Royal Holloway 2 Antiques Roadshow

This week, we returned, as we said we would, to Egham and Runnymede,

birthplace of the Magna Carta

and home to Holloway's College for Women.

The wherewithal for this vast and lavish project came from the application of this.

Thomas Holloway was one of many notable Victorians

deeply committed to social and economic change.

Although not from a rich family, he showed enterprise and determination.

His product was a "good for what ails you" ointment, made from a secret recipe.

Actually, it was beeswax, resin, lanolin and olive oil.

With this and other potions he was going to cure and conquer the world.

He set about the hard sell -

boards carrying his advertisements went up from the Pyramids to Niagara Falls.

The Holloway technique was quite audacious.

He paid a theatre company £1,000 to mention his product in a pantomime.

"Look behind you! It's the ointment!"

He even asked Charles Dickens to give him a plug in Dombey And Son. The great writer declined.

Having made his millions, Holloway's first contribution was this -

a sanatorium in Virginia Water.

It was ornately decorated in the hope the inmates would be cured, in part, by distraction.

At about that time, American beer baron, Matthew Vassar,

built a college for women.

Holloway was not to be outdone. He built his own women's college - the Royal Holloway.

Each student had two rooms, plus a common room for tea parties.

Vassar's college had an art gallery;

the Englishman responded by with a BIGGER collection of Victorian art,

including this one - The Marriage Market, Babylon, by Edwin Long.

Interesting choice for a women's college.

Thomas Holloway's gift to English womanhood has gone to a sort of emancipation in reverse -

it's now Royal Holloway, University of London.

And the Antiques Roadshow experts are here for another term.

They're painted, actually, on glass.

-Yeah. You have two of these?

-No, I have this one and this one.

-Whenever I look at it, it makes me smile.

-How do you use her?

Well, I use her as a torchere. I put some flowers in a vase on top.

Well, that's what she is.

It would have been a candlestick or flowers.

A torchere is the word for this.

To me, it's a mermaid and her baby, and I think it's lovely.

Do you know anything about it?

-No. I would imagine it's Italian, but that's only a guess.

-That's...

Otherwise I know nothing.

Yes, you're right. Venice is the most likely source.

Venice has always been a centre of wood carvers,

of makers of decorative works of art for hundreds of years.

And Venice still has workshops and all sorts of elaborate things.

This was probably made in 1900-1910, difficult to be precise,

but sort of Art Nouveau-ish period.

It's a mixture of styles. You've got Modernism, which is Art Nouveau

and all these flowing lines.

If you look at her hair, this flowing hair, almost like seaweed,

is the way Art-Nouveau women were drawn.

At the same time, you've got the Rococo, the Beaux Arts -

styles of the 18th and 19th centuries.

And the workshops in Venice were selling the old and the new,

and this brings it all together.

-You know it's all made of wood?

-Yes.

-And then gessoed with plaster.

-Yes.

-Do you have other things like this? How does she live at home?

She lives, um... I mean, I've got nothing the same as this,

but I do have other things that are carved

-and slightly, you know...

-That are decorative in that sense?

-Yes, yes.

-But nothing like her?

-No.

-You'd never find another one, would you?

-I don't think so.

Because she's so desirable, I think a collector would pay around...

£1,000 to £1,500 for her, because she's fun and decorative.

-Thank you.

-Thank you very much.

-'This is your favourite piece?

-Yes.'

-Why?

-It just looks like a family bundle of rats.

-And the detail, especially their eyes.

-I love this character.

And there's the signature of the man who carved it.

-This is from a group. Here are four. How many are there altogether?

-Originally, there were 40.

-And where did they come from?

-My husband's grandfather was a Dutchman,

and he studied in Delft University around 1920, I think.

He made friends with Hirohito,

and in the '60s, he went on a trip to Japan and contacted him,

and Hirohito presented him with this box and told him that he shouldn't open it until he got home,

and inside there were 40 netsuke.

