The Royal Hospital Chelsea Antiques Roadshow

This week the Roadshow has come to a perfect place

for anyone who wants to take the time to reflect and to reminisce.

A dignified building by the River Thames,

it's been home to proud veterans of the British Army for over 300 years.

The Royal Hospital, Chelsea.

Like the first veterans who arrived in February 1692,

the men here have willingly surrendered their army pensions

in exchange for board and watchful care.

They also qualify to wear a distinctive uniform.

They're known to the world as the Chelsea Pensioners.

The hub of life here at the Royal Hospital is the building, designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

He drafted his first plans in 1682, paying meticulous attention to the

needs of the veterans, as well as the aesthetic beauty of the place.

Today Christopher Wren's purpose-built structure accommodates nearly 300 old soldiers,

including survivors of the D-Day Normandy landings and the Korean War.

Between them they represent most regiments and corps of the British Army.

Among their ranks, past and present, are the winners of many decorations,

including awards for gallantry and outstanding and unusual service.

A lot of the men bequeath their medals to the Royal Hospital Museum,

and they're displayed here in their memory.

The long wards where the men sleep haven't changed much,

since my grandfather, Sergeant Edward Nugent, arrived here in 1940.

He spent 15 years at the Royal Hospital and I remember coming to visit him.

His berth was exactly like this one.

You might think that this place could be haunted,

after all, thousands of people have died at Chelsea.

Apparently there is just one haunting.

It goes on in the Surveyor's Closet where Christopher Wren worked.

Every now and then, it's said, you can hear the murmur of voices

and the tinkle of teacups coming from this direction.

And if you listen carefully, you can hear chatter and the occasional tinkle coming from outside.

-That would be the Antiques Roadshow.

-Are you together?

-Father and son.

Oh right, I didn't know if you were security or something like that.

-What have you got?

-Two pieces of jewellery.

Oh, I'm in a no-go area, you see I spent all my married life

running past jewellers' shops, with my wife trying to take me in, but that is very nice.

-George IV.

-I think you want to, really want to see Geoffrey Munn.

He's just the right person for you, just right, you know.

Ooh I like that as well, do I like that? I like that a lot.

-Ooh yes, John Sandon.

-Yes.

Somehow the name John Sandon's coming to me as I look at this piece.

Now what's a young man like you doing with acres of royal jewellery like this?

Well, um, it all started ten years ago with the cuff links and the associated letter.

They were on a local news programme as coming up for auction,

and I rang and left a commission bid and...

-And you got 'em?

-I got them.

-Wow!

And we want to hear a bit about this letter too.

"I send you these links as a souvenir of my Coronation,

"when you attended me as one of my pages, George RI 1937".

-Not bad, is it?

-No.

That one goes with the cuff links, and those cuff links were presented to Robert Montague Elliot,

and he was the second son of the 8th Earl of St Germans,

and he was a page of honour from 1937 to 1940.

So bang-on provenance in the King's writing. He's an emperor too.

-That's right.

-And I think that's a marvellous thought, that his hand

moved across this paper, and he took the care to give somebody

something to a moment of enormous importance to them both really. Now which was the next one?

Um, the next one was the small brooch at the front.

-Made for King George V to give away.

-That's right.

And by Collingwood's who are very famous jewellers,

and they specialised in making these royal presentation brooches.

What do you feel when you acquire something like that?

It's quite exciting in a way, because you've got the history behind it.

That one was presented to a nurse

that looked after Princess Victoria, the King's sister,

some time in the early '30s, I believe.

And this, this one here for George V too isn't it?

Tell me about Korr underneath.

Well, apparently, according to the family,

it was added on afterwards. So whether this is,

I don't know, a lady-in-waiting's badge or something like that,

because it actually comes with all its bits and pieces.

It's fitted as a brooch at the moment,

but it's got its chain and its pendant fitting.

That's typical of the very finest jewellery. It's always very versatile

and it comes with a little Meccano set of a sort of car maintenance set underneath, really.

And that's a sign of something really very distinguished.

We can tell it's distinguished because it's made by Hennell's,

a very old established London firm, who were supplying the court,

and in a way this is all about duty. It's about royal duty, isn't it?

and part of the duty is to leave little footprints in the sand

to reward people, give them things that they're going to treasure.

