Antique Furniture Finds That Turned Out To Be Worth a Fortune | Antiques Roadshow UK

They're so fashionable. These are ideal pieces of furniture. Wow, it's amazing. How much? Good heavens! As everyone says, that is surprising. It's just delightful. The shape of the top followed through with the front, and this lovely colour. A little gem, I think. It dates from the early 18th century. Difficult to be too precise, but 1710 to 1720, that sort of period. In England, it would be Queen Anne stroke George I. But I don't think it's an English one. I don't think it's Irish, really. I think it's continental. It has this flow to it. If we say Dutch, it's that sort of area, that sort of feel to it. And they influenced the rest of the Western world and later on America. And you see this type of double serpentine curve developing into a block front, if it were American, of the 1740s. So, structurally, it's a very interesting thing. The way they've used this heavily curled veneer, this walnut with these burrs in, and divided it in two and opened it up like a butterfly's wing, so that it reflects both sides. Wonderful. And a lovely, crusty colour. Not over-clean. These handles are new. They're about 1890 to 1900. Right. Whereas these are the original Laskatians. OK. Now, they used exactly the same metalware in Holland as they did in England and in France at this time. So, this is no indication of provenance, but those are certainly of the period of the chess, 1710 to 1720. And, interestingly, you can see where the original handles went, which precisely matched this Saskatchewan in pattern. If we go to the bottom, it should have little bun feet, but little tiny, like if you squashed a melon, rather like that, a sort of an oval shape, much lower, and a little bit more round, if you like, a little bit more chubby, and far, far shallower. So, I suppose it would have stood at least two inches lower on the ground. OK, yes. Now, for one reason or another, we will never know, it wasn't tall enough for a particular purpose. And not only did they raise the feet, they also put a new rail in here. Because that rail is nothing to do with it at all. Yes. Now, to put it a little gem to start with, you can imagine it would have looked a perfect proportion little piece of furniture. Right. Do you use it now? What do I use it for? Yes. I use it for holding my socks, and the top drawer is junk. A sock and junk chest. That's right. Well, why is that super? I suppose if it turned up today, and you, or rather, let's put it the other way, if you lost it, or it got damaged, and you wanted to replace it, Yes. it would cost you eight to ten thousand pounds. All right. As everyone says, that is surprising. These are actually Masonic chairs. This chair is the Master's chair. The chair on the end there is the Senior Warden's chair, and the one in the middle is the Junior Warden's chair. And these are shown up by the square on that chair, the level on that chair, and the plumb rule on the middle chair. Those are symbols of the Worship Master, the Senior, and Junior Warden. Right. If you look at the actual design of the chair, the framework, and the decoration, they are very much in the Hephawite style. They're straight out of the design book, and I would therefore date them somewhere around 1780, 1790. In our cash book, we have entries which state that the Lodge purchased furniture from a local furniture manufacturer in 1806 or 1807. I'm not quite certain. It's one or the other. Well, that's quite interesting because, of course, the styles tended to be used a bit later in the provinces. So this would have been high fashion in London in the 1780s, and by the time the designs reached out into the provinces, it was a little bit later. But here you have this lovely curved back rail with these wonderful acanthus leaves here coming out of the patera, and these very, very striking Prince of Wales plumes held in this coronet. Yeah. And then this shaped serpentine seat and the channeled legs, which, if you consider them in miniature or scaled down, would be exactly, as you would expect, a dining chair of that sort of date. And although they appear to be almost identical, they are all slightly different. Subtly different, yeah. Values are usually based on known factors, and in this case, it would be very difficult to establish the baseline. But the large chair I would put, for insurance purposes, somewhere in the region of £7,000. Right. And I think the two smaller chairs, which are not quite a pair, as we've already discussed, I would put somewhere in the region of £10,000. So in total... Making a total of £17,000. Obviously, that's a lot more than we've got them insured for at the moment. A pair of what-nots. Curious word, isn't it? It is, yes. Do you know the origins of it? Actually, no. I mean, really, they are étagères, stages, platforms, and were developed in the latter part of the 18th century from France. And then, during the 19th century, they became multi-formed with columns in every shape and size, particularly by the sort of 1860s, 1870s. In the 1880s, it started to get very much more elegant. A renaissance of classical style came in, and superb quality what-nots developed like this. And I think it stemmed, that name stemmed from the fact that somebody would say, where shall I put this mother? And they'd say, well, put it on the what-not. And the name stuck, absolutely. I can think of no other reason. Now, this very style is typical of the makers of the 1870s, 1880s. This is the top quality, though, crace and sun, Holland and sun, and, of course, gillows. And they followed this line of ebony and a strong contrasting timber. And then you'll see here, outside this, framing it, is this strong ebony colour, black ebony, and then this beaded edge, which actually sparkles. And a note of quality is the amount of it there is round all the edges. And another piece of quality are two drawers in each, usually one either in the base or sometimes one in the top, but one each end is pretty good. And nice to see the original little knobs here with their carved wood fascia. And when we open the drawer, there you are, you've got Gillow & Co, the magic name, the magic name. If you pull the two together, there are just slight differences in the pattern. You can see there you have a plain groove or a reed. Here you have a little heart at the top, a little heart shape. And there's a slight difference in the size of the turned feet. So not quite a pair, a matched pair. Gillows had innumerable differences, slight differences in their patterns. It really, to all intents and purposes, matters not. Now, any maker's name on a piece of furniture adds to the value. Not only the historical value, also the monetary value. And in this case, of course, Gillow's probably the greatest increase in any name on a piece of furniture, certainly in the 19th century. Now, have you had these a long time? No, we've just had them about three years. Oh, really? Yes, sort of in a local antique shop. We thought they looked so neat and well-proportioned and then we realised