Chatham Historic Dockyard 1 Antiques Roadshow

Every series of the Antiques Roadshow,

the producers like to set me a challenge and test my mettle.

Well, they certainly have this week.

I'm 50 foot up in the air

on the tiny fighting platform of a Victorian gunship.

Yikes! This week, we're in Chatham.

Since the 17th century, home to Britain's fleet

and where the Royal Navy ships were built.

Welcome to the Antiques Roadshow

from the Historic Dockyard, Chatham in Kent.

The 18th century was dominated by war with France and Holland.

So being close to the Channel and the North Sea

meant that Chatham on the River Medway

was an ideal place for the Royal Navy to base and build its fleet.

Chatham Royal Dockyard

was the principle shipbuilding yard for the Royal Navy.

And between 1700 and 1815,

125 ships were built and launched here,

providing work for nearly 2,000 men from 26 different trades.

Many of the Georgian buildings are still here,

a reminder that this was once the most important dockyard in Britain.

In 1984, the dockyard closed and is now a museum,

welcoming visitors from all over the country.

So it's time to raise the Roadshow anchor and set sail

as we join our specialists

and residents of the nearby Medway towns.

I always think that the best paintings of sailors and the sea

are by sailors first

and artists second.

And here is one, William Lionel Wyllie.

-And he was a local man, wasn't he?

-I believe he was, yes.

He did work in Medway and also the Thames

and then he moved to Portsmouth, I believe.

Yes. I think that's right.

And is that not recognisable as Rochester Castle?

Rochester Castle.

So right over there, I think I'm right in saying.

Yes. That is one of...coal is being unloaded by hand.

So, it's coal being lifted out of the hold

-by these...were they stevedores, or...?

-Yes.

Hauling it out.

And there's a fellow here, I rather like him, he's shouting, isn't he?

I don't know what he's doing. Is that a mug of beer? Could that be?

-Yes.

-So he's having a jolly good old drink and a shout.

And it's such a bustle, such a lively scene.

You really do get a strong sense of, when would it be, about?

Early 1900s.

That's what I think. Or perhaps even earlier.

-Yes.

-Here are the barges they're loading the coal into.

-Yes.

-And this smoke and the steam,

it's very evocative of the busy life

-that this place must have once had.

-Oh, yes.

When you think of what it used to be like, the Medway, years ago,

even in my time, it's altered so much.

-Because your job is on the river?

-It was on the river, yes.

I was skipper of a salvage vessel. Medway Rhino.

A voyage and salvage vessel. Based at Sheerness docks.

So, I mean, would you say that's a fair representation of river life?

Yes. I've actually gone around there

and got an idea of where he actually took it from.

And that was right on the corner of what we call Chatham Ness.

And there's a poem on the back.

That is a poem from a burial at sea.

When you do ashes at sea.

-Have you had to do those?

-I have done it, yes.

How does the poem go?

"It is my sole relief that on some far distant shore

"far from despair and grief

"old friends shall meet once more."

I think that's great. And it obviously means a great deal to you.

It's a nice feeling.

If you're doing someone's ashes, a colleague's ashes at sea,

in the Medway or in the Thames Estuary,

it's nice to be able to do something.

I think that's great. I think it was probably done

for one of the magazines, like The Graphic.

It's an illustration.

It's actually done in watercolour, in one colour.

Which again, it adds to the immediacy.

I get the feeling of him standing right there and doing it,

just dashing it off. Catching it like a snapshot.

And that is why it feels so real, so immediate.

And so very good.

How did you get it?

I rescued it from being burnt.

-Oh, no!

-Yes.

-That's terrible!

They were clearing out some of the offices.

-This was ages ago?

-40 years ago.

-Oh, I see. Yes.

-And I managed to rescue this one.

Well, now, he's a very sought-after artist.

He actually ran away to sea

because the Royal Academy rejected some of his pictures.

He thought, "Forget that, I'm going to sea."

And that's, of course, where he learnt a great deal more

about the sea than he had known.

That's why he came back the better marine artist, I think, later on.

And he is collected.

And I particularly like his work, I must say.

So I'm delighted to find one.

I can't put a huge amount on it because it is black and white.

But I'd be surprised if it wasn't worth £400-£600.

-Something like that.

-OK. Thanks very much.

It's a pleasure. Thanks for bringing it.

So, where exactly did this piece of furniture come from?

It came from Hampton Court Palace.

-That's a good provenance.

-Yeah.

How do you know it came from Hampton Court?

My aunt had a wet fish shop in Hampton

and she supplied the palace with fish

and she would take fresh fish to the palace every day,

and this cabinet stood in one of the back passages at the palace,

she liked it, she thought it was unloved,

she used to have a joke with the people there

that she delivered the fish to for years.