What an extraordinary story. This is not a netsuke.

Some people think that anything small and ivory is a netsuke,

but netsuke carvers were out of business when, in the late 19th C,

the Japanese court decided to abandon traditional Japanese dress,

so all the people who'd been making netsuke

started to make these little decorative objects called okimono.

Carving netsuke started in the 18th century and you've got a splendid 18th-century example here.

This is cut off a triangular sliver,

-an outside sliver of elephant ivory.

-Yes.

They've used the outside section - beautiful thing.

There he is - this long, bearded sage,

looking slightly morose, deep in thought.

My favourite's this boxwood carving,

there he is, little Ratty, crawling out of his box. He's beautiful.

-Very cheeky.

-Ivory, bone, boxwood... this is the odd one out.

Now this, unlike the other pieces, was carved in China,

and is made of jade.

It's 18th century, it's a beautiful piece of quality jade. Lovely.

In terms of value - I haven't seen the whole collection, but these four may give you some guide.

Your 19th-century rats are probably worth between £300 and £500.

Your early 18th-century netsuke

is worth between £300 and £400.

Your 19th-century rat coming out of a box -

again, £300 or £400. And your Chinese jade,

-well, I think that's 18th century and it's got to be of the order of £400 to £600.

-Mmm.

-These dolls, made by Pierotti, belong to you?

-Yes.

I'm the great, great, great-grandson of the original Pierotti

who moved over from Italy to England.

Absolutely. Domenico, his son, was sent to England

because he fell out of a tree and he was sent to England to recover

and his aunt taught him modelling.

She made small dolls out of papier mache and then coated them in wax.

And that is how it all started.

In 1849, he started modelling Queen Victoria's children,

and he won a prize at the Bazaar at the Pantheon in Paris

for his babies.

I think he was probably the king of wax-doll makers, Domenico,

and then Henry, his son, took over.

Very often, in the beginning, they used beeswax,

then it was a mixture of beeswax, candlewax and turps.

But to get the colour, they used carmine and white lead.

Well, white lead - as we all know - is poisonous

and poor Charles, who was Henry's son, died of lead poisoning in 1892,

and his poor mother and sisters took over the business,

and that's how it progressed. So your mother was one of...?

She was the daughter of Enrico Walter, who was the last one making dolls with his brother.

-Right up to the 1930s.

-Yes. My understanding is

that this was made for a nativity play for my mother's school.

We estimate that must have been round about 1920.

It has inserted little eyelashes - incredible insertion with a little needle -

and all round the line of the scalp

you will have needle insertions of single human hair,

and tufts of hair would be inserted in the rest of the head to make it look realistic.

What fascinates me is you've got two heads here...

This one is a man. It's so unusual to find a wax doll of a man,

although Pierotti did go into making famous people.

-This is all you've got?

-We've got more limbs in another box, but we just brought those.

-Headless limbs?

-Those are all the heads we've got.

-With about five times as many limbs.

-Lots and lots of limbs.

-Well, I can only imagine they made, obviously, many more limbs than they did heads!

Your baby there...

Very often Pierotti signed with the whole name at the back of the head,

but that isn't signed and because it is religious, it doesn't make as much money as if it were a doll.

Having said that, coming with your provenance,

-I can see a museum certainly paying as much as £1,000 for it.

-Yes.

And even the limbs are probably worth something to a wax maker!

..The wine cooler is clearly mahogany, from the Regency period,

but what is interesting about these books, is that the books stop before the Regency period.

The age of satinwood was up until about 1800,

and the Regency wine cooler's from 1810-1820.

So when this was written - here we are, 1904 -

nobody had considered the Regency period at all.

So here's a major book, one of the first serious dictionaries of English furniture,

written by Percy Macquoid in 1904 - I think the last volume was 1908 -

not talking about Regency furniture at all. 1800 was the cut-off date.

