King's College Antiques Roadshow

ORGAN PLAYS

# On Christmas night all Christians sing

# To hear the news the angels bring

# On Christmas night all Christians sing

# To hear the news the angels bring... #

We have returned to King's College, Cambridge.

# ..Then why should men on earth be so sad?

# Since our Redeemer made us glad. #

The annual festival of lessons and carols from King's

has been broadcast for more than 70 years,

but the choir itself, like the college and the chapel, was founded by Henry VI,

more than 500 years ago.

Henry wanted the chapel to be without equal in size and beauty...

an incredibly ambitious task...

which eventually took five kings, four master masons

and an army of craftsmen over a century to complete.

It took just three of those years

to construct the largest fan-vaulted stone ceiling anywhere in the world.

From below, the intricately carved stonework looks delicate, even fragile,

but each of the central bosses actually weighs a ton.

And from way up here in the space between the ceiling and the roof,

you can tell just how solid it all is.

Sir Christopher Wren admired the great ceiling and came up here several times

to try and work out how it was done, so that he could replicate it.

He never managed to achieve that, but I'm sure he enjoyed the choir.

CHOIR SINGS

The purity of the human voices is enhanced by the acoustics of the building.

Each note is said to hang in the air for five seconds.

The chapel is the most popular tourist attraction in Cambridge

and it's easy to see why. Now let's test the pulling power of the Antiques Roadshow.

Well, I just love printing presses

and this one, because it is so small, is even more adorable.

Where did you get it? My father - a terrible cadger of free objects -

found it at a business that he was doing some work for,

and, having the cheek of the Devil, he said, "Can I have it?"

and they said yes.

He intended to take it to an industrial archaeology museum

but it got no further than my house because I said, "Me, please." You were a terrible cadger, too!

Anyway, Frederick Ullmer, Albion Press.

Well, the Albion presses came first in the 1820s

but Frederick Ullmer was a lot later than that.

He was making Albion presses, or little Albion presses,

in about the 1870s, 1860s-1870s, and I think this dates from that. Yes.

It's lovely because it's got the original colour,

it's green and there's a little gilding round the top here, round this crown and this -

where you put the pressure on for the plate - is still in wonderful order.

You've brought some typeface, as well. I have, yes.

That, as far as I'm concerned, is much later than the printing press. Oh, it is, yes.

Right, you're the master printer, you're the master cadger, show us how it works.

Right, having rolled up the block underneath... Yes.

..one carefully feeds the... It's very like Caxton's original press.

Absolutely, yes. It hadn't changed really for several centuries.

Use pressure. That's it.

Pressure down on it

and wheel it out, and, with a bit of luck, we have a print.

So, let's have a look.

That's tremendous. It's a bit smudged but that's absolutely wonderful.

It's a little bicycle.

People think that, because they're small, they're for amateurs, but they're not.

People who had large printing presses would use these for hand bills

and smaller pieces of stationery and things like that. Yes.

So it is an absolutely perfect working Victorian model of a printing press.

It is absolutely tremendous. Now, do you have any idea of value?

I haven't a clue. I never have had.

Well, I think if you went into the market today

and you had buy one of these,

you'd be talking about £1,500 to £2,000. Really?

Yes, yes. And you print off this?

Occasionally, yes. It has seen Christmas cards pass through it.

If I give you my address, will you send me a Christmas card?

You could try, yes. You could hope for it. I don't see why not.

Well, thank you very much. Thank you.

Adorable item, as I say.

This was produced by my great grandmother and she left it to her son,

Joseph Whiteside Wakinshaw.

In her will, it says, "My picture in needlework of Bolton Abbey."

Oh, after the Landseer of course.

Absolutely, yes. And who was the seamstress?

Who was the stitcher?

She was a woman. She was born Ruth Whiteside, and you can see that on the sampler. Oh, yes.

She did that when she was 13.

And so she then graduated from that...

To this. ..To something a little larger.

Well, I think she did this... I don't know the date of Landseer's painting.

Actually, I don't know either, but I can say that Landseer

was at the height of his popularity in the 1840s, which is when Berlin woolwork

was at the height of its popularity, which this is a great example of.

Berlin woolwork was something invented in Berlin. It was the first time that squared paper

had been printed into patterns where one square represented one square of the canvas...

Stitching by numbers, really. Yes.

