I stopped by the Antiques Roadshow at the Statehouse Convention Center for a couple of hours today to see what gems people had hauled in from their attics and garages and mantelpieces, and right off the bat I learned about the pot shown above from tribal arts appraiser Linda Dyer. Dyer said she believed it was made Hopi potter Nampeyo; it was given to a man working in Gallup, N.M., in the 1930s by daughter Fannie Nampeyo, who said it was “used” and he could have it. That man passed it down to the aunt of the woman in the picture above (or something along those lines) whose name Antiques Roadshow rules preventsme from publishing. The jar’s estimated value: $30,000 to $50,000. 

Some political bigshots were among the 5,000 folks at the Roadshow today, and they got some air time: Sen. John Boozman was interviewed about the 16th century clock he found in a dusty box in his father’s garage, acquired in London after the war. (Value: $7,000 to $10,000). I asked him if he was going to put it back in working order, but his wife, Cathy, laughed and said she had no intention of winding it three times a day. Mayor Mark Stodola was also there with blue porcelain dishes with a fish motif. He said it wasn’t his office that got him before the camera, but the china. He was being filmed at a small side set that is apparently where web features are shot.

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A set of three white jade pieces white thought to have been acquired in Burma after World War II included a small zodiac, a gift piece, worth around $25,000 to $30,000; altogether the three items were predicted to bring in $40,000 to $60,000 at auction. The pieces date to the 18th and 19th century, Roadshow Executive Producer Marsha Bemko said, and were brought in by the buyer’s nephew, who recently inherited them.

The find of the day as of 2 p.m. (several hours away from the end of the event at 9 p.m.), was a collection of never published photographs of jazz greats like Louis Armstrong, “Baby” Dodds and Billie Holiday, brought in by the grandson of the Cleveland photographer who made the photos. They were autographed, and just part of a collection that the grandson brought in. Laura Woolley appraised the part of the collection she could see at between $50,000 and $75,000.

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And, of course, there was the grave good from Northeast Arkansas, a prehistoric effigy pot of a hunchbacked woman. Antiques Roadshow will not appraise pots it can’t establish provenance on — it has to come from private property, since Native American artifacts are protected on federal property — but that requires trust in the person bringing forward the vessel, of course. Worth $10,000 to $15,000 at auction; invaluable had it been left in situ.

I saw not one but two beautiful Adrian Brewer paintings. The  owner of one, a long landscape that had hung over a fireplace (!), was told to insure it for $20,000. (He has no intention of selling, of course.) The other was smaller and equally beautiful, a scene, I was told, of Petit Jean. Its owner was still in line, next to another woman carrying a Peter Max drawing done for her at a dinner party many years ago.

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Perhaps one of the most unusual things I saw selected for filming was a pair of bronze teacup holders dating to the late 1600s or early 1700s made to sell to “muckety-mucks,” as it was explained to me, in the Japanese market. The missing teacups must have been tiny. The owner picked them up at a yard sale 30 years ago. Value: $5,000 to $7,000. I’m going with him next time he goes to an estate sale.

The oddest thing I saw: A lamp which had as its base three crucifixes, Jesus and  the other two men crucified with him at Golgotha, one assumes. I also saw Sissy of Sissy’s Log Cabin, her gold “Sissy” barrette holding up her bun. She was getting some gold jewelry appraised, and while there were smiles at the appraiser’s table, I did not see her whisked to the green room to await her appearance on television.  

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Bob and Peg of Pettigrew were among the folks who were disappointed with the valuation of their object: A hay fork made of one piece of wood. They were told that young folk aren’t interested in such things anymore. (Finding that objects weren’t worth much was the rule of the day, of course.)

Press types were allowed to take in an object to be appraised, and having nothing of value, for fun I took in a note written to me in college in 1972 by contrarian feminist Camille Paglia, apologizing for hitting me with the eraser she was throwing at the guy sitting next to me in class (“Aestheticism and Decadence” it was called). The appraiser Googled up Paglia, whom he’d not heard of, and was impressed by her books but not by my note, of course. It is, of course, priceless to me.

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An interesting fact from the triage table at the front: Mona, who has worked with the Roadshow for 17 years, said she’d seen three old medical kits filled with medicines in one hour. Security checked them to  make sure they held nothing dangerous. Police check firearms that are brought in.

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