These are completely priceless things, but I suppose everybody wants to know

which is the least expensive and the most expensive thing.

The least expensive was the stick pin, that cost something near £300,

and the most expensive was the cuff links and the letter.

They cost a little over £2,000.

And the value, I think, is a lot to do with the letter, isn't it?

Without that it would be a great deal less in your collecting experience.

-That's right, yes.

-I reckon this is a collection that's worth...

£10,000, £15,000 as a group, isn't it?

Wow!

-Are you going to get a Faberge one now?

-I'd like to,

but I think they're a little expensive for me at the moment.

You've given your heart and soul to this,

-and will continue to. It's marvellous, thanks so much.

-Thanks.

My father remembers eating off them, their Sunday lunches.

-Ooh, very naughty.

-Yes, and that one was called the "ugly plate",

because nobody liked the pansy.

Well, eating off it hasn't done the pansy any good, as you can see,

-the enamel in the centre there has worn off.

-Yes, that's right.

So what have we got here? We've got

a passion flower, passiflora here,

pansies here.

-What's that one?

-Well, maybe a peony, I'm not sure.

An anemone or a peony.

But what I like about seeing these botanical painting here in Chelsea, is the beginning of botanical

-painting on English porcelain, started just down the road at the Chelsea Porcelain Factory.

-Right.

At Chelsea they copied the specimens of prints and drawings made at the Physic Gardens.

That was in 1755.

-This is in 1820.

-Right.

But not on porcelain made in London, but porcelain made up in Shropshire.

-Right.

-This is Coalport porcelain

from 1825, and it's high, it's Regency, it's rococo, it's vivacious, it's scrolling.

-It's terrific quality.

-But it has no mark on the back,

actually no distinguishing mark.

Well, no because when people were retailing porcelain

in the 18th and early 19th century, very often the retailers didn't want to know that it was made

at Spode or Wedgwood or Coalport, because otherwise people went straight to the factories.

The first people really to realise this were at the Spode factory and at the Wedgwood factory.

They were some of the first people to stamp their mark, but the retailers didn't like it.

-How much of the service have you got?

-Well, I've got 12 plates, and three like this.

12 of these, three of these,

-is going to be somewhere in the region of £2,000.

-Right, thank you.

-It's a jolly nice service.

I feel as if I'm sort of holding a living piece of Art Deco in my hands.

It's wonderful, the way it catches the light. Just glorious.

Much too old to be yours, though.

Yes, indeed. It was my grandmother's, and neither of my sisters wanted it, so I got it.

-Delighted to have it.

-And your grandmother, an American lady?

Yes, who spent a fair amount of time

here in London and also in France in the years between the wars.

-Ah, so she was sophisticated, elegant...

-Yes.

-And obviously very interested in fashion.

-Oh, yes.

And what it is, it's a 20th-century take

on something called a Miser's Purse, which is a lovely name for it.

You usually see them from much earlier periods, from the 18th Century,

and they were called Miser's Purses

-because it was difficult to extract money out of them.

-It is.

-Still is.

Hard to get your lipstick out,

out of an evening if you've had too much to drink.

So you have to move the ring, you have to find where the opening is,

delve inside, so they were called Miser's Purses.

I think it's French, I think it's from the first half of the 1920s, so between 1920 and 1925.

What they've chosen for decoration are cut steel beads.

And cut steel, it sounds fairly prosaic.

You think, "Steel that's very boring - why didn't they use something a bit more exciting?"

But when you look very closely at each of these little beads,

they're faceted, they're cut just like a gemstone

and you get this wonderful shimmering quality to it.

-And then how do you wear it?

-I would wear it with one of grandmother's very smart dresses

-that look straight out of Sargent's "Madame X".

-Lovely!

-My daughter does it now.

-Great.

-Just sort of over my hand like this.

It would hold it this way, or you could do it on the arm this way.

Provided you didn't have anything too heavy, and...

All it would hold was the lipstick really. And a handkerchief.

-And your taxi fare home, I hope.

-That too, yes, of course.

Um, now I'm building you up as if this is, you know, the world's most valuable and exciting Miser's Purse.

Yes, well it's a treasure to me.