And it became hugely, hugely popular.

Queen Victoria, for instance...

There are reports of her actually sitting

and doing her Berlin woolwork during meetings with Prime Ministers, and so on.

That compulsive? Yes.

There are a couple of things that detract from its appeal.

One is that it is slightly faded, but it's faded in a uniform way, which is something.

The second thing, of course, is that it shows a dead animal.

Yes. Now, it's a lovely dead animal.

Politically incorrect. But a bit UPC, yes. Absolutely.

So that will have an effect on the value

but, to compensate, it's got this fabulous rosewood frame of extraordinary dimensions.

Yes. I mean, it weighs a ton.

I bet it does.

Value of this -

we'd be talking about perhaps £1,000 to £1,500 at auction. Oh, really?

Yes. Now let's turn to this little poppet.

It really is so lovely.

First of all, it's named and dated.

Secondly, it's got a very attractive border around it.

It has very neat colourful stitching,

but the thing that makes it exceptional is this frieze of children at the bottom here.

There's a boy holding a sheaf of corn.

There's a toddler holding an animal of some description...

a sheep perhaps. I think it's a sheep.

A sheep. A boy here holding his hat and probably the mother figure here.

That really brings the whole thing to life in an extraordinary way.

The surprising thing, I suppose, about this, is the value...

because, although it is a tiny proportion of the size of this piece of Berlin woolwork,

this is so perfect and so desirable that this would probably have a similar sort of price.

We'd be talking about around £1,000. Really?

For this little sampler here. You do surprise me.

So, are you a stitcher yourself?

Yes, but only of kits.

Me too, but at least we can pretend that we're doing the real thing.

Yes, yes. Thanks for bringing them.

Thank you very much indeed.

That's rather nice, a little miniature of...

looks like Pope Gregory XIII...

it's been in the wars. Yes. Tell me about it.

My father lived in a converted lifeboat on the River Cam.

And was in the Home Guard. Yes.

And spent his life fishing. Yes.

It's one of the items that came out of the water. Came out of the water?

Yes, during the war. I wonder what the story was behind it.

Did someone throw it away or do you think it was...? I have no idea.

It seems such an odd thing to throw away. It's on a nice piece of copper,

which is an expensive medium to paint on,

but it looks like it's been cut down.

I think it's probably a copy after Titian, who painted a number of portraits of popes

but it seems to me as if someone's kept it as a nice sort of memento.

Yes. You know, it's a rather intimate small size, and things like that.

It's remarkable that it's survived being in the water for so long

and it's lost a little bit of paint, but nothing very serious.

I just can't believe it and I think it indicates how well painted it is.

The artist really spent some time preparing to paint onto this lovely bit of copper.

I suppose we have to put a value on it, don't we?

You know, the idea that it came out of the Cam on a fishing trip is wonderful.

Um, I guess it's worth in the region of sort of £300 to £500, something like that.

Fine. Not bad for a day's fishing.

It's not, no. It's not going anywhere so... Good.

Now, let's just see what sort of weight we've got here... 31 ounces.

So that's about £100 worth of silver just on scrap value but...

..have a look and see.

Now, what can you tell me about it?

Well, this salver came to me from my grandmother, who was born in 1875

and I'm particularly interested to know if there's other significance of the engraving.

Indeed, now the salver itself is an absolute joy,

but the armorial there is fascinating

because what we've got, the actual arms...

Can you see a representation of what is essentially a lozenge? Mm.

Now, that straight away tells me that this was made for a lady. Mm.

The reason being that, in heraldry,

men have their arms represented on shield-shaped escutcheons,

but that was an implement of warfare and considered unseemly for ladies.

Normally, this tells you that it's going to be a widow.

The lady wouldn't normally represent her arms in this way unless her husband was already dead...

because it would be obviously then, the husband...

It should be fairly straightforward to establish whose arms those are.

Now, this wonderful little Neo-Classic bow at the top,

the engraving here is 1770s. In fact, let's just have a look at the exact date.

Oh, yes, there we are. We've got that letter "a", for 1776

and so the engraving tallies nicely. Maker...

That's a chap called Richard Rugg...

Uh-huh. ..who specialised in making salvers.

Had you thought about value?

Well, no. I certainly don't want to sell it,

but one's always interested in something's worth.

Right, well I certainly don't blame you not wanting to sell it.