This was some time just after the war,

and one day when she went in

they said that she could have the cupboard.

And she did a deal with them and she paid for it in fish.

Fantastic. So the only cost this piece of furniture owes you...

No, it's not the only cost.

It has cost me £1,000 twice in ex-marriages,

so I've had to pay out a little bit.

You obviously like this piece of furniture

if you've held onto it through two divorces.

I've had it for 38 years now,

and my aunt when she died wanted me to have it.

-And I've had it ever since.

-It's a great provenance, isn't it?

It's always nice to know that something comes from a good house,

-and you don't get many as good as Hampton Court.

-No.

And one of the pieces of it that I like the most are these panels.

-Yeah.

-The carving is really crisp and deep,

-but it's also very, very refined, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And these panels date it to about the late 16th, early 17th century.

That's the good news.

Now the bad news.

The bad news is that these panels

have been set into a piece of furniture

-that's been built around them.

-OK.

Using pieces of wood that have been perhaps old choir stalls,

panelling from churches, panelling from houses.

And do you want to know which country it had come from?

Had you spotted the "1 er"?

This is French "premiere". And it means "first".

And then on your side there's "27th".

So these maybe have been numbers on the end of pews,

somewhere on choir stalls, somewhere possibly in a church.

St Peter in the middle there.

But they are pieces of wood that have been taken

and put together in this form of furniture.

There are a few clues.

One is the difference in the dates that the pieces were carved.

The difference in this piece of wood here,

the cornice has had to be stained

to match it and blend it in to the other pieces.

And it's also quite scaled-down size.

If this was a 17th-century cupboard, it would be much bigger than this.

And that's been scaled down, I think,

-in the late 19th or even early 20th century.

-OK.

So it truly is a piece of furniture that evolved over time.

I mean, who knows where all these bits of wood originated from?

But as far as value goes,

you should have stopped after your first marriage,

because it is worth around £1,000.

I've lost money, then!

I'm from WB Simpson, that made this panel.

I'm a director of a company along with my two partners

that have been there all their lives,

and their father was part of the company all his life.

And we've collected these panels

as part of the heritage of the company.

-So what we're looking at is a sort of company history.

-Yes. Yes.

So let's look at WB Simpson.

William Butler Simpson was one of the great names in Victorian tiling.

But of course he goes back much further.

From memory, I think he was born in the 1790s

and died in the 1880s, so a very, very long life.

-Is that a picture of him over there?

-That's WB Simpson, yeah.

How old is he there?

Looking at his appearance, we'd guess that he was about 30.

And of course that may be when he just started the business,

-which I think was 1833, wasn't it?

-That's correct, yeah.

Before that, we think he designed wallpaper and interiors and fabrics.

Which takes me to this pattern book.

-So this is part of the archive, is it?

-Yes.

We're looking at probably, I guess, the 1840s, 1850s.

And it's full of decorations like this which are not for tiles,

they're for painted panels in houses.

You could have a fairly formal arrangement like that,

you could have stained glass if you want stained glass,

and of course equally, you could have sort of illustrative panels.

And you can imagine things like this,

these rather exotic sort of classical landscapes,

set into big framed panels in drawing rooms

and that sort of thing. That's what they were for.

And all this, of course, is long before tiling gets going.

Tiling is really something that starts in the 1860s

and then moves on.

This one, we can see, is dated 1905.

So this is long after Simpson himself died in the 1880s,

but I think he must have shifted his business to tiling

when tiling became fashionable. And again, great competitors.

Doulton's, later Carter's, Craven Dunnill -

all the big names did tiling.

And the emergence of the tile panel as a decorative element

is very much of the 1870s and onwards.

And it became the sensation of that period,

with all those names making wonderful panels.

Now, these sort of rural England scenes,

to me, are associated more with pubs and hotels

where you could actually glorify that vision of...

the England, to be fair, that was disappearing.

All this was vanishing at that time, under railways and factories.

This is what we were thinking about preserving.

I think this is a great thing. You say you acquired it. Did you buy it?

I think it was bought through an auction 30 or so years ago.

Just as a panel. Which we've now mounted and kept in our offices.

Kept as a display, yeah.

If somebody came to you and said, can you do this again, could you?

Well, we would give it a good try.

I think we might be able to do that, yeah. One day, maybe.

LAUGHTER

There's two things here. One is you've got a great factory archive.

Two, the things themselves are individually quite valuable.

The book, a pattern book like that, is meaningless

unless you've got the Simpson connection. You have,

so you're looking at probably 3 to 5,000 for that.

As an insight into decoration.

The small panels are going to be £1,000-£1,500 each.

Because they are such great subjects.

Maybe Robin Hood, maybe some medieval fantasy -

who cares, really? But when we come to the big panel,

this is really serious stuff. I mean, we're looking at £10-£15,000

-for something like this.