It is a treasure but this 1920-1925 purse, within that period,

we'd be talking about £200, maybe a little bit more, perhaps £300 but I would say that would be it,

so it's not going to send you on a round-the-world trip.

But the point is that these are now being really appreciated

by people like you and me who just occasionally take them out on a special outing.

-Absolutely - with that black dress.

-Yeah, very, very stylish.

Thank you very much indeed.

Now, you're the Governor of the Royal Hospital.

-Yes, I am, yes.

-Is that a pleasant posting?

It's a marvellous posting for a senior officer to end his career as a connection with the military.

-I'm rather envious.

-Yes.

These things are nothing to do with the hospital. They're your own.

-That's right.

-Now, I have to say, what is this?

Well, it's a bee, clearly,

and it comes from the throne of the Burmese Kingdom which was sacked.

In a sense, the Burmese Kingdom was put to an end by the British in 1885

with the Royal Hampshire Regiment seizing the palace in Mandalay.

And I'm not sure how, but this bee

came into the property of my grandfather.

It was one of about 20 on the back of a throne.

This is one, I think, of only three or four that survive to this day.

The Western significance of the bee

-as the symbol of industry, of endeavour, of activity.

-Yes.

Which is very common.

It's interesting to see it also had the same significance over there.

Presumably carved wood, covered in lacquer.

Now, that in itself is an indication of status.

Um, lacquer was first used by the Chinese in the Han dynasty

200 years before Christ,

so it was a well-known material

in the Far East.

And it was always associated with quality, with wealth, with prestige,

and the British were very fascinated by that.

Queen Victoria had collections of Japanese lacquer,

and so it may well be that those who were there in the 1880s thought, "Ah, lacquer - you know..."

-Yes, might be, might be valuable.

-Might be valuable and, "the Queen likes this".

-Yes.

So you say there are three or four.

Where are they? Do we know?

I think there's two in the Victoria and Albert here.

I think there's another in America somewhere.

Does it have emotional symbolic values to you as a family?

Well, my family have always said that it's a very lucky bee

and my wife of course is convinced that that is the case,

and so she treats it rather carefully.

How does it manifest its luck?

Well, she says that if it's in a place which it's unhappy about,

it will be found on the floor in the morning,

and I think there is an occasion where that has proved to be so.

Hopefully it's happy there and not going to jump off.

-I hope no.

-Moving on, it is sitting...

it is placed on this fabulous shawl, so tell me about this.

Well, my grandmother, during the Delhi Durbar of 1911...

Her husband, my grandfather, was the Controller of the Viceroy's Household

and he was put in charge of organising the Delhi Durbar in 1911

and the women's programme for the maharanis,

for the wives of the maharajahs,

was separately co-ordinated by my grandmother.

-It was a complete separation.

-They weren't allowed to be with the men.

All the maharajas' wives pooled together

and produced a single present for my grandmother and this is it.

It's a fabulous thing, it's got gold thread, wonderful colours.

It's very contemporary. They were not giving her something

that was in a sense traditionally Indian.

-It was something that has a modern look about it.

-Yes.

If you think of the pattern, there's quite a lot of Western influence.

It's as though they chose something they thought that she as a Westerner would appreciate

because she can relate to it.

I may be wrong, but that's my feeling, that's my response to it.

The two things together really tell your story, as a family associated

-with India over a long period of time.

-That's why it's special.

We've had a long link with the Indian army and this really is the sort of parts of the relics of it.

Yeah. This is obviously a seriously important object.

It would obviously would have importance to the government of Burma today as part of their history.

-So much was destroyed, I regret to say, by us.

-Yes.

Um, and therefore there is very little surviving from pre-British Burma.

We could be talking tens of thousands, we could even

be talking of hundreds of thousands, if its significance is so important in cultural terms.

-So I won't even guess.

-Right, yes.

-And similarly the cloth.

This is a glorious object.

Taken out of context, it's just a wonderful thing.

-It works as part of your family history.

-Yes.

Again, in textile terms, it's worth several hundred pounds.

-Yes.

-But that, again, is not the point.

It's just so exciting to see these. This is why British history is so wonderful.

I agree. Thank you very much.

"Charles Dickens' buttons, worn by him on his smoking jacket

"with certificate of his sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth."

How did you come by this?