I would say today we're looking at £3,000 plus.

What do you think they represent, or do, or are?

Well, I can tell they're Oriental.

Very good. And they're whistles, aren't they?

They are whistles. We'll try.

That's amazingly good.

Did you hear that?

They are indeed Oriental - they're Chinese.

And they're a class of porcelain called blanc de chine

and they come not from Jingdezhen, which is the main porcelain centre in China,

but down south from Dehua.

These were called toys, that was the proper name for them,

and they were made, not to be played with by children, but by adults. Oh.

And this one is SUCH fun...

We've got a Dutchman... You can tell he's a Dutchman because he's got this tricorn hat on. Oh, yes.

And he's kicking a tiger!

Rare little things, and the fact they've survived is extraordinary.

What date do you think they are?

Absolutely no idea whatsoever. Right. I inherited them.

Would you believe about 1660?

Oh, goodness. Isn't that extraordinary?

Yes, yes. Absolutely extraordinary.

And I think, despite a little bit of damage on each of them,

we're looking at about £500 to £1,000 for the two of them.

Ooh, that's amazing. Isn't it amazing? Yes.

We've got a mass of what apparently are proofs for packets here.

What do they mean?

What have you got here?

They were left to me by my uncle, Ernie Hunt.

Right. And he actually designed and drew them.

So he was a commercial artist?

He was a lithographic artist, yes.

So he did the designs and then he prepared the colour separations for printing.

Yes, yes. Right. So what we have here in effect is his portfolio.

Had he been looking for a job, he'd have taken these to say, "Look, this is what I can do."

So we start off very suitably... Cambridge Cracker.

Yes. Which was a type of biscuit, but Macfarlane and Lang - famous name. If we move on...

There's another Cambridge cracker...

A different kind. That's lovely, isn't it? It is, yes.

And she's advertising some cosmetic, French cosmetic or Dutch.

Very pretty, very decorative.

Most of them are 1920s' style. Yeah.

Here we've got biscuits, again another famous name. Here we've got tobacco...

These presumably are lids for tins, aren't they? Yes.

Which might have been lithographed onto a tin or with a paper label,

and there's a much more elaborate design for domestic bottled goods.

Yes. So we've got 20, 50...

..I haven't counted... 60 or so here.

For value, it's very much to do with the decorative quality of the image and the condition.

This chef, torn and tatty, is frankly not worth very much.

Good ones in bright colours, nice subjects,

will be worth £30, £40 each.

Yeah. And the subject is important.

It's always a pretty girl that is the most popular. Pretty girls can sell anything.

Add it up... You've got several hundred pounds' worth.

Yeah. But more important, it's a family archive. It is, yeah. Yeah.

I've had somebody who was not an expert, give an opinion,

but I'd like to know how old it is and who might have owned it.

What was the non-expert opinion?

Well, we've always called it a chest, but he called it a coffer,

so I thought that it was used for storing money.

But something that big would hold a lot of money.

Yes. How old is it and who owned it?

That's what I'm interested in.

Right, it's actually the type of chest which can range between 1500-1550 to about 1700-1720.

It's the sort of thing that was made... let's have a look...

You say coffer. I think the definition of a coffer and a chest is the same thing.

A coffer doesn't mean to say it's for money. Right.

Sometimes they do have a little till here which is for money. Original hinges,

totally untouched, 400-year-old piece of furniture - fascinating.

It would have been used for linen, because linen was very expensive.

Linen bed sheets, things like that. Tapestry covers, very expensive.

Almost one of the luxuries of the 17th century. So that's what it would've been used for.

I just think that it's just charming...

You've got the thumb carving, the chip carving here.

Just the most simple carving, one quick hit with a chisel,

and you get that lovely effect, but just, you know, it's a local joiner,

not a cabinet maker or carver, it's pre-cabinet making.

It's very simple - known as a six-plank chest.

Right. One, two, top, bottom. Two front and back, four and two slab sides, so a six-plank chest.

I just love this wonderful warping. Here he is, he's got some wood

and for some reason he hasn't got the wood seasoned properly

and you've got this lovely warping, and to me that adds value. Oh, right.

That's what attracted me, because we see a lot of these.

People bring them in to the Antiques Roadshow.

Right. But this is just plain, simple, unadulterated and just the naivety of that...