-Wow. We didn't think it was that much!

So it's not just your archive.

It's also quite important financial history as well.

-Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Now you've brought along this

rather small, narrow box.

Very, very thin box.

And it holds a secret,

-doesn't it?

-Yes, it does.

Shall we open the box and see what's inside? We open that.

There's a lever behind.

If I pull this out, watch what happens.

CROWD GASPS

Oh, my!

-Gasps from the crowd!

-That's what it's for! And it's quite sharp.

It's incredibly sharp. It's handmade.

Every single part of this is handmade.

And it is, to my mind, a very vicious object.

-Yes, it is, indeed.

-But what's it for? That's the question.

-Well, I don't know what it's for.

-Ah.

-I've owned it for all my life.

Before that, it belonged to an old German gentleman.

I guess it's over 150 years old, for sure,

-and I still don't know what it is.

-OK. Well.

-Let's look at it and sort of analyse it.

-Yes.

From the point of view of date, I think the way it's constructed,

-it must be late 18th century or early 19th century.

-Yes.

Whether it's English or not, I'm not sure.

-I don't think it is English, I think it's Continental.

-Yes.

However, the question is, what is it for?

Now, we've got the interesting brackets. You see these little pins?

-Yes.

-There's one on either end and this is meant,

I think, to mount it on something, between two pinions if you like.

There's also this lever,

so it's meant to be pulled remotely

and this is meant for deployment right at the last minute.

-Now, I have to tell you I have never seen one of these before, ever.

-OK.

But, I think it's one of two things,

either it's for securing on the outside of a door

of some official office,

perhaps the police office or something like that,

in case it's attacked.

You would pull this lever and out would come these spikes

and there might be several of them in rows

to stop people approaching the door.

I suppose so, yes.

Or it could be something that's attached to a carriage

to stop highwaymen attacking the carriage.

I think that... That's my conclusion I eventually came to.

But I'm not 100% sure. However, we are going to value it.

-Now, I think it's worth quite a lot of money, actually.

-Really?

My grandchildren will be pleased to hear that!

Well, I think it's most unusual.

I wouldn't mind betting that this would sell at auction today

for something in the region of

-£1,200-£1,500.

-Yes.

Well, it was given to myself and my husband by his mother

when we moved into our first house, as a present.

She had bought it at an auction in Bournemouth

but I have no idea what she paid for it.

And I understand you have done some research.

Yes, well, we were interested in Gillows,

we knew that they were quite famous and an article in the magazine

told us about a museum in London that had their records,

so we went there and on microfiche,

we each had one of the microfiche machines,

and we were racing to see who was the first to find it.

I bet that took a long time, didn't it?

It wasn't too long, probably about half an hour.

Then they printed out documents for us with all the details.

-May I have a look?

-Yes.

And these documents are saying?

-They tell you exactly what the cabinet is made from.

-Which is?

-I think it is bay wood.

-Right.

And it tells you precisely,

all the exact prices of each item that went into it.

It was made as a music cabinet

and it comes out that it cost £18, 12 shillings and 10 pence.

-That's brilliant, isn't it?

-Very precise.

And that also came off the microfiche

which made it easy for us to identify it.

Right, there are some

telltale signs about this cabinet.

As soon as you look at it, you know

it's by this renowned maker,

-Gillows of Lancaster.

-Indeed.

One of the telltale signs is this,

if I pull this drawer open like so...

..under the underside,

and this is almost like Gillows' signature, see these little screws?

-Yes.

-They have been chamfered down and there is a little space.

That's there so the drawer can expand and contract,

without splitting the actual base of the drawer.

It was one of their little signs.

Other cabinet makers didn't do it. It was just down to Gillows.

These little pieces here, this is to stop the dust.

When you are cleaning the drawer out,

it's actually easier for maintenance.

So they were thinking not only for them,

but for the people who were going to use the piece of furniture.

-Of course, it's stamped here. Gillows of Lancaster.

-Yes.

They were leading cabinet makers in Lancaster,

but also they were interior decorators

and when this was put into the music room,

the whole room would have been in this fashion,

in what we call aesthetic period, which is around 1880, 1900s.

Later into the 1900s, Gillows merged with another company

and they were called then Waring & Gillow.

But this is just before they merged,

-so they just have the brand name Gillows of Lancaster.

-Right.

Because this is aesthetically beautiful,

I would put a value on this

between £3,000 and £5,000.

Oh, my goodness!

That's lovely, thank you.

Three very pretty Dresden Cupids.

Are they your collection, have they always been together?

I'm not sure if they have always been together, they belong to my mum now.

But she got them from her mother-in-law

who died about 10 years ago. So I'm not sure where they have come from.