Well, back in the early 1970s in business, I was introduced to

a lovely gentleman by a colleague who dealt in various artefacts

and he was selling bric-a-brac and so forth

and one time he said, "Could you loan me £100?"

He said "I've got good security for you. This is worth more than a hundred,"

and he said, "but if I don't come back to by the end of the year you could keep this, and I assure you

"it's worth more than 150."

So the telephone went, he was going to meet me with the money.

I expressed my disappointment because we'd hoped to keep it.

He said, "Would you like to keep it?"

So we agreed on it, so it's been in the family since then.

Fantastic. Although it looks like a book, it's not because when we

open it up inside, there are Charles Dickens' buttons and underneath them

we've actually got a hand-written

little letter that says, "I certify that these buttons

"were always worn by my brother-in-law Charles Dickens on his smoking coat at Gad's Hill

"from the time of his going there to...

"Until his death - 9th June 1870".

And then it's signed Georgina Hogarth.

Very interesting because Georgina Hogarth was basically Charles Dickens' wife's sister.

-Wife's sister, yes.

-And I'm going to let you into a little bit of a secret.

There were a lot of rumours about at the time, and later, that his

relationship with her may have been slightly more than platonic.

-Is that right?

-Yes, and I think it's actually ironic that,

in terms of her authenticating his buttons,

if anybody knew, it was going to be her,

because bearing in mind that she probably buttonholed him.

Oh, there's something else here.

"Made by Riviere & Son".

They were amongst the best bookbinders in the country.

Then based in London, now based down in Bath,

but the actual quality of this is absolutely fantastic.

Now, anything to do with Dickens, very, very collectable.

-I think to the right person, I could see someone paying £2,000 for this.

-Could you?

-Absolutely.

If you remember the street cry, "Stop me and buy one,"

you'll know the theme we're about to introduce.

This week's collector, Robin Weir, is not a flake

but a serious historian of ice cream and everything about it.

Robin, when did people start making and eating ice cream?

Well, the earliest records of ice cream are around the sort of 1650s

in Naples, and this is where ice cream really started,

and it was a very, very extravagant thing to have.

You needed a lot of servants, you needed people who knew how to make

ice cream and you had to have access to ice, which was very expensive.

So what's the earliest relic or bit of evidence you've got here of the ice-cream story?

Well, the earliest thing that we've got probably is this print

which is a Neapolitan ice-cream seller.

It's from about 1840 but this was one of the first prints

-of somebody actually selling ice cream.

-And what is this guy doing?

Well, this is a Russian ice-cream seller.

It's a sculpture by a man called Napoleon Jacques,

who was a Frenchman, and it's incredibly detailed.

You can see he's holding a little ice-cream glass here

which was what they used before the ice-cream cone was invented.

And those are what he's holding?

Well, these are English ones.

-Penny licks?

-Yes, these are penny licks

and this is how they served ice cream initially.

They would get a glass like this, they'd put the ice cream into it

and then you would lick it out, then you'd hand it back and the next person

would use it, and so on. They never got washed.

They were ultimately outlawed.

-Because...

-They were spreading tuberculosis.

This is a particularly interesting one.

It's about the meanest one I've ever seen. You'd get almost no ice cream in it!

-It's a trick glass!

-Almost, but when it has ice cream in it,

-it actually looks much bigger than it really is.

-So these are obviously moulds.

Are you telling me that you make an ice cream in the shape of...?

Oh, yes, these are lead pewter moulds.

These are old ones, and what you do is, you start off with the mould,

and then you pour in all the various colours of ice cream.

This was really ice cream - or sorbet in this case - as decoration.

It was table decoration.

Obviously you'd eat it, but everyone would ooh and aah when the servants brought it in.

-It would be a pity to spoil it.

-Well, it is a pity to spoil it.

The ultimate thing would be to do a mould in the shape of your own head. What an idea.

Well, I was offered one of George Washington's head this morning, from somebody in America!

And what is your collection comprised completely?

-What have you got altogether? Hundreds of...

-This is a tiny bit.

I got involved in ice cream when my children started slipping into the supermarket trollies

ghastly flavours of ice cream

and I started to try and make ice cream and one gets obsessive

-and you buy more and more ice-cream stuff. We've now got over 400 books on it.

