Spectacular' 275-Year-Old Robe Worth Hundreds Of Thousands | BBC Antiques Roadshow UK

My goodness me, thank you very much. There are those moments in your life that you will always remember, and I will always remember standing here, but I'll certainly always remember the first time that I saw this spectacular robe. I want to know everything that you know. I was brought to the UK by Sarah's grandfather, probably in the early 30s, and he was general manager of the Standard Bank in India. In Calcutta. And Calcutta. Yes, I think he must have had it as a present. So have you always known about it? Where's it been? It was in the dressing up box. No. So did you wear it as a child? Yes, oh yes. So look, 1750, it certainly would be imperial. It's a lady's robe. A robe of 1750 is a very rare robe indeed. I mean, there are a few survivors. The only other ones I know of this type, you'd have to go to Beijing and you'd have to go to the Palace Museum to see one of these. It really is a sort of a museum item. Now, the colour is important, and a bright yellow would be for the Empress or the Dowager Empress or the sort of first-ranking concubine. This isn't a bright yellow. It's got a slightly kind of limey, just a slight green tinge to it. If you put that next to a sort of yellow imperial robe, you would see the difference, but it is certainly imperial. How do we know that? Well, we've got this lovely sort of gilded five-clawed dragon here. We've got these dragons chasing these wonderful kind of flaming pearls and these sort of flame scrolls and the crashing waves at the bottom. So there's a lot going on there. You know, spectacular thing. And then I've just got my little glove here because you mustn't touch these because you can, with a little greasy hand, stain the silk. And if I just pull that back, you've just got this wonderful, rich red brocade inside there. And it's just a fabulous thing. I just keep coming back to the condition. It is extraordinary. However, and there is a however, it does have a little problem. And that is, if you look at the dragon here, it wasn't intended to be sort of two-toned. What's happened there, I suspect, is that when they've mixed the sort of the gilt on the copper wire, that actually the copper has oxidised, you see. And that is going to affect, ultimately it will affect its value. Another thing I've noted, and I think that at some time somebody's actually sort of turned up the bottom. I think it's probably a little shorter than it should be because I can see part of the fringe here that actually maybe has just been sort of turned up as well. Just flip that around just so we can just have a look at the back, which is just as rewarding. I mean, it's just spectacular. And that decoration just continues. And that's sort of how we wanted to see that dragon on the front in that sort of perfect condition. If that comes up at auction, with the way the market is at the moment, I think that would make £200,000. Oh. That's surprising. Yes, yes, right. And I wouldn't be surprised if it made a bit more. My goodness me, thank you very much. Well, we won't put it in the dressing-up box again. We won't.