that they were Gillow. We just liked them, thought they were very attractive. Oh, they're charming. They're as good as you'll see. If we take this little piece here, that would cost today, in the region of probably £4,500, £5,000, without the name on it. With the Gillow's name, double, at £9,000. A pair, even a matched pair, would be certainly £22,000. So desirable, they're so fashionable. These are ideal pieces of furniture. Wow, it's amazing. And you've bought extremely well. Do you have any family history which might relate to Scotland by any chance? Yes. Oh, good. Yes. It was left to me by my grandmother. She died in 1947. But both families originally came from New Galloway, Kirkcudbright, that sort of area. Wonderful. Well, this is a Scottish sideboard. We call it Scottish Sheraton because it's in the style of Sheraton. Ah, oh yes, Sheraton. And that would be about 1790, 1785, 1790. And we would date it from the following features. First of all, you have this very elegant, slight bow. Three nice shallow drawers to the frieze. Very careful choice of timber giving all these wonderful waves going right the way through. Standing on four of the most wonderful square tapering legs with spade feet at the bottom. The whole thing has a superstructure which is really peculiar to the northern counties and Scotland at this time. Which is this box-like structure on top with sliding doors. You don't find that in southern counties furniture at this period. And here again, they have used the most amazing choice of timber and laid it as veneer so that you get this mirror image. And then right in the middle, not knowing quite which way to go, they put it upright. Absolutely stunning. The colour is as good as you'll ever see. And just enough marks on it to show it's been used as a sideboard. That's what I like to see. If we just have a look inside, this drawer will do. And I don't really need to because it all looks so right. But those are the original handles. That's what a handle should look like inside. The little round nuts which hold the screw threads for the front of the handle. Slightly sunken in, not totally flush. And wonderful quality throughout. Now, there is one thing about the sideboard which I don't know if you've ever noticed. But it's the mark of the most wonderful quality. When you look at it from the front, straight on, you see four square taper legs with a little spade foot. When you stand from the front and move to the side, you then see that the front leg is not a square, it's a diamond. And that is the most wonderful thing because just imagine drawing that, let alone making it. It's the most complicated geometric thing to do. The man who made this was a master craftsman. And the man who designed it was a master. And I don't know if you have any valuation for insurance or replacement or anything like that. Well, if you wanted to replace this sideboard today from a good, and it would have to come through a good agent, dealer, a gallery, you'd have to pay around about £25,000 for it. How much? £25,000. Really? Good heavens. It's as good a sideboard as you'll ever see. This is the most sensational and delicious celebration of marriage I've ever seen. Was this a wedding present to you by any happy chance? No, it wasn't. It was bought by my father probably 50 or so years ago. I don't know where or how, but it's been in the family for about that time. Right. Because everywhere one looks, this fantastically engraved bone inlay is symbolic of the celebration of love. So you have this wonderful, very chinoiserie peasant with his marvellous hat and his companion. And all the way through all of the marquetry, you have the two of them uniting together and the celebration in the central panel of the wedding. Yes. And then, unusually, you also have an inscription all the way along the top in Latin, which I'm afraid my Latin isn't very good, but I believe translates as, this is dedicated to the venerable day of this marriage. Can you throw any light on the alms at all? Well, not very much, I'm afraid. Somebody has told us that the left top quarter is Lichtenberg and the bottom right quarter is Württemberg. And that's about as much as we know about it. Right. But the other two quarterings remain unidentified. Totally unknown to us. Because this is, I mean, as a celebration of marriage, this is exactly what one would expect to see, would be the quarterings of the alms of what were two very grand, well, one an Austrian and one a very grand princely family, linking and uniting together. And also, the stretcher itself has a further armorial device. What's very surprising for me is that all of the treatment of the rocaille and the engraving and the marquetry is typical of the German Rococo, which happened remarkably early in the 18th century. Yes. And then it is dated quite distinctly, 1730. And you think that that would have been put on at the time? I'm usually very sceptical about dates, but I think everything hangs together very, very well on this. Right. I don't think you'd ever be able to replace it, because I've never seen one of this quality before. I mean, have you an idea in your mind of a sort of level that you feel happily insured with it? Well, we haven't really had a reliable valuation at all. Well, I will try and do my best at a reliable valuation. I think this ought to be insured for £30,000. Really? It is a really fantastic piece of South German furniture. I inherited it from my mother, and she had been given it, I think, by an old admirer of hers. That must have been some admirer. It probably was some admirer. I would guess probably in the 1920s. In here you see a whole bank of little drawers painted with these wonderful Dutch landscapes. They're painted in oil on a small oak panel. And I think this is 17th century, so let us say it will date from about 1630, 1640. Made probably in and around the Antwerp area. And the inspiration of the paintings is after somebody called Jan Bruegel. Wonderfully minutely detailed landscapes. This one here with a winter landscape. You've got the real feeling of the cold and the frost and the snow. But my favourite is this. The centre one. This wonderful one. It draws your eye across the bridge into this distant landscape. And really tempts you to open the door. It's rather pertinent being on the door that opens up, isn't it? To take you inside into this mirrored interior with this black and white checked floor. And mirrored back, because in there would have been your absolutely prized possession. Best of all. And so this would then be closed up, locked away from everybody's eyes. So nobody would know that inside this very restrained piece of furniture is this complete... This paradise, really, isn't it? And have you ever had it looked at before? I had it looked at, but not by a very expert expert. Literally about 20 years ago, I think. And they said then that he thought it was probably worth insuring for about £600. Well, if I said that I think you should insure it for in the region of £15,000, we would be nearer the mark. Really? Really? My goodness.