-- it has some of the finest engraving i've ever seen on a piece of electroplate, and, in fact, it ranks among some of the best engraving i've seen on silver. this is absolutely beautifully done. so, what do you know about its past? well, in about 1952, i bought it in a little junk shop in worlesy for 30 shillings. that's not a bad buy. wasn't it? i think that this slice, together with its fork, actually tell a story,
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and if this was an oil painting, i think it would be entitled the fisherman's return because on the blade here we've got, i think, the fisherman's wife looking rather pensive, rather doleful, and fish in a basket at the bottom, and if we look at the fork, there's the husband out at sea in the sailing boat, doing the fishing, and she's waiting for him to come back. what i find absolutely astonishing about these pieces is that they're such wonderful quality. they've got big ivory handles on the end. why did they make them in electroplate rather than in silver? so, 30 shillings in 1952. i don't know what that equates to in today's money, but all i can say is that this is really a work of art. this is such superb quality... really? ...that i would think... ...a pair of fish service of this quality,
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probably £400, £500 for the pair. good gracious! oh! i think they are absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, and the quality of that workmanship is as good as anything i've seen for a long, long time. brilliant! well, the last time i saw beautifully detailed little models like this was when i went to see a friend who was a sea cadet, and i remember, in one of their cupboards, he showed me some beautiful little wooden models of ships. now, i always thought they were for recognition purposes, for the admiralty, but tell me more about them. well, these models-- uh, the top ones-- were made for winston churchill by bassett-lowke in 1942, after the navy had lost a number of ships bombed by the r.a.f.
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and he decided we've got to stop this. we're going to have to teach our air crews how to spot a german boat, a british boat, an american boat. because of course from the air, ship recognition must have been terribly difficult. exactly. and do you know if they then went into production of these prototypes? yes, they did. yes, they... i'm told that churchill was thrilled by these, and he then instructed bassett-lowke to make a quantity so that they could be sent to various places where they'd had problems. now, of course, bassett-lowke was very famous for steam locomotives, for model-- model steam engines... exactly. ...and train sets, that sort of thing. but i'm fascinated by what your father did. what-- what was he doing in the firm of bassett-lowke? my father was bassett-lowke's best friend. right. and they traveled the world together. right. and i have here
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bassett-lowke's sort of signature, really, which he took around the world, showing people wherever they went. he said, "i can make the best models in the world." well, this is a watch case, a pocket watch case. and in there is the golden hind. good heavens! isn't that astonishing! yes. so they were well known... bassett-lowke were well known for producing these wonderfully detailed waterline models. exactly. originally in a seasoned lime wood, which is beautiful for carving. it's got a fantastic grain. and, um, because these ships were hand-built, these models were hand-built in wood, they were incredibly expensive. and these boats were the initial... prototypes. prototypes, exactly, which bassett-lowke and my father took to the admiralty, and this is literally the original. i wonder if churchill himself actually looked at this very case? oh, definitely, definitely.
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isn't that astonishing? well, you've got military ships here, of course, but the bottom case looks like a history of shipping. tell me all about that. in the early '50s, it was decided that they would like to produce a unique set of models all to the same scale, one inch to 100 feet. right. and every model there is made to that specification. there were only two sets of these made. one is in the museum in northampton... ...and the other one is here. is right here. well, i feel rather privileged to be looking at it, in that case. um, after the war, the admiralty, of course, had no more use for these recognition models, so in, um, i suppose the end of the 1940s, i think it was, they sold them, they sold them to the public, and they do turn up from time to time at auction-- very seldom, i have to say. um, and, um, a model warship,
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a wooden model hand-painted warship, today at auction can fetch sometimes up to £100. mmm. now, what does that mean for the prototypes? i mean... heavens! what an incredibly difficult thing to put a value on, i have to say! that's why we're here, you know? ( laughter ) i would say, and i'm gonna take the whole lot... ...as a collection... a package. ...a package, if you like, including the pocket watch, that, from an historical point of view is just astounding, i think you'd be looking at £10,000 to 15,000. really? that is, uh, a figure which... would glow in my father's heart. ( both laugh ) thank you very much! some wonderful items there from two beautiful gardens, and despite the weather forecasts and my mac, the sun stayed out for us too. from all the team here at the roadshow, bye-bye.
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beginsian government sending details of its chemical weapons to an international court in the hague, boiler be enough. awaiting a verdict in china, a leader ismmunist scheduled to hear his fate. and meet the german singing sensation who is trying to take america by storm. tonight, we sit down with the artist who counts bono as a act singer.r -- as a backup welcome to our viewers on public television and around the globe.
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our viewers on public television and around the globe. syrian government began sending details of its chemical weapons to an international watchdog in the hague. the agency known as the organization of prohibition of chemical weapons will supervise the removal and destruction of all of the weapons by the middle of next year. a move aimed at averting u.s. airstrikes. under any circumstances, there is bound to be a key point. asked week's meeting of world leaders at the united nations. richard galpin reports. >> you an inspector is connected -- collected samples from the site in damascus last month and concluded that the nerve agent sarin had been used. their analysis of the trajectory of the rockets fired in the attack also implied the government was responsible. although they still deny it, the syrian authorities have now started handing details of their chemical weapons arsenal to the international community. so it can be removed and destroyed. willif this happens, syria
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still be awash with conventional weapons. fighting two years of has left much of the country in ruins. it is estimated more than 120,000 people are dead. many others have been seriously injured. have been there suggestions that moderate rebel groups handling government forces may get more, not less help, from the west in the form of weapon supplies aimed at tilting the balance in their favor. richard galpin, bbc news. thehat is complicating picture in syria is it is no longer a battle between the government and the rebels. this week, two opposition groups have been fighting near the turkish border. a cease- agreed to fire, but there still appears to be anger on both sides. paul wood is there with this report. >>
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