-Are they your taste? Do you like them?

-No, I think they're horrible.

I'd give them to a charity shop.

This is a very popular style that has been around for a long time.

In Dresden, these have been made since the 1750s

and they've carried on being made really for an awful long time.

Many homes have liked them, perhaps the traditions for Cupids around

has waned a little bit but actually these are... I like some these.

They are rather different. Which do you think is the best of them?

You have any preferences?

No, I think they're all horrible, but probably that one I would prefer.

Right, what we need to look at

with these is who made them and when and really how well they are made.

Looking at that one, it's Cupid in disguise.

Cupid there is dressed up as a little girl with a fan

and we look at the amount of detail in the way the faces are painted

-and it's actually not terribly well done on this one.

-Ah.

This one isn't a good one.

So, having got that one out of the way,

there's the mark on the bottom. It is two lines and a cross.

It looks like the Dresden sign, but it's a copy.

This was made in, probably, about 1900 in Sitzendorf,

a town near Dresden,

but it isn't the real thing but it is copying this one.

This is Meissen, Meissen is the great factory in Dresden.

When you look at the way it's painted,

there is a lot more detail there.

The scrollwork on the base is so much more precise.

-It is just that much better.

-Oh, yes.

The mark, very proudly, the crossed swords of the Meissen factory.

That's the mark we always like to see.

But, of course, everyone copies that,

It's the easy thing to pretend.

What you can't do is imitate the quality of Meissen

and when Meissen made that in 1870,

they were making wonderful quality figurines.

And then we've got a group here which, actually,

-goes back rather earlier.

-Oh!

This one, again, nice and heavy and it's a Meissen one.

I think it is the seasons. This one is summer,

holding the corn. You've got spring with flowers.

That's autumn with a goblet

and there's winter warming his hand on a burner.

And we look for the telltale mark, and there it is, tucked at the back.

The early ones are marked around the back

and if you find one with a crossed swords there and it's real

-and good quality, we're looking at one made in 1745.

-Wow.

-So, middle of the 18th century. So that's that much older.

-Yeah.

It's had a bit of mending, this has been a bit damaged at the base.

The tree has been broken off.

It's had a bit of a hard life but the quality still shines through.

So, three different figures,

and appropriately different values.

Because she there is a copy,

that one's going to be probably around about £40.

It's pretty but nothing special.

The Meissen one, that one is real Meissen, but Victorian Meissen,

so that we are looking at about £600.

And here we have got just that much older, mid-18th century,

Meissen at its best, so in spite of the damage

we're looking at £1,500.

Wow!

Maybe I like that one best!

It's not bad!

So, over £2,000 worth of figures,

but this is the one to treasure.

Yes, to be careful with on the way home. Thank you.

Take a look at this toothsome trio here.

They may not be the most attractive objects I've ever seen

on The Antiques Roadshow, I have to be honest,

but they are certainly among the most popular. Toby jugs.

This week's Basic, Better, Best challenge is set by our

ceramic specialist Henry Sandon, who is a great devotee of Toby jugs.

He has brought three along today, one is worth £50,

one is worth £700 and the best one is worth £1,400.

Can you tell which is which? Let's see what our visitors think.

Basic for the guy with the brown coat

cos he seems a little bit more dull and not as, like, nice looking.

And then better for the guy in the blue and then,

best for the guy with the green coat.

-With the attractive spots on his face?

-That's right.

-Would you fancy owning something like that in your home?

-No.

-It is not trendy enough.

-That's harsh, isn't it?

The handle on that one is better finished than the other two

so I'll put that as best.

Basic, better, best.

-And he is best because?

-He just looks older.

His teeth look a bit shabby

and he just looks like he needs a good dentist. I'll go with him.

I like his nose as well.

-So you like his bad teeth and his sort of beak-like nose?

-Yes.

Is that what you like in a man?

Well, in Toby jug, not so much in a man. But in a Toby jug!

That is the best. That is better.

OK, why do you think this is the best one?

-Blue is my favourite colour.

-Is that really the only reason?

Yes, I'm afraid so, yes.

It's just so arbitrary, isn't it?

Thank God for Henry Sandon. At least he knows what he's talking about!

Generally speaking,

I like to hold the glass that I'm appraising on the show,

but this is a rather rare occasion.

Frankly the less I handle it, the better I feel.

Tell me why on earth have you brought this disaster area in

-to the Roadshow today.

-My wife will answer that.

I bought it for him as a present

-and then after a period of time, it started to go crumbly.

-Yes.

-And then you noticed it started to smell.

-Of sulphur.

-Sulphur?

-Yes.

It was smelly glass that's falling to pieces.

This is not what everybody wants.

The reason that it's disintegrating is that it's crizzled.

It is a lack of alkali in the ingredients.

