Edinburgh Antiques Roadshow

Whenever the Roadshow team are asked, "Who wants to go to Scotland?"

There are cries of, "Me, sir! Me, sir!"

The last time we went to Edinburgh, by an extraordinary coincidence,

two sets of identical twins turned up on the show.

And we not only saw double twice,

but we found enough good items to make two programmes.

And here's the second helping.

Now where did you get this gaudy figure?

I got this from my, my mother and father actually.

My mother inherited it from our granny,

when my granny died and it was given to my mum and dad

-and my dad hated it, so my mother gave it to me.

-OK, and do you like it?

-I like it.

-That's good, yeah.

My wife doesn't like it. But I like it a lot.

OK, it's a pottery figure and, I mean, it couldn't be more quintessentially Scottish.

The little piper sat there on a marbleised pedestal.

The colours, which are painted under the glaze and thus preserved so well,

are very typical of what we refer to generally - Portobello type.

Now Portobello, just west of Edinburgh, had a number of kilns

producing charming little figures and jugs and everyday products.

However, pieces of this palette were also made in Glasgow, Fife, Alloa -

there were potteries everywhere.

-Right.

-We don't exactly know, and I think that's part of the thrill, the mystery of these little figures -

a lot of them have yet to be fully researched.

Obviously we can date it because the great rare factor is

it's got a date on it, 1835.

Oh, right.

And this charming little fellow is Rob Roy MacGregor's Piper.

I'm talking to a Scotsman -

I'm sure you know far more about Rob Roy than I do.

I don't know much about his piper,

but Rob Roy was really the Scottish equivalent of Robin Hood.

-He was, yes.

-Yes, something of an outlaw, he was a Protestant

with Jacobite sympathies, which was very unusual.

And of course, he became romanticised by the writings of Walter Scott.

Now he's sat on a barrel, he's dressed very, very traditionally.

Now, who damaged him? Was that the cat or...?

I think my mother did that as a child. She knocked it off a dressing table or something,

-so she always said.

-Right, right.

I don't know who glued it together, because they missed a bit.

Well, look, you've obviously had various members of the family

who've either loathed it or loved it.

-Have you ever imagined what it could be worth?

-Haven't a clue, no.

Right, well it is something of a rarity and I think if you wanted to own this figure,

you wouldn't have much change out of £2,000.

-What!?

-£2,000.

£2,000?

-It is a very rare little figure.

-Wow!

Maybe your wife will take a shine to it now.

My wife might like it. Yes, gosh.

So here we are, sitting in the "Athens of the North"

on, very appropriately, a classical bench,

and I think this piece of furniture is probably more Roman than Greek.

But none the less, looking back to that Classical tradition

and benches of this form were popular really from the beginning

of Neo-Classicism so from the end of the 18th century, from the 1770s and then right

the way through the 19th century. Do you know anything about the history of this particular piece?

This bench, I got in 1974, or so.

-Yes.

-It was being thrown out of an old church, and I phoned my husband

and asked if he could come. I asked them first if I could have it

and they said, "Certainly, take it away."

He said, "What piece of old rubbish are you taking home now?"

so he came with the little van we had...a Morris Minor

-and we took it home.

-Do you remember the church? Was it a classical church?

-Was it a Gothic church?

-It's the church that everybody in Edinburgh knows because it's now The Hub,

which is the centre of the Edinburgh Festival.

I think what I can tell you, without knowing more of its history

in a definite way, it's a piece of furniture that's been commissioned.

It's very large in scale, it must be all of seven foot long

and pieces like this were really designed