Value? No idea.

I know it wouldn't have cost very much when we bought it.

£1,000. Really? As much as that?

Jolly good.

I'm very excited about this...

Let's imagine we're back in Edwardian times - 1905 -

and I'm a ten-year-old school boy. You've given me this present and I've ripped it open.

The first thing I see is the wonderful label, which tells me what's inside

because here is a railway station, beautifully lithographed.

All the figures are going in and out of the train.

Joy of joys for a small boy, and even a big boy, I have to say...

Right. ..Is this fantastic train set.

Where did it come from and why is it in such amazing condition?

It was won by my great grandfather in a raffle in a pub, in 1913, for sixpence.

Right. And although, the children were allowed to play with it,

I don't think they played with it much, and they had to be careful,

and, as you can see, it is in quite good condition.

What I love about it is it's actually an engine that's run on steam.

Have you ever tried to fire it up?

We did get it going once, when I was a small child and we set it up one Christmas

but it went so fast round the track, it fell over and very nearly set the carpet alight.

And they could also blow up and blind you, so not a good idea to try it today.

No, we've never done it since. But let's have a quick play, can I? Yes. Oh, good.

So it's what's called a gauge one and that's the size of the track.

As I explained, it works on steam, so you could actually fire this up

and you'd put water on it and away it would steam.

Then it has the tender, as the train would.

Then it has these two glorious carriages, one of which is the first class,

There's a second class one too. It's tucked underneath.

And these are all hand painted, hand enamelled. Right.

And you've even got the little plaster figures that go inside. Yes.

Now these are the things that go missing. They get broken or eaten, or whatever.

But they just... You open the lid and...in they go.

It's in pristine condition.

Right. I can see it today at auction fetching somewhere in the region of between £2,500 and £3,500.

Wow. So, not a bad raffle prize.

No, very good. Thank you for letting me play with your toys.

That's all right. Thank you.

If you look at that you'd think, "That's a strange-looking shotgun cartridge,"

but with a bit of wizardry as you twist the bottom.

Yes. Up comes this carrier and out pops these little silver leaves.

Do you know what this is for?

Well, we didn't when we first had it. My husband was given it about 20 years ago.

We had it rolling around in a drawer for about five of those

and then one day he started to play with it, and out they popped.

That's absolutely brilliant. And it was only after he'd been on a shoot that he realised what it was.

They're called place finders and they...

Well, this is a very elaborate version of what is a fairly simple idea,

where to ensure that there is no fixing about who stands on the best peg... Yes.

..Where the biggest number of birds is going to come across,

then the host of the shoot, at the beginning of the shoot

gets all the guns together and says, "We're going to draw for pegs"

and he would produce this.

Would you like to draw for a peg? Thank you. What have you got?

Number one, yes. That's a very hot drive, this one.

They'll be coming nice and high over you(!)

And it was that sort of element of chance that gave people at the beginning of a shoot,

firstly to know where they had to be,

and then they went up two numbers or down two. Yes, I see.

It was just a novel way of doing it.

Hundreds of these must have got dropped in farmyards and things.

Yes. Which is why yours is so nice - it's complete.

It's rather neat, isn't it? Yes, it's incredibly clever.

These have become very, very popular, recently

and these brass versions are worth between £750 and £1,000.

So, all that time it was in your drawer,

you didn't know what it was or what it was worth.

No idea. I'm glad I brought it along. Thank you very much.

Thank you, thanks.

This brings together two of the most influential and important artists

working at the beginning of the 19th century.

Sir William Nicholson - the portrait painter -

and Sir Edwin Lutyens - one of the most famous country house architects.

So, what's the connection?

Which side are you connected with?

Well, Sir Edwin was my husband's grandfather. Ah, right.

And these have been handed down through the family and I ended up with them when my husband died,

and Sir Edwin and William Nicholson were great friends. Yes.

And I think, probably, these were drawn after a very enjoyable dinner one night.

Yes, they're somewhat surprising in execution.

We have Sir William Nicholson's monogram in the bottom left-hand corner

but if somebody wasn't familiar with his work,

he would be forgiven for thinking, "Are these good enough?"

I mean, they are caricatures, quickly, randomly drawn.

The perforations on the left-hand side are sheets from a sketch book.

Did he have them on him when he was at every dinner?

I don't know. Perhaps they played some sort of game between them?