-And your favourite flavour?

My favourite flavour of ice cream

is Parmesan cheese ice cream served with a fresh pear.

And that is a very old thing.

People get all excited, saying, "My goodness, savoury ice creams, how ridiculous!"

The Georgians and Victorians had dozens of flavours like this.

Well, give me a vanilla and a Flake any time.

This one is a very exotic shape so tell me about this one.

Yes, that's the old...rose that blew over in the gale. That's where it snapped,

it died off, so I dug the root up and carved that on the root there.

And what was your chosen subject here?

-The devil.

-The devil.

Well, I'm a bit of a devil.

-You were in Africa?

-Yes.

-You were in Italy?

-Yes.

-Then you went to France and Germany.

So they used you well, didn't they?

-They did indeed.

-Now, what regiment?

-The Scots Greys.

-Scots Greys?

-The Royal Scots.

-So you weren't on horses then, you were in tanks.

In tanks, yes. On tank command.

I think you gave up your horses in Palestine?

-That was right, that's right, yes.

-When?

-About 1940.

Yeah, I bet it broke your heart didn't it, so part with your horses?

It did, but we had to take part in a man's war, as Churchill said.

Yes, so then what happened?

Well, I left the Scots Greys in '45 and went to the Lifeguards.

-Really?

-Yes.

-How long for?

-20 years.

-Good Lord.

-Yes.

-And how did you finish up?

-I was a Corporal of Horses in the Lifeguards and then

in '65 I left the Lifeguards and went to the Honourable Artillery Company for 14 years.

Gosh, so you became a gunner.

I became a gunner. Actually I was a musician, I was in the band.

That's wonderful, isn't it?

-But you've got all these for the coronations and...

-Jubilees.

Jubilees, that's unusual.

This is a unique group and I would think that any collector would love this group.

-Yes.

-And he would pay something like...

-£1,500, £1,600 for it.

-Really, really?

-Yes.

This lady is an adopted aunt of mine

who I'd known all my life.

She was a wonderful woman and my mother got to know her during the war,

-and so I've known her since I was a little boy.

-Really? How interesting.

Yes, her father was a wealthy man.

-Right.

-And I understand he lost his money from some business enterprise.

And she had been educated at home and all of a sudden had to

earn money, earn her keep.

And she came down to London and she made her living as a dance hostess in the '30s

-and she died about ten years ago when she was 90.

-Really? Gosh.

And her husband died last year, he was 96 and he was a remarkable chap as well.

So dancing kept them very young.

-Yes, yes, it certainly did. This is a picture of her, in her 30s.

-Right.

Just pre-war. And I think that was about sort of '37, '38.

-With a charming companion.

-Charming companion, yes, yes.

-Such a great photograph.

-Yes, it's a lovely photo.

You can see the likeness there, that sort of rather wonderful look.

I love it. It's such a wonderful portrait

and she looks so sweet and fun and engaging

with the doll and the elephant here.

It's sort of casual,

not the typical formal portrait you had from the century before.

So it's a very informal and charming portrait.

It's painted here by an Edwardian artist

called William Raymond Symonds

-and it's dated 1910.

-Yes.

-So that gives us a good indication

She's probably here, what...?

-About five, six.

-Yes, exactly.

And actually, this picture was exhibited

in the Royal Academy in 1910.

-Was it?

-And she was called "Beryl"

-which I assume is right.

-Yes.

-We have a slight condition problem here, with the picture.

-Yes, yes.

I mean, just don't be alarmed and I wouldn't advise everyone to do this with their pictures,

but if I just get a bit of spit and you just do that...

And you see how this varnish, which is called blooming varnish -

it's not a swear word - it's just where, it's really rotting varnish, it's old varnish.

And it's very easy to clean. Take it to any restorer,

they'll strip the varnish off and put on a new varnish.

Is that a very expensive process?

It depends where you go to, and you want to go to someone reputable who'll do the job well

and I think it probably would cost £1,000 maybe £2,000 to have done,

because it is a skilled job.

But it's such a beautiful thing, and I really love it.

I would say something like this would be worth between sort of

-£7,000 and £10,000, that sort of price.

-Mm, yes.

So well worth having cleaned.

Yes. I mean, although it's not damaging the picture,

you can't see it really,

and you want to see all these wonderful vibrant colours.