It's like the cake that doesn't rise. The ingredients are rubbish.

They were not perfectly balanced.

Crizzling is evidenced by a mass of tiny cracks.

It's opalescent rather than see through, which it would have been.

So what did you think you bought?

-What is this?

-We took it to the museum.

-The V&A.

-Yes.

They looked at it and immediately said that it wasn't Venetian glass.

OK. It certainly looks like it.

It pleased us because by that time,

we were very curious about the whole thing. It was very strange.

And we had come across Sir Robert Mansell.

OK. What you are saying by Sir Robert Mansell is that he was

Admiral Sir Robert Mansell, MP, who held the glass monopoly,

the monopoly for making glass in England under Charles I.

So we're talking about before Restoration and all that.

We are around 1640.

A very interesting guy, but boy, that's a big leap.

What you are doing is linking this to Sir Robert Mansell which

is a pretty hairy occupation to do.

For a start, one of the problems about glass of that age is, frankly,

we don't what it looked like. We don't.

What we do know is that Venetian style, Venice glass,

was the dominant glass-making style over Europe at this date.

But to link this with Mansell is pushing it

because, frankly, there are problems about placing it that early.

It certainly looks it, but the linkage between ceramics

and glass has always been quite strong.

When you see a cup in ceramics like that, you think, "This isn't 1640."

Or silver, it could also be in silver.

Similar forms in silver. This is later

because for a start it's too big.

Cups and saucers at this date were much smaller, a third smaller.

Further, the handle, it wouldn't have had a handle at that date.

Handles of this type are more neoclassical.

-This is going back to the Greek. This is later.

-Yeah.

So whilst it is crizzled and looks a million years old,

the chances are it's more like 150 years, probably, than 350.

And that is a fact. That is the probability.

The value of course, because we've got to value stuff, is

if it was 1640, nobody knows what Mansell made anyway,

so to say this is what he made, you can't go there,

it would be maybe £200 as an academic curiosity.

It could be brought out at lectures

or put in a museum cabinet, basement,

or you accept it as a 150-year-old one and actually, worth a tenner.

-Yes!

-SHE LAUGHS

Right!

-What does one say to that?

-The missus has said it all, in my opinion.

That's the best...

I think you'd best have a fiver for that. Fantastic!

I don't think I've had an owner do a better ending than that. Brilliant!

Well, a beautifully made wooden presentation box

probably of holly wood and, for me,

there's no prizes for guessing what is within.

There are three pretty little enamel blue eggs. Tell me about them.

They are my friend's whose aunt gave them to her.

She believes they're Russian, but that's all she knows about them.

I think she probably guessed that they were

Russian from the lid satin. It is written in Cyrillic.

It is clearly legible to enthusiasts of this subject.

It actually says the name of an important Russian jeweller.

I'd like to discuss this in a back to front way

and tell you about the eggs

which are sky blue enamelled Easter eggs on the necklace.

They're surmounted by tiny, tiny diamond laurels

and that's quite important in a way

because in the tradition of jewellery

the colour blue is for love.

Something borrowed, something blue,

and here we have it conspicuously written.

Above it we also see tiny laurels set with diamonds.

This is a visual rebus for a Latin phrase which is

"Omnia vincit amor" - "the triumph of love over all".

So here is the triumphal laurels surmounting the colour blue.

There's also another message coming across,

because they are Easter eggs.

This is a gift from somebody at Easter in Holy Russia to present

to somebody that they love and it's the triumph of love over everything.

I think it is a triumph because it's survived.

It's in pristine condition,

which is wonderful for all kinds of good reasons.

Let's return to the lid satin once again.

It says quite plainly, K Faberge, Moscow.

Oh, gracious.

Wonderful.

We don't need any explanation beyond that to know that this is by far

the most famous goldsmith's workshop that's ever existed.

-It's very exciting stuff.

-What are the blue baubles of?

They are made of a silver core which has been engraved

and then flooded with blue enamel.

-You are seeing through the enamel on to the engraved ground.

-I see.

There's a great tradition in Russia to give Easter eggs.

In the country, you'd have painted white chickens' eggs to give.

In the towns, there would be wooden eggs, perhaps ceramic eggs,

but in this curious and claustrophobic world

of the Romanov court and its orbit, only Faberge would do.

-This is a whiff of pre-revolutionary Russia.

-Wonderful.

And in 1917, catastrophe happened

because the Russian Revolution came about

and Faberge's empire was destroyed utterly and completely and forever.

And so when we see these things coming through,

the excitement mounts enormously.

And mercifully, your friend has taken enormous care of it,

because it's almost perfect condition,

and it's kept within this box,

which signs it, it's like a picture frame.

And your friend has an object which is undoubtedly worth £12,000.