Sir Edwin, in all the letters he wrote to the children,

he always did small caricatures.

Yes, yes. Funny pictures.

I love the way that the spectacles just intersect the eyeballs in both of the drawings.

Yes.

Of course, Edwin was the designer of the Cenotaph, the Viceroy's house in New Delhi. Yes.

Very, very, very successful and Sir William Nicholson was also a great painter.

Now, as I said, they don't look like any other works or paintings by Nicholson that I know,

but they are fascinating because it brings these two great men together.

Mm. I think perhaps... I hope you won't be too upset if I said

probably the maximum they're worth is £2,000 for the two.

No, I wouldn't be upset at all.

Well, they're wonderful. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

He's a Japanese figure and he's a porcelain figure not a pottery figure. Yes.

And he's amongst the very earliest Japanese enamelled porcelains to exist. Really?

What sort of date do you think he is?

What sort of date do you think he is? Well, you tell me the earliest. Let's say 400 years?

Mm, he was made in about 1660,

just after Cromwell, but in Japan.

Right, yes.

It's a model of the rice god Daikoku standing here on two rice bales.

The base is interesting. You can see the muslin...

Yes. ..that the porcelain was pushed onto when he was made. He's a very rare little thing, really.

Um, the other pieces here.

Yes. Running through them quickly, these are Chinese, from around 1900.

Really? This is Chinese, dating from the second half of the 18th century.

Right. And running through the prices of these -

about 50p.

Really? About 50p, about £5, about £5,000.

Really? Mm.

Well, I thought he was a little gem but I didn't have any idea what it was. That's fantastic, isn't it?

Often the backs of pictures have more information than the front

and here we have a wonderful inscription, which really tells us the whole story.

"HMS Triumph homeward bound in Magellan Straits, September 1888"

And then we have the initials of the painter - "JDM",

but we don't quite know who the artist is. Now let me just...

turn it round.

Here we have this wonderful picture of HMS Triumph.

It's sort of Boys' Own stuff, isn't it?

She's quite an important ship, you know. You've done a bit of work.

I have, yes. Can you tell me something?

Well, she was actually the flagship for the Pacific fleet.

And we don't know who JDM is, or do we?

I worked through and I've decided he wasn't an officer.

Right. And so he was a member of the crew who was obviously talented in this way. Yes, exactly.

And they were going through very difficult places there.

Of course. Lovely. It's frustrating, isn't it?

Because you know we've got actually a historically interesting picture.

Yes. It's quite well painted, although it is obviously by an amateur hand.

Yes. And you can see some of the figures are a bit naive.

Lovely, yes. It's wonderful. And are these...icebergs, do you think?

Yes, yes. Coming through... Fascinating, fascinating.

I also love the landscape. I mean it's wonderfully exotic.

Yes, isn't it? Lurking danger...

She was going through the narrow parts here. Right.

And because it was the narrow parts they had to anchor every night.

Difficult to value because, you know, we don't know who JDM is. No.

I don't know what it's worth, so I'm going to skip that problem.

I'm not going to sell it, so that's all right.

It's funny to see things like this on the Antiques Roadshow that are part of our lives.

Yes, these are quite new to me...

but very familiar and that's how I earn my living. Here they are...relics.

Relics of an already nostalgic age. People collect these things -

they have become part of our past, but I remember the first set we had like that.

1953 - the Coronation. But my mother had already been working on Watch With Mother since 1950,

so I was very much a child of the television era and you must have similar memories.

Well, television wasn't around when I was a child. The wireless was everything. Yes.

And I listened to Children's Hour and the wireless Toy Town series.

I actually met the mayor of Toy Town when I started broadcasting

and no-one I've ever met since has matched that.

I can't match that.

These are both by Pye, which is a local Cambridge company

set up in 1896 to make scientific instruments. Their first radio was 1922.

Their first television was in the late 1930s during that curious era

when there was experimental television from Alexandra Palace

and I understand that Pye sold 2,000 sets at about 34 guineas each

before 1939, which is a huge amount of money, in relative terms.

And then they came back in the 1940s after war-time radar experiences

and this was one of their first post-war models.

This is 1948 and so this is really the sort of thing that I remember very well.

And people collect them not simply because they are old...

That is a fairly plain thing. This has a sort of beauty to it.