The clean will show you everything the artist intended you to see.

Well, this is far and away above the average triple top table.

This immediately tells us that it's a games table and will have

two tops which open up and provide us with a third surface for something.

Before we do that, tell me about the family history.

Well, basically in 1900, Earl Rosslyn said the reason he wasn't the richest man in the world

was because all the wheels in these casinos were fixed so as to suit the bank.

If he got an honest wheel, his system would guarantee to win.

-Right.

-And he boasted it all over London until everybody got really fed up with him,

and the King, King Edward VII, he told Sir Hiram Maxim,

-the great American.

-The machine gunner?

Yes, who had written a book on Monte Carlo facts and fallacies.

Knew all about it, and told him to deal with it and sort it out.

-Right.

-So Sir Hiram said, "All right,"

and he had this built, purely for the occasion.

-This table?

-This particular table.

And on 19th September, 1908, in a flat in Piccadilly, they each had £10,000 worth

of chips - the equivalent of about £500,000 of our money.

And with only observers and a secretary, they played and played till the 29th September

when Rosslyn admitted he was broke, that his system was no damn good and he had to give it up entirely.

-And it was on this table?

-On this table.

Let's have a look at it. OK?

And this is what Sir Hiram Maxim made.

This is the wheel that he invented to be absolutely cheat-proof, right?

So there would be no possibility... and of course it was small enough

for them to take to pieces like this.

They could see there was no possible way that this could cheat,

so the poor chap was proved to be...

And there were arbiters, and there were umpires from both sides.

Well, now, how very difficult

-to put a value on such a thing.

-Impossible.

-It is really.

What I like about it honestly

is such magnificent craftsmanship, as a cabinet maker.

-Look at these...

-I think that's a very good approach to it.

How much would it cost to make such a thing today?

Without that provenance... The provenance doubles it.

-It would cost probably between £10,000 and £15,000 to make such a thing today.

-Yes, I'm sure of it.

And we'd easily double that because of that marvellous provenance.

Now can I put across four, I'll have a thousand on 20 to 24, OK?

Oh, I don't know about that.

Hard on the BBC if you make it, but there you are.

-Oh, oh, it was so close.

-Close, yes, my dear fellow.

-Rolled it in there.

We'll have your pay in no time at all, take it from me.

I only know that it's been in the family for years.

I think it belonged to my great great aunt.

And now my mother has it, but I know nothing.

We just have it for decoration, it's one of a pair.

This is a trembleuse cup and saucer, designed and named after people who had the trembles.

It was intended for infirm people who had shakes.

The cup sits very firmly inside the saucer there,

so however much you've got a shaking hand, you can't possibly spill your coffee or chocolate.

Made by the great Sevres factory, the mark tells us all we need to know.

There is the Sevres mark, the monogram of Louis XV, and the initial date letter. The "N"

in the middle is the year code for 1766 so it goes back to that year,

and the painter's symbol on the top tells us it was painted by Noel, a great painter at Sevres.

He specialised in these wonderful ornaments and decorations

of formal scrags, borders, and the quality is just so sensuous.

-So a pair of them?

-Yes.

And the other one's in just as good a condition as this one.

That's so important too, because a single cup and saucer of this quality

is going to be pushing £5,000.

Oh!

You're joking.

So a pair of this quality, absolutely stunning, £10,000.

You need a steady hand in order to take that in, don't you?

Absolutely. Maybe you should hold onto it for a bit longer.

I'm delighted to say that David Linley has popped in to see us.

Your design headquarters are up the road.

-Yes, just Pimlico Road, just behind here.

-How long have you been here?

-Been here about 12 years now.

-Have you brought anything in for us?

-Well, I brought this mystery object for you.

Oh.

Which I collected on the Pimlico Road.

You'd better do something with that. So you bought that locally?

Yes, I always try and collect things that I find interesting.

We try and use the old to inspire the future.

-So how old is this?

-This is about 1840

and, as you'll see,

it's a rather ingenious pocket lectern.

There you are, you see, and this opens like this

and goes onto a table.

What will they think of next? Quite wonderful.

And obviously this is the kind of thing that inspires you.

Absolutely. I mean, to me, invention and quirky objects...