Oh, my goodness! Oh, she'll be thrilled to pieces. Oh!

Because quite recently she had a big fire at her house.

And quite a lot of things lost.

And this was one thing that survived.

Well, that's wonderful. It may be some small compensation.

But how exciting to see it here today.

That is absolutely wonderful, she'll be thrilled to pieces.

I'm thrilled to pieces!

I'm exhausted now, I don't know about you! Wonderful, wonderful.

If you remember,

I was telling you earlier about our Basic, Better, Best challenge

set by Henry Sandon this week, our ceramics specialist.

Three Toby jugs, one worth £50, that's the basic.

The better one worth £700, and the best one worth £1,400.

Now, Henry, I have to say, among our visitors,

we are all a bit nonplussed by them.

Particularly because, in the nicest possible way,

-they are just so darn ugly.

-Oh, no, they're not! They're beautiful.

-What is so lovely about them?

-They're real people, aren't they?

They have noses, fine noses, and pustules on their face,

and they're drinking beer. What could be better than that?

Yes, look at this one in particular. He's covered in spots,

and his teeth are terrible.

Shame, isn't it? Well, they were coarser people in those days.

And I suppose... They named Toby jugs after Toby Fillpot,

who was a great drinker in the 18th century.

He was supposed to drink gallons of beer at a time.

And they named Toby jugs, it's said, after him.

And I think they're great.

They derive, of course, from the 18th century,

from the 1780s when they were invented by Ralph Wood.

And the three models here are of the Ralph Wood type, the ordinary jug.

Now, very, very much rarer ones come in strange shapes.

The Fiddler, a chap playing the fiddle,

and a chap who is ironing clothes. They're very, very rare.

One of the chaps ironing clothes, The Tailor,

-fetched £30,000 a few years ago.

-Really?

-So they are expensive.

Now these ones aren't in that market,

they're the ordinary, the usual Toby jugs.

Well, I had a bit of a go at thinking which I thought was which.

-I mean, this one has its lid.

-It's got his hat, yes.

Which I do very carefully there.

So I thought, I presume that must affect the value

because the other two do not.

So, basic, because I thought he was painted the most basic way.

Better because he has his hat. And then best, well, he's the most ugly.

-Ohh!

-And he's got the most detail.

So, go on, put us out of our misery.

That's not a bad shot, I suppose.

The basic one is the latest one, in date.

He's going to be a Victorian one, 1860-70 in date.

And that is this chap. He's a Victorian one.

The quality of the making is poorer, no decoration worthy,

and he is a basic one.

Perhaps 50 quid or something like that.

Right. Got that wrong. So, better?

The better one, the better one is our friend down here.

He is a Ralph Wood-type of about 1790 in date.

And he is very nicely decorated,

but the glaze doesn't work sometimes.

The face is poorly decorated, the glaze runs

and dribbles down his coat. It's not terribly well controlled.

And he basically would go for something like

about £700 at auction, that one.

One of our visitors chose him as best because she thought

his teeth were so terrible, he deserved recognition all of his own!

-Well, people in the 18th century all had bad teeth.

-Quite.

So this is the best one, which I happened on by chance, really.

Certainly the modelling is the finest of the three.

The modelling is finest, and also the painting.

I mean, the face is absolutely fantastically well painted.

And the base, look at this wonderful marbling around the base.

It's exceptional, you very seldom get that.

And he's by Neale,

a noted maker of Toby jugs in about the 1790 period.

And he is the best of the three of them.

And he's valued at auction somewhere around the 1,500 or so bracket.

Goodness me. And you've got some in your home, Henry?

I've got lots in my home, yes! Including some of me!

Very embarrassing, but I find them great fun.

It's a really lovely Chinese painting, it's so obviously Chinese.

And we've got two of the Eight Immortals here.

We've got a man called Li Tieguai,

-and, you know, for all the world, it is a Chinese painting.

-Yes.

But there's a rather strange clue on here

as to where it might have come from.

And it says Montgolfier in the watermark.

How did you come by this?

My husband's grandfather, George Mottished,

was a road surveyor in Hampshire before the First World War.

And he joined up, he went into building roads

for the troops at the front.

Oh, right. And this is him? That's him there, yes.

And he had, working under him, a troop of Chinese coolies.

He called them coolies. With no disrespect.

And they were building roads for the troops.

Right from 1916 to 1919, I think.

He had a lot of respect for his team, he liked working with them.

When they disbanded at the end of the war,

the gangmaster presented him with two painted scrolls.

He was very, very touched by this gesture.

He had them framed, took them home,

and they were his treasured possessions.

And we inherited them about five years ago.

I must say,

I don't think I've ever seen Chinese paintings on French paper.

-Probably not.

-So it is so interesting, with the connection.