This is a wonderful sort of Art Deco motif - the sun burst and the clouds and all that.

People collect these for two reasons...

They're technicians and they're interested in how it works, they're interested in the visual impact,

because, in this time, the television and the radio had to become pieces of domestic furniture,

they lived in our house and if it looked like a scientific box of tricks,

everybody would say, "I don't want that in there."

It had to acquire a domestic face, and this is a classic, really

because it doesn't tell you it's a radio. The knobs are round the side,

it's a wonderful sort of structure reflective of all the spirit of the jazz age.

It's a good area because they're not expensive.

You can buy a radio like that for about £150. You can buy a telly like that for about £100 if you want it.

So it's quite accessible to the next generation.

But let's imagine again...

If we had that radio, what would we like to hear?

Well, I would live on a permanent diet of Larry the Lamb,

Dennis the Dachshund and Mr Grouser. That would be your thing, would it?

Yes, what I wouldn't do is to hear again Mr Chamberlain declaring war...

I heard that with my family around a set like this - terrifying moment.

That picture seen so often. Sitting on the arms of chairs.

You actually did that? Yes. Well, I couldn't claim that.

Shall we see what's on telly? Yes, haven't got Radio Times but I bet it's good.

I'll turn it on, it's bound to be good.

There you are, a real classic.

ANTIQUES ROADSHOW THEME PLAYS

So, you've had this a while?

Just had it, just over a year.

Yes. There we are.

Oh, isn't that lovely? Bought from an auction or...

I saw it in an antique shop locally and liked the pattern, so I thought, "Well, I'll have that one."

I should think so too... what did you pay for it?

£20. £20? Yes.

It is well marked, isn't it?

It's got the Worcester mark on it, but no signature of the painter. Do you know who painted it?

Well, I understand, through a bit of research,

because I was so interested in it, that it might be Bott.

That it might be, I'm not 100% sure.

Well, I can tell you positively - it is Thomas Bott. Thomas Bott, senior.

Yes. He had a son at Royal Worcester

who did this sort of style of Limoges enamel

but this is Thomas Bott, senior.

Yes. Somewhere round about the 1865 period. Yes.

All this is in enamels. Enamels on this deep blue ground, which is Thomas Bott's speciality,

he claimed it was like Limoges enamels, the medieval method of painting white enamel onto copper,

but in this case he just painted these white enamels onto the blue,

but it's not a case of firing this colour. He built and built these colours,

time and time again, to raise them, and fired each time

and then eventually you get to the heavy raised enamel on the fronts of these,

of these faces, and the very faint bits are left as tiny little stems of the leaves.

The workmanship is absolutely fantastic

and this is sort of Classical style, sort of imitating Greek and Roman, which was his great love.

That's what attracted me to it. The decoration?

The decoration. I love Roman Classical decorations.

Yes, but they are very beautiful and so typical of Bott's work because it just screams Thomas Bott.

I mean, it just couldn't be anybody else. So, you've got a very fine piece.

Twenty quid? Yes.

Well, I suppose if you want to know the value now,

the real value, I think you're looking at £1,500 to £1,750,

something like that and perhaps you should insure it for £2,000

because you're not going to find another one too easily, so congratulations.

Thank you. And treat it reverently.

I will, I love it. I wouldn't let it go. Good.

Of course, this is tremendous fun. Tell me, what on earth is the significance of that car?

It belonged to my cousin who was serving out in Shanghai as a nurse

and it arrived out there in 1923

for the grand sum of £190, including shipping

and I've even got a photograph of it with my dear cousin at the wheel.

Isn't that wonderful? A number of her nurses draped over it.

It cost £190? The car did, yes.

Oh, the car, not the ink set. No, I've no idea how much that cost. Extraordinary.

It's wonderful when you get a bit of original material to go with it

and, of course, the maker we've got here is Omar Ramsden. Ramsden, yes.

And, of course, it's an inkwell.

What fun to have this individually commissioned with this wonderful enamel work

but, the ink stand itself, a special commission from Ramsden.

I suppose today, if that was coming up at auction, it would be estimated probably at £2,000...£2,500.

Really? Gracious me.

Especially with the car connection. Anybody interested in Citroens,

this is going to be almost a "must have" if you're a fanatical collector.

It's such a treat to see these early cigarette cards

and the quality of printing is simply fantastic.