I believe that furniture and collecting should be fun

and that, you know, here's an object that is something that I'd never seen before and you still

continuously find things, you know, that inspire us as designers to make things interesting.

Speaking of which, from this to this.

Well, this is a humidor based on the four gates going into Istanbul.

And what we've done is, we've used all sorts of different crafts

such as turning and carving and inlay, as you can see here.

How many kinds of wood?

There's about five or six different woods here, but the craftsmanship

is the link that I think is what is fantastic.

And inside, again,

we're just using every space available, a little ashtray,

that's for your cigars in there and all the bits.

And again you can see the pattern through the back.

And the only change really from the 18th and 19th century

is the fact that we can now use laser technology

to create very highly complicated designs that you can see here.

It's from antique furniture that these designs come to mind?

Absolutely. I remember going round with my mother, going to Urbino and seeing this amazing room

full of false perspective, all done in marquetry, beautiful 15th century

intarsia work and that's what inspires me, by looking back and seeing how things are created

and how we can include them for work in pieces of furniture for today.

The Linley sense of humidor. Who knows? 100 years from now,

-people will be saying, "Look at this wonderful old thing."

-I hope so.

Well, on the face of it, this looks rather disappointing, doesn't it?

-A rather...

-I suppose so, yes.

-A rather stained little print.

-Yes.

Can you tell me a little bit about it?

Well, it was left to me by an old colleague at work.

-Yes.

-And, um,

she had marvellous stories about all sorts of things.

Some of them were very fantastic and so I didn't really listen

very much when she said she had a connection with the Empress Eugene.

-Aha, of France that is of course.

-Yes, exactly,

and so I didn't really take much notice and I didn't expect

her to leave it to me anyway, and then it came and I wished I'd learned more from her at the time.

Right, if we raise this

like so,

we see this incredibly interesting portrait bust of Napoleon and it's full of wonderful symbolism which is

perhaps lost to certain people today, but in 1815 or '16 when this was made, these were very potent symbols.

And here, we have the snake eating its tail, a symbol of eternal life.

It's in this rather wonderful frame which looks like a sort of sunburst

-and perhaps alluding to royalty, because of course he was treated as a royal.

-Yes.

And of course the eagle of France.

-And it luckily tells you it's Napoleon.

-Yes, it's very lucky it tells you it's Napoleon.

I'm always very keen on labels like that. Us experts use them all the time, you know.

And here of course the flag of France.

-They've managed to fit in a lot in a small space.

-They have,

and then if you just pop this back here, actually, suddenly, you see this is a little

homage to Napoleon as well.

And we have the violets. Aren't they sort of Napoleon's flower?

-Yes, definitely.

-And if you look very carefully

there are portraits of Napoleon here, the outline, the profile of Napoleon,

and I think there's two more.

Yes, there's one here and there's another one tucked away there.

Nobody would find them if they didn't look very closely.

Exactly. It's an interesting idea

if you think that this was perhaps hanging in an English person's home.

-And when you had the Wellington relations to come to dinner, you would...

-Clamp it down, yes!

Exactly. And then when you had your French cousins, you would open that up as your

wonderful homage to Napoleon and oh, look there's something written here.

-Oh, that I didn't know.

-I've just seen that, it says "London" -

all I can read - and then "1816".

-1816.

-But look, is that a "B"

for Bonaparte, do you think?

-Isn't that fascinating?

-It's magnificent.

So that probably dates it to a year after the print, so it really is very, very contemporary.

There's a huge following of Napoleon.

-Yes.

-And a lot of collectors, and I think something like this

-could make... This is a guess, I think £1,500 perhaps even £2,000.

-Oh, goodness me.

-It's just unique, I think.

-Yes.

-This is Armentieres here.

-It is, yes.

And this is a trench map which came out during the First World War.

Now, you look rather young to have been in the First World War.

These belonged to my grandfather

-on my mother's side.

-On your mother's side, to be specific.

-Yeah.

-That's splendid.

-Did you ever go to Armentieres?

-I did, I was in there in 1940

prior to the evacuation of Dunkirk.

Gosh, how did you manage to get out of Dunkirk?

-Well, I was busy, but you can ask my mate.

-Go on, tell me, how did he get out?

How did we get out?