Macquoid was a decorator and advisor to wealthy people.

He left part of his collection to this museum in Brighton.

Here you have an oak chair, probably Flemish, circa 1500,

but we now know that, in fact, it's a fake,

-made in the back streets of London about 1850-1880.

-Extraordinary.

And this is one of the problems with this book,

and also fascinating, that a lot of pieces were actually fakes.

And in this one, we've got the Age Of Mahogany,

-and here we have a piece of...

-Walnut.

-..walnut. A walnut cabinet.

But a cabinet like this, with these oyster veneers, which is typical of the William and Mary period,

wouldn't have cabriole legs like that.

It'd probably have an extra drawer and on low bun feet or a low stand.

So here is a major colour plate in the book and it's clearly not right.

-So the people who are named in the book wouldn't have known this, would they?

-No, not at all.

Here we have two pieces by William Kent from Houghton Hall in Norfolk,

and they were perfectly right, they weren't fakes at all.

The books are really rather a descending investment,

whereas the Regency pieces are ascending, so it compensates a bit.

And these were reprinted in the last decade and the value has gone down.

A set like this probably between... £400 and £500 in a shop.

-But the Regency piece of furniture here, which looks like it's been in the family for a long time...

-Yes.

..that's going up in value.

You can expect an auction value of £2,000 to £3,000, and if you wanted to insure it, and cleaned up a bit,

-slightly more than £4,000 today.

-Well, that's wonderful. Thank you.

-Wonderful. Now we know.

-Yes, now we know.

Are there many of the founder's possessions known to have survived?

Very few. This is probably the most important one, from the founder himself.

-There's lots of pot lids and ointment jars, but his own possessions - very few.

-Bearing the name.

-Bearing his name, yeah.

-Right, this is actually his watch.

We've got a date on it. It seems to be just the hallmarks for 1814.

Presumably that will be before.

Holloway was born 1800, so he'd only be 14 when that watch was hallmarked.

-Then it obviously wasn't something that he acquired new.

-Yes.

-Whether this was given to him as a bad debt...

-It's actually got a signature on it,

and the signature is "McMaster of Dublin".

It's a peculiar watch - it's got a rack-lever escapement,

which means it has a lever, but uses a rack.

The balance cock of the watch has actually got the harp,

which is significant of Ireland,

and it has a Dublin maker's name and the hallmark's Chester.

Liverpool is where the rack lever was invented

and Chester was a suitable hallmarking office,

and obviously it was made for this Dublin maker, so maybe he was a travelling man.

We've got no record of him going to Ireland.

I think your idea that he might have taken it as a bad debt is a good one.

I think so, because he was a stickler for people paying their way and he may well have accepted a watch.

He might not have known how valuable it was,

but he would have said, "Yes, that looks a nice watch, worth so much."

Well, as something that belongs to the college, it's priceless,

-but for the benefit of anybody who might own the same watch...

-Yeah.

-it's probably worth something around about £700 or £800.

-I see.

-Is that because of its age?

-Because of the unusual escapement, its age

-and the gold case.

-Yeah. Thank you very much indeed.

Now, how long have you been the proud owner of this glorious pot?

-About 30 years. It was a gift from my wife.

-Oh, very nice.

It is a glorious pot because it's got so much going on -

thick dripping glazes and also, it's been beautifully veined,

it's got flashes of oxblood red and this lovely cobalt coming through.

It looks ancient. It looks like when you take the top off,

-you'd expect a genie to appear.

-Yes.

-You're using it as a tobacco jar,

-which is what it's been designed for.

-Mmm.

-But when you look at that, the name Royal Doulton is not one that would normally come to mind.

-No.

But when we turn it over,

you've got all this information.

You've got "Chang" - the type of glaze,

"Noke" - he was the head of the art department,

"HN" is for Harry Nixon. This was made during the late 1920s,

and they used to be locked away in a room in Nile Street in Burslem

and none of the other Royal Doulton workers were ever allowed into that inner sanctum.