Absolutely. How many cards should there be?

Right, the small size and the medium size set, both comprise 50 cards.

I see here you've got the small zebu and the large zebu.

I brought them along to demonstrate the background that appears on the larger sets.

There's a bit extra for your money, as well as the size.

And did you have to pay a little bit extra? Yes, always a little bit extra. Exactly.

But what's even more extraordinary is that you've got another lot here

and these appear to be the original drawings for these. Watercolour drawings.

That's what I think and hope.

And they were first produced in about 1890 and they are simply fantastic, aren't they?

I mean, this orang-utan...and you've got the small card of that.

Do you have the large card? No, I haven't. So we don't know what kind of jungle he's in.

No, not really. Looks fairly dense but... Doesn't it, just?

The very fact that you've got every one that matches up with your set,

I can't imagine they're anything other than the originals.

No. And I think they're really very desirable.

The small cards have a catalogue value, I dare say, of about £150...£200.

The bigger ones much more than that,

but the originals are really very difficult to value.

I imagine they would make around £80 a piece for the larger ones.

That's £2,500 and then you've got all these...

How many original fish have you got? 50.

Supposing they're worth £40, £50 each, that's another £2,500.

So that's £5,000 for the drawings. That's right, yes.

All in all, it's really fantastic.

Should cover the council tax for a couple of years.

Depends how much they put it up, I suppose. Well, indeed.

E Wheeldon, Derby. That's great-grandpa.

Oh, quite a grand sounding ceramic name, but spelt differently.

Yes. And a Whieldon pot indeed.

Do you know anything about Whieldon ware?

Well, it's pre-Wedgwood. They got together, didn't they, and collaborated?

We've have had quite a few pots like these on the Roadshow, over the years.

There was a wonderful punch pot in Liverpool, years ago. I remember that.

You remember that?

I do. With these wonderful glazes. Yes.

And super colours. And it's got its top, as well, sitting on there.

Was this used in the family?

Oh, never. It was bought in the early 1950s by my father for eight guineas... Eight guineas.

..From an antique shop in Wiltshire.

Well, that's less than £9, isn't it? Yes.

It's '50s, that was a long time ago. Yes, he was very pleased to find it.

I bet he was, I bet he was.

Whieldon is a name given to these wonderful coloured glazes

where the glaze is sort of an inherent part of the pot.

They're sealed there, those colours, for all time, they never change.

That pineapple is as bright now as when it was made.

What, in 1760, 1765?

I mean, it's a marvellous design, isn't it?

The whole plant comes out of the pot, doesn't it?

Of course, in the '50s, Whieldon was the only potter anyone really knew about.

He worked at Wedgwood, he made these glazes in Staffordshire,

but we've done more research since and we now know there's a lot more pottery

and a few years back they were digging in Staffordshire and they found bits of this teapot

on the factory site of another maker called William Greatbatch.

We now know this isn't Whieldon. It's actually a Greatbatch teapot.

Oh. It's only made down the road.

Oh, right. Really, he was a marvellous caster. The detail in the modelling is always superb.

Just look at those leaves.

Eight guineas back then in the '50s. I suppose that reflected...

The handle's been broken off at some time. I don't know if you'd noticed. No.

It's had a bit of mending there, but I think we can forgive it that.

Right. Even so, with a broken handle, it's still going to be £4,000.

Oh, I see. It's a lot of money.

A costly little teapot.

It is, yes. But an exciting one.

Oh, I'm glad you like it.

I believe that it's a missionary being eaten alive by an alligator or crocodile.

And I feel it's about 100 years old,

sort of about the time that Africa was being opened up... in the 1870s, 1900.

You're absolutely right. It was made around the 1890s, I would think. Made in Europe, in Austria.

It's a cold-painted bronze.

What made you think it was a missionary?

I thought the book was a bible and I thought it was German, perhaps.

I thought it was a missionary's hat.

Yes, yes. Well, in fact, there is a German name on the book but it's Baedeker. Right.

Baedeker travel guides. Oh, really?

No self-respecting person would leave Europe without a copy of Baedeker.

In fact, nobody would travel without a copy of Baedeker. Right.

Fantastic travel guides that were produced from the late 19th century onwards,

so that ties in very nicely with the date that this was made.

Right. I think it's really a crocodile eating a traveller of some kind.