-Is it both of you were at Dunkirk?

-We were both there but we didn't know one another then.

-Right.

We rowed out to one of the big boats,

but it wasn't Dunkirk, you see, it was for about ten miles of beaches.

-Yes, yes.

-And we came off at a place called Bray Dunes which is almost...

-And how did you manage to escape the bullets?

-Well, you had to dodge!

-Dig a hole in the sand.

-When they came over you, in the sand dunes.

-Gosh, gosh.

That's absolutely wonderful,

-but you're both here now and you're both in the same regiment.

-Now, yes.

-The Royal Hospital Regiment.

The idea of these, they were issued to the Army to show where the trenches were.

And I notice you've got one here, you've got quite a few, but you've got one here of Arras.

-Arras.

-I went through there on the way to Belgium.

But this one shows all the trenches.

It does, yeah, all the blue ones, yeah.

All the blue ones and all that sort of thing. Now, as you can imagine,

First World War trench maps, by their very nature, are bound to be very easy to get lost -

in the mud, in the terrible conditions out in France,

so to find the ones that survive is quite a good thing.

-And I've got four!

-You've got four?

Anyway, let's cut to the value.

What do you think?

-A tenner a piece.

-Go on, have a guess.

-I haven't got a clue how much.

No, I think we can do better than a tenner a piece, I think we do something like £100 each.

-Oh, where we going?

-Where are we going?

This is a beautiful brooch. It's very old. How long have you had it?

Oh, I suppose about 25 or 26 years,

I think I was around about 70-odd then and I'm nearly 92 now.

Fantastic! Isn't that marvellous? And any idea where it was made?

Could possibly be French.

Well, it is French, actually. Now, tell me about how this brooch came to you.

Well, let me see. It was around about 1977, something like that.

And, er, my lady had gone out for the day

and it was very strange because she had gone out to lunch with her friend

and I thought, "Oh, good, that gives me time to do a little job in the house."

We'd just lost our housekeeper,

and I was working away, came in to the flat, just as she rang the bell to say she was coming home, come in.

I opened the door, and her friend and she moved in followed by two men.

The one with the dispatch case said to me, "Lay down on the floor, this is real,"

and produced a pistol or a gun in front of me, you know.

-No!

-And I looked at him and I said, "What?"

-so surprised.

-I should think so.

And then he turned round and said, "Don't be bloody stupid, this is real."

-No!

-So I said, "You get the hell out of it! I'll call the police!"

-in which both he and his partner turned round and rushed out of the house.

-So you drove them off?

I drove them off. I chased them part of the way down the road but lost them at the corner.

You are absolutely fantastic.

I came back,

sat down on the doorstep and burst into tears.

Oh, no, oh, goodness.

Well, you were very, very brave.

And I think your lady thought you were very brave to give you such a beautiful brooch.

Yes, she gave me one or two very nice things in her life, you know.

Well, I've got something startling to tell you.

There's a tiny mark on the clasp here which has the initials of a craftsman called Aucoc.

It's A-U-C-O-C.

Now, he's a very important jeweller working in Paris in 1900,

perhaps not for his own sake quite so much,

but that he trained somebody who was the towering genius of the Art Nouveau Movement

called Rene Lalique, who made the most spectacular jewellery and then moved into glass.

He's the greatest genius really of the Art Nouveau Movement,

never mind in jewellery, and this was his master.

It's chased gold and enamel with diamonds in platinum

and it incorporates everything that's important about Art Nouveau.

It's highly sculptural. There are four portraits of children here

in relief in gold, and it includes these marvellous flower motifs

and this is a distillation of all that was going on in the Art Nouveau Movement in 1900 in Paris.

A very dramatic and beautiful jewel.

And the combination of this, and your story of how you acquired it, is an absolute bombshell.

But there are two bombshells to hurl around here. Not only is that

the most moving story I've ever heard in my life,

but the value is another.

And I have to say I think that it should be insured for £8,000 today.

Oh, my gosh!

Ooh, oh, golly.

It's been a double pleasure for us today - the usual chance to see some fine objects

and the unusual opportunity to get an understanding of the kind of work that goes on here, the organisation,

the dedication, the loving skill that goes into making sure

that men who have served well are now themselves served well.

So until the next show, from the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, goodbye.