They were very much the A-Team as far as Royal Doulton were concerned.

Now, when it comes to value,

if your wife wanted to buy you another one for your next birthday,

she'd have to pay somewhere in the region of £1,200 to £1,500.

-It's not bad, is it?

-Not bad at all.

I inherited it from my aunt, whose husband gave it to my aunt,

but I don't know the history of it, apart from that.

It's an interesting cluster ring. When I first saw it,

-I thought to myself it's going to be something like a topaz or one of these brown sapphires.

-Yes.

It's a diamond in the centre

and on this side, we have another one in white,

but the most interesting one is this one

because this is a bluey-green one.

All diamond-set, but all different colours and, from my point of view,

seeing coloured diamonds, it always is very exciting

because coloured diamonds are extremely rare.

This one is almost a sort of yellowish-brown colour,

but this one is the one that's quite exciting

because one of the rarest colours you can find are blue

and even rarer is the colour green.

The surrounding line of diamonds around the three principal stones

-is a different period from the three centre stones.

-Oh.

I think it's Victorian, this cluster,

with this nipped-in silver setting.

But when we look at the three principal diamonds,

we see that they're claw-set stones.

The diamonds themselves are cushion shaped, Victorian cut stones,

and I think they were probably cut in maybe around about 1900 to 1905.

Valuing fancy diamonds is very, very difficult.

There are so many subtle nuances of colour - greyish-blue, bluish-grey, greenish-blue, bluish-green,

and what you have to do with them is send them off to a laboratory,

where they will actually issue a certificate stating exactly what the colour is.

Let's suppose that it comes back

as being a natural fancy green-blue diamond, or blue-green diamond,

and they can say it with certainty,

in which case I'm going to be very broad with my pricing here and say,

hopefully, at least £2,500 to £3,000,

but it could very well be worth £5,000 with all the right gradings.

That's very good news. Thank you.

This is quite a find. Now, what we have here is a waist-belt clasp.

On the back is stamped "Earls Court Exhibition".

Right, on the front we have

"1887 Jubilee".

Now, that's Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee,

-and this was the very first time that Buffalo Bill came to England with his Wild West Show.

-Uh-huh.

And he brought Annie Oakley with him,

and there's Annie Oakley firing away, laying back on a horse.

She was introduced to Queen Victoria and Queen Victoria said to her,

-"You're a clever little lady". Where did you get it?

-Car boot.

-How much did you pay for it?

-£30.

-I think you could certainly put one nought on the end of that.

-Lovely.

-Possibly £300 to £400.

-Really?

-Yes. Annie Oakley is really collectable.

Oh, brilliant. Thank you.

Ackerman published dozens and dozens of books,

but seldom did he produce something quite as exotic as this.

And, in this place, I think we get a taste of the style of the book.

He commissioned some of the leading illustrators of the day to do these plates -

Rowlandson and Pugin -

that's not Pugin the architect, this is Pugin's father.

Here we have a wonderful view of the hall at Carlton House, which was the Prince Regent's house.

The Prince Regent spent masses of money doing up this building.

In fact, in the end, it fell down.

So this is a snapshot in 1808 of Carlton House.

The type of illustration is an aquatint,

and it's been hand-coloured and, because it's never been opened,

you've got this dazzling colour. Where do you keep these at home?

-They've been on a shelf for years.

-Sitting, collecting dust?

-Exactly.

They are in lovely condition, but here you have this weird shadow -

-this is the offsetting of the colour.

-Oh.

-So that has gone onto that page?

-That's right.

It's a sort of burning of the acids in the colour and you've got this shadow, which is a slight pity,

but is very typical for Ackermans of this period.

In this other volume, there's an absolute wonderful illustration

of the Exhibition Hall at the Royal Watercolour Exhibition.