I love the angle of the feet here. It looks as if someone's dived into this crocodile

and even the wind in the scarf on this great top hat, and I think the brolly as well,

adds an additional feature to the whole thing,

so the crocodile is totally dressed up with the man's clothes.

And, at the top here, there is a purpose to this as well, isn't there?

Because this has got a little vesta case in here and you could strike your matches there.

It would have sat on somebody's desk. You obviously like it.

Well, yes. He's both hideous and attractive, isn't he?

And my mother thought he was appalling but my father must have enjoyed him, and I certainly do.

If it was to come at auction it would fetch in the region of

£800 to £1,000. Would it really?

Good gracious.

Mother will be shattered.

Well, obviously, it's a town plan, but which town?

Now, I notice at the bottom here that it says "the Delaware River"

and I notice, rather excitingly, "RM Penn, RM Penn"

and various other Penns all over the place.

Is this Philadelphia? Indeed, yes.

I don't believe it. This is presumably to do with land transactions.

That's correct, yes.

As we're in Philadelphia, this has to do with Pennsylvania, which William Penn founded.

Oh, that's quite correct. RM Penn is Richard Penn, who was one of his grandchildren. Right.

And there are large areas of land in Philadelphia that were left into the Penn family

and remained with the Penns until the time of the revolution.

So where did you get it from?

My grandfather was an auctioneer.

Yes. And after he died and his house was being cleared, my father went through some five sacks of documents

and pulled out the most interesting.

What he thought was the most interesting. Yes.

And this map is dated just before the revolution.

Yes. 1775. And in the indenture, when you read this script, you find that, in William Penn's will,

he is leaving 10,000 acres of Philadelphia to each of his four children of the second marriage,

and that is just to begin with.

Beyond that, he doesn't bother to detail the rest of the land.

And, of course, all this is worth a fortune, I assume.

I've no idea. Well, in 1775, I mean.

Oh, yes, in those terms.

I don't know if you've had a chance to notice. This piece of land alone is 124 acres of Philadelphia.

That's extraordinary. So what it would be worth now is beyond imagining.

Quite incredible, and it was lying in your... An attic.

In an attic in your grandfather's... I think that's incredible.

When I first received these documents they were folded so tight

that they'd fit between my two hands. Good heavens.

And I found somebody at a museum here in Cambridge

who could put them in a humidity chamber to unwrap them. That is amazing.

It might have fallen apart if I'd tried to open it.

Did it cost you a lot of money to have that done? No. It was not a lot, less than £100.

Oh, well, I think that you could certainly get somewhere in the region,

for this little piece of history, somewhere in the region of £10,000.

Indeed? Well, I...

It's been worth the trouble, then.

At first sight, this is the world's most boring pot.

Just blue...

but when you get round to the front, all is revealed and even taking the whole pot in one go,

you don't get the real glory of it,

you've got to see it up close because it is fantastic.

We have these little birds, which are probably sparrows, flittering through the air

on this midnight blue ground,

very popular colour for Japanese cloisonne ware, which is, of course, what this is.

The quality

of the lines here in silver. This is silver.

Right. But it is fantastic work.

How on earth did they fix onto metal,

a vertical piece of wire that thin and then infill it with colour?

It is just mind-blowing quality.

On the shoulders, we've got beautiful little kiku chrysanthemums

and, unusually, we've got this decoration inside the mouth and on the bottom.

Now, I've seen only three or four pots in my life with that feature.

Where did you get it from?

Here. In Cambridge? Cambridge, yes.

And where... In an antique shop?

Yes, in an antique shop. How long ago?

20 years, 30 years. Really? Between 20 and 30 years ago.

The moment I saw it...

You had to have it. ..I just, yes, had to have it.

What did you pay for it, may I ask? Um, £20... £30... I can't remember.

Serious money, then.

Oh, yes, well... You liked it a lot, didn't you?

I liked it, yes. Yeah, quite a lot of money, £20... £30...

Do you think it's worth a bit more now?

I've no idea at all.

Well, you can add a nought to it.

Really? No, you can add two noughts to it.

What? Certainly £3,000 to £4,000.

Wow! Ooh. How awful. You've got very good taste.

Thank you very much. Thank YOU very much.

Here endeth our second visit to King's College, Cambridge.

But now to the Provost and Fellows of King's, many thanks.

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