-We know that they were painted in France.

-Yes.

Now, the Chinese Labour Corps

was largely shipped out of Shandong province.

It became clear that by 1916,

we needed labour to work with your grandfather-in-law as engineers.

They did all the sort of basic work.

They laid roads, as they did with him, they dug trenches.

And eventually, after the war, they cleared up all the barbed wire.

And there are various debates about how many there were.

But there were about 150,000, maybe as many as 200,000 Chinese labourers

who worked with the Allies through that second half of the war.

And did he ever write about any particular incidents with them

-or anything like that?

-No, but he told his daughters a few tales.

One was that they were so short of road materials

that when the theatre of war shifted from one place to another,

they took up the road they'd made and moved it to the new place.

And when they came to a hole they couldn't cross,

he commandeered a wagon-load of tins of bully beef and tipped them in.

They had more bully beef than they had road material,

so they crossed the gap on bully beef.

And he clearly had a very close relationship with them.

And interestingly, they stayed on after the war,

lots and lots of them.

And I suspect that some of the diaspora of Chinese in France

and in England came from this group of labour that was sent over.

And in fact, in France, about 2,000 died during the war.

Er, and there are, there's one wonderful graveyard

by Lutyens, with a Chinese gate

over the entrance, where there are 2,000 of them buried.

And it's in a place called Noyelles sur Mer.

Most unusual, cos all the others are standard war graves,

-but this is an unusual Chinese one.

-How amazing.

-Very interesting.

Now, I have a connection with this, strangely.

-Because my great-grandfather, same generation...

-Yes.

-..was in Shandong province.

-Oh!

-..and was responsible

-for recruiting them to send to the front.

-Well, I never!

In modern terms, one would think that was a shameful thing to do,

and I think they were paid very little.

And it was three months' journey, and some were sunk on the way.

It's not something one should feel entirely proud of.

The fact is, the Chinese today are very keen to rehabilitate

-the value of the Chinese Labour Corps.

-I'm not surprised.

And this is such an interesting thing.

The sad thing is that, apart from to you and I,

who have a particular interest in them,

-they're not worth a huge amount of money.

-No, no.

You realise they wouldn't be.

So whilst you and I think they're fabulous,

I think commercially, they're worth...

probably no more than, you've got two of them,

I suppose, £400-500 for the pair.

-Hmm.

-Which is not a huge amount of money.

-No, it doesn't matter.

Do you know anything about the inscription?

-Why people can't read it?

-Well, I can't read it either.

And maybe somebody who sees this

will be able to translate it and tell us!

-That would be lovely, wouldn't it?

-I would love to know!

Yes! Right, thank you very much!

She's got this wonderful, serene look about her.

-She obviously hasn't been in the sun.

-No.

-Has she been out much at all?

-No. I've had her for five years.

I just had her in a bag, in a box, under the bed,

and when my sister had her,

she had her in a bag, in a box, under the bed.

-So she hasn't seen the daylight, no.

-Poor little mite!

Now you said your sister had her,

she's obviously a good deal older than your generation.

-So whose was she before that?

-My sister was a carer,

and she belonged to an old lady that she looked after,

-and she gave it to my sister.

-So that's the link?

-Yes.

Well, she's lovely.

She's what's known as a shoulder china doll,

because her head and her shoulders

are all made in one piece, as you can see.

And, in fact, I'm rather pleased that she's undressed,

because you can totally see the construction.

She's been stitched onto this calico body.

You can see the wide hips here.

Not because women had huge hips,

but because it was the fashion of the time to have wider skirts,

and that would give width to the skirts when she was fully dressed.

-Have you done any research on her?

-Erm, no, not really.

I did have a quick look on the internet last night,

but I drew a blank, really. I just thought she may be German?

Well, she's got a good chance.

I mean, these china-headed dolls were made...

the majority came from Germany, there's no question.

They were made elsewhere too, but the majority were German.

I've got no reason to think that she won't be. What about date?

I know some of them are, like, 1800s,

but then they went into the 1900s, so, no. I really haven't got a clue.

OK, well, it's somewhere in the middle there.

Shall we try and pin it down a bit?

Well, one good way of looking and being able to date a doll,

particularly one that has got an elaborate hairdo,

is to look at that hairstyle.

There we can see it's plaited at the sides

and then tied back into

this sort of loose, low chignon.

So that's good.

I mean, I'm not going to be able to pinpoint it to a precise year,

but I would say between 1855 and 1860.

So you can get a good guide from that.

Erm, she's not a hugely valuable doll,

but she's still collectable,

and I would put her at around £300 to perhaps £350.

Yeah, that's very good. Yeah, I'm pleased with that.

Lovely. Thank you.

A few years ago, I had a call from BBC Look North.