All the elegant figures of the day going through, and a description -

"Art in Britain today". And this chap, Abbe Winkelmann,

says that a country with an awful climate can't produce good artists.

"Owing to the absence of good weather, the English have never yet had a single painter of eminence,

"the French however have had two, one of whom is Poussin."

-So you've got to have nice weather to produce decent artists(!)

-Right.

Actually, Ackerman has got some wonderful artists here. The whole thing is absolutely packed with...

There are about 104 plates, all of this dazzling quality.

There's a lovely little note in volume one at the beginning,

which says something about how much it's worth, which I think is quite amusing.

Here it says, "A copy sold at Christie's in 1946 for £260."

It would have been a pretty good investment to have bought it then,

and this set now, at auction, would make

somewhere between £3,500 and £4,000.

And you ought to insure them for £5,500 or £6,000.

-So £260 in 1946 and nearly £5,000 today. Wonderful set.

-Thank you.

-..But you've got to have a very big room to display, haven't you?

-Yes.

-..Tell me how you got it.

-My mum gave it to me when I was this size,

-so that's 21 years ago.

-But you didn't play with it?

-Occasionally,

but it lived in a cupboard most of the time.

-Well, quite right, because you know it's by Steiff.

-We saw the button in the ear, so we thought maybe it was.

Got a button in the ear, but the interesting thing about this button

is that it's a blank,

which shows that it's really early,

because the first buttons Steiff made had an embossed elephant on it,

which was the first animal that she ever made, which was a pincushion.

And this is probably the interim between

putting their name - embossed "Steiff" - on it, and the elephant,

so this is somewhere around 1903, 1904, so a very early one.

Plus the fact he's a white one -

it's a very collectable colour

because they didn't make as many white ones as they did the beige.

-Right.

-He's a lovely size, he's in wonderful condition.

-Did you get him with this outfit?

-Yeah, and the box.

Whether it was made by Steiff or by your grandmother or whatever,

it's beautiful. It looks completely right with the cap. Wonderful.

Got the original eyes, little boot button eyes - shoe buttons, really,

because boot buttons are bigger.

And I would put an insurance value on him of somewhere around

£1,000 to £1,500.

Ooh, goodness!

-Be a while before she's playing with him!

-So don't let her play with it.

-Isn't that marvellous?

-Mmm, have to look after him now.

-Wonderful.

-Wow!

..Which is your favourite?

Oh, I... Well...

that I really like because it's Art Nouveau.

Exactly. This is typically Art Nouveau.

The colours of the enamelled areas here, this lovely blue-green colour

-is typical of the period between about 1890 and 1910.

-Right.

Now, the hallmarks are very clear.

The London hallmarks are 1905,

then the maker's mark of William Hutton and Sons.

Their chief designer at this time was somebody called Kate Harris

and I'm sure this would have been designed by her.

This is a tortoiseshell photo frame,

silver mounted in tortoiseshell and if we turn it over, we should find some hallmarks. There they are,

-on the side there.

-Yeah.

-1898.

-Right.

So it's a late-Victorian silver-mounted tortoiseshell frame.

Now, tortoiseshell actually comes from the hawksbill turtle.

It's an endangered species, so it's illegal to import it these days.

Tortoiseshell is - especially with silver - very, very popular.

This one dates from a bit later than the tortoiseshell one - 1906.

The hallmarks are clear. It's very pretty with this pierced band

and then blue enamel behind.

Um, photograph frames don't really date before about 1870-1880,

even though photographs had been made for long before that.

I think photographs weren't mass produced until that sort of time,

then it became a status symbol. Once you had made some money

then you would have silver frames of your family, of your ancestors.

If I was to suggest the best investments in antique silver over the last 20 years,

it wouldn't be Georgian silver necessarily,

-it would probably be silver frames like these.

-Would it?

Enamel and silver combined together is always popular.

-Even a small frame like that would be worth about £600 to £700.

-Right.

A frame like that - you wouldn't buy that in a shop for under £1,000.