In the light of the Chilean mining disaster,

their attention had been drawn to the fact that

local residents had found an old Victorian rubbish tip

and had been sending down shafts like mine shafts into the tip,

and clearly, the council had issued an order banning this,

because of safety, the fear of collapse.

And you know jolly well what they were looking for, don't you?!

Yes! Old bottles! And that's how I got into it, really.

Back in the 1980s,

I was doing some research on my great-grandfather's company.

He was a mineral water manufacturer in Gravesend.

And one night, we went to the local pub, myself and my brother,

and he just happened to say that, round the back of the pub,

they were building houses on an old Victorian rubbish tip.

So he said, "Do you fancy having a look?" So we went round the back

and there were just bottles everywhere, laying everywhere.

We were hoping to find one from my great-grandfather's company,

-but we never did.

-What's the name of that company?

-CH Perry.

-OK, and what did they make?

-Fizzy lemonade, really.

OK, people will take a glancing view at these and think,

"Ooh, we've dug up things like that in the garden."

But I suspect that we're in the presence

of a rather elevated collection here.

Yeah, because when I first started,

the first bottles I found up there was quite a rare star-shaped poison.

And via that, I met other collectors and I found out about...

Oh, you caught nutter-itis?!

Yeah, I found a network of clubs

and there's also magazines and shows.

But with the poisons, it just got to be too much.

There were so many. So what I did,

I whittled it down just to the patented shapes that were developed.

Go on. Show us what you're talking about.

Well, back in the Victorian times, of course,

there was no electric or anything like that.

There was gas, if you were lucky, or candlepower.

So what was happening was that people were getting up in the night,

or whatever, reaching for their medicine, for their cough,

but reach for the wrong bottle

and picked up the bottle of carbolic acid,

drink that, and there was a lot of deaths via it.

So what happened is that chemists, doctors, and glass companies

all started to patent different shapes

so that they felt odd to the touch.

So you'd get up in the night, it would feel strange,

it would have grooves, or bobbles, or whatever on it,

so you knew that it was odd and so you'd be wary of drinking it.

So, they presumably all date, what, 1860s onwards?

That's right. That's when the first true poison bottle was patented.

Right up to the 1920s, until electric light was prevalent.

-So predominantly blue, obviously, here, which delineated poison.

-Yes.

-Blue was poison?

-Yes.

-And what about green and amber, then?

They just came along later.

A lot of the glass companies just diverted into...

they probably thought,

"Well, the main thing is the shape, so colour doesn't matter."

OK, well, show us something stonking.

Well, probably the classic English poison bottle is the coffin.

-In the shape of a coffin!

-The shape of a coffin.

Can't get much more macabre than that!

That's patented by Langford in 1871. Very rare.

There's only about six known worldwide,

and half of those are damaged.

Yeah, there's the nutter in you coming out!

Yeah, I'll lay that down because it's a bit...

-What about the skull?

-Now, the skull, that's an American.

That's the only American bottle I've got.

-The rest are English?

-Yes.

Well, generally speaking, blues sell in shops for about a tenner.

Yeah, I mean, it's a good thing to collect,

if you're a youngster coming into the hobby.

You can pick them up as little as 50p.

But when you start to specialise...

And what are the restrictions about going into tips?

-It's almost impossible.

-Is that right?

Because of health and safety. You just cannot do it.

Right, so you'd have to check a club to find out what you can do?

That's right.

OK, so I'm thinking the blue ones

would go for a bit more than green ones...

Not necessarily. No, no.

I'm just thinking at my level, which is the tenners!

Oh, right! HE LAUGHS

How much are you paying?!

Well, I've been very lucky, actually,

because a lot of these I got in the early days of the hobby.

So the whole thing is picking up? It's a hot collecting field?

It's collected worldwide now, all these items,

and so it is very difficult.

So how much are you...?

Well, the coffin, there would be quite a few people

who would pay £12,000 for that.

-What?!

-£12,000.

-£12,000?!

-Yeah.

-Is that right? £12,000!

Let me see it!

-MAN IN CROWD:

-Don't drop it!

Look at that!

That's 12 grand!

Go on, hit me again! Hit me harder!

-Well, that one is about £2,000.

-Is that right?

So how much have you got on the table here?

You, selling at auction?

Round about 50K.

£50,000? Here?!

There's only one thing for it!

LAUGHTER

And if you drop that, you WILL be dead!

LAUGHTER

Do you remember how I started the programme, all the way up there,

terrifyingly, on the fighting platform of HMS Gannet?

Well, fortunately, the producers have allowed me down here

to the safety of the forward deck,

and all the rigging you can see around me,

miles and miles of rope, were made here at the Ropery.

So from HMS Gannet and historic dockyard, Chatham,

from all the Roadshow team, bye-bye.