-Right.

-Um, I think probably the most valuable is the tortoiseshell.

Silver-mounted tortoiseshell is fashionable, so are photo frames.

I think, probably, that's going to be worth well in excess of £2,500.

Right.

Well, we've heard all about Holloway's potions and pills doing people good for whatever ails them,

-but this is a book of advice.

-Yes.

It was published after his death in 1900 and it's got all kinds of crazy information.

Apart from having an almanac for 1900,

it tells you about a Patagonian funeral, quaint South American customs and Australian girls.

"The Australian girl is tall and slender.

"She lacks somewhat in complexion, but generally, she is pretty." Well, that's fair enough.

"Advice on cranial covering. Few ladies know they carry 40 or 50 miles of hair on their heads.

"The fair haired may even have to dress 70 miles of threads of gold every morning." What a prospect.

-Amazing, isn't it?

-And people took notice of this as well.

-Yes.

-Nowadays politically incorrect, some of it.

-Oh, yes, I'm afraid so!

But this is 1900.

..These are the real gems.

-Really?

-What did you pay for those?

-A couple of pound each or something.

-Do you know where they were made?

-No.

-Well, they were made in Sunderland.

-Right.

-This is a really nice one,

with a hen. "Saviour of mankind adopts the figure of the hen,

-"To show the strength of his regard for the lost sons of men." A nice, religious verse.

-Yes.

This one is the mariner's compass - again, you know, a shipping thing.

-As I said, Sunderland about 1820. And you paid?

-A pound each.

-Not much more than that.

-Well, I think the pair at an antique fair...

-probably £250-£300.

-Oh, my gosh!

-Easily.

-You're joking.

-No.

Thank you.

-When did you start collecting dog collars?

-About six years ago.

I went to Portobello and I fell in love with one of these dog collars.

Since then I've been looking out for them all the time.

-From £50 to £200 I've paid for them.

-The prices have rocketed up in the last two or three years.

-They have.

And hard to get hold of. I hardly ever see them these days.

-And are you a dog lover?

-Oh, yes.

-How many have you got?

-One - Katie.

-But lots of collars!

-Lots of everything on dogs, not just collars.

I like this big mastiff one with the owner's name on - W Reid, Lymington.

You can imagine a huge guard dog chained up, and if he escapes,

Mr Reid would have expected him to be returned.

And this sweet little chap

-which would have gone on a little poodle or chihuahua.

-Yes.

And somebody who lived in Tyldesley, Mr Crompton, wanted his pooch back. That one's made of nickel.

In imitation silver and bright cut with a leather liner to it,

so that little poochy's neck didn't get too strained, which is sweet.

Here's another one with a leather liner, but for a butch dog.

Studs on the outer rim so that when he was trotting around,

all the neighbours knew he was a big, brave, fierce dog.

-This one's rather precious, isn't she?

-Yes.

Has a little padlock, as if she's trying to preserve her chastity.

So you'd lock her and unlock her.

Deliciously engraved. I guess this is probably German or French,

but with a red leather interior,

which is good fun. And this is another nickel...example,

but with a fake hallmark on it.

-I see, yes.

-When nickel is polished very brightly, it looks like silver.

It's supposed to be a lion,

like a sterling-silver stamped lion. Cheaper than a solid silver type...

..but still very effective and with red leather inside. Delightful.

Do you know what age they would be?

Would it be turn of the century or later?

-Late 19th or early 20th century, but there are earlier ones.

-Yes.

16th-century iron-bound... extraordinary collars.

-I think we're going to focus on a few values here.

-Yes.

I guess that the mastiff one from Lymington is probably worth about...

-£200 to £250 now.

-Gosh!

The pooch from Tyldesley - very collectable -

maybe £120 to £150.

-Thank you.

-And the precious, lockable

padlocked neck variety - unusual really -

-about £150 to £250 for that one.

-Yes.

The butch, studded fellow - around £150 to £200 for that.

And, altogether,

you know, a very interesting group.

My mother bought the whole drawing room, in auction, in 1927

from a lady who'd been out in the Far East and she bought the carpets and the chairs...

and sofas... and she bought the drawing room.

-She bought the entire drawing room?

-Yes. In Halifax, in auction.

-That was very extravagant.

-Well, she was getting married.

-I see, so it was part of the dowry?

-Yes.

-She brought a little bit of Japan into Yorkshire.

-Yes.

-Well, this was made in Japan, in the mid 1890s, the cabinet.

-Mmm.

Um, the actual carcass of the cabinet, the actual wood of it,

was made by a different worker to the specialist who did the lacquer panels.

We have sliding doors on top,

we have hidden within the niches, differently shaped pieces of gold lacquer

with inlay of ivory, bone, mother of pearl.

I love the asymmetry of these things - that's what really gripped the English imagination

because they were so used to boring, conventional Victorian furniture,

all heavily symmetric, but here,

they were going for something asymmetric. It's great to see it

with these pieces of Satsuma.

The end of the 19th century was the age of amassing things from over the world - the age of colonialism.

Everything that people encountered was brought back home.

There is a problem with the panels up here.

Various bits of the wisteria and the bird have dropped off.

You've got to watch that your humidity level is nice and wet.

-I don't know if you have a soggy drawing room?

-It's very damp, my house.

-Is it?

But it has moved around lots of houses and it's always been used

-by the children and grandchildren. It's been around and not museumed.

-Yes.

-It's a living piece.

-So every time it's moved, its atmosphere changes and a leaf will drop off.

-Yes.

I would want to get these pieces recarved.

-Now tell me about the Satsuma-ware. Do you have a favourite piece?

-I like this one,

-with the wisteria.

-Yeah.

-But there are 12 plates altogether.

-Right.

Right, I always look at the backs first... Oh, dear,

-we have an accident.

-Yes.

-Do you allow cats on the cabinet?

-Not cats,

-just children and dogs.

-Even more dangerous!

The overall effect is stunning with these drooping wisteria,

-which echo the wisteria we've got in the cabinet.

-Yes.

-So, well found,

well placed and well positioned. But I'd think twice

-about moving it around too much.

-Well, I can't leave it behind when I move house, can I?!

-Well, somebody did. That's why it came to you in the first place.

-Yes,

-that was in 1927, not in MY lifetime, it's not going to happen.

-Yeah.

Now, I'll put an overall value on the Satsuma-ware.

For each perfect plate we're looking at a valuation somewhere between

£150 to £200 per plate. But that rules your favourite out because it's damaged. The cabinet -

in spite of all of this damage,

you could buy something like this today at auction for around...

-£5,000.

-Well, she did buy it, actually, for £25. I know that.

-You can't complain, can you?

-No.

-So how long have you had this?

-I think I bought it in 1969.

It's beautiful. It's Adam and Eve. Do you know who the sculptor is?

-Sykes?

-Charles Sykes.

-Charles Sykes.

-I realise that the woman is the same one as on the Rolls Royce cars.

-Absolutely.

-Eleanor something?

It is the same model they used for the Rolls Royce mascot, yes.

She was flimsily clad, wasn't she?

Now she's here in her Eve state. But it's wonderful, the detail,

the way she's just standing on his foot, reaching up to him.

-Charles Sykes loved his slightly erotic or bacchanalian groups.

-Mmm.

We have a tender, lovely looking subject, beautifully sculpted,

-part of what's called the English New School.

-Mmm.

-It's a really marvellous thing.

-You can read the signature. You bought it in 1969?

-Yes.

-How much?

£28.

Right, I mean, today,

-something like that has got to be insured for a minimum of £3,000.

-Oh, that's nice news! Lovely!

Thank you. I'm so glad I brought it.

At Holloway College we have to think about Mr Holloway.

-Well, he was such a remarkable man. He was one of the great Victorian philanthropists. Rags to riches.

-Yes.

And with the profit from making all these Holloway's pills and ointments,

he produced this fantastic college.

I'm interested in the fact that also there is the standard Victorian pot and its pot lid.

-Yes.

-You obviously know the history of these. They're part of our culture...

-Yes.

Not just for patent medicines, but for toothpaste, all sorts things.

Bear's grease for your hair - not that it would do ME much good - is one of them.

And these were a huge, huge massive production,

mostly by the Staffordshire industry, and what people collect today is the lid.

-Yes.

-This is a style that emerges in the 1840s then goes right through,

-so they're very hard to date.

-Yes.

These pot lids indicate that it was very expensive.

-Yes.

-This is 2/9d,

and you could buy a 33-shilling or a 22-shilling jar, couldn't you?

-Must have been mountains of it!

-Yes.

I must say, I love this one. "Inveterate ulcers, sore breasts,

"sore heads, bad legs, etc, etc." Anything you want in the etcetera!

-So what did you pay for these?

-Oh, something like £5, £10.

I think that's about right. They're the sort of thing you could get in a charity shop for 50p,

-and in a smart antique fair, they could be £20.

-Yes.

-Very collectable.

Well, thank you.

I think one of the most interesting points about 18th-century watches

is there's more that you DON'T see than you actually do.

The decoration of the case is what they call baroque repousse works.

Repousse work is the fact that the case has been stamped up in gold,

started as a smooth case and they've embossed it from the back,

then chased it from the front to give you all the decoration.

We have a mythological scene on the back -

they always use a Biblical or mythological scene.

-On the sides we have the four seasons. Did you spot those?

-No.

You've actually got - need to wear my bins to see it -

-spring, I guess here, OK?

-Yes.

You turn around to the edge...

that's the reaper, so that's summer.

And then...what have we got there?

The grapes, which is autumn and, finally,

the old man with a sack, which is winter.

So the four seasons - a common representation.

How long would it have taken to make that case?

Well, time was one thing they had plenty of.

My guess is it that would have taken a guy weeks to complete the job,

but they did nothing else, they spent 40 years working as repousse worker.

One man would do the repousse, another the chasing, another the piercing. Lots of men were involved.

-Not just one person?

-Oh, no. Anyway, let's go on. This is fantastic.

You always have, at the bottom, the grotesque mask -

a sort of gargoyle-type figure on the base,

and the rest of it's pierced out with these birds, scrolls, done from pattern books.

So you find many watches the same - similar pattern work.

Now again, open it up, inside... Well, he's not finished yet.

Signature on what is known as the dust cap.

More work inside, beautiful, all the balance cock pierced, a miniature diamond in the end there.

This has not been opened - look at the colour of the barrel.

-This has not been opened for decades.

-No, it hasn't.

You can see it's got a sort of bloom - wonderful condition.

It's signed by Andrew Dunlop, London.

He was working up until about 1730, 1730-odd,

so this would date from about 1725, and it's a very rare watch.

If you don't mind me asking - how did you come to be the owner of it?

It's my husband's. He inherited it from his uncle 30 years ago,

who was a boat-builder and a fisherman in Cornwall.

And, apparently, he restored it, but I don't know how true that is.

-Well, he didn't do much.

-He didn't?

-He might have just cleaned it.

-Maybe that's the case, then.

Because it's in mint condition.

The value in my opinion is probably a minimum of...

-£3,000 and up to £5,000.

-Really? Oh, wow!

-There are so few of them in such fine condition.

-OK.

It's also a repeater...

We'll be here till Christmas!

-Thank you very much.

-Thank YOU.

A fine way to end our programme. To Royal Holloway College, London, thank you for being our host,

and to all the students here, good luck. And now from Egham, goodbye.

Subtitles by Gillian Frazer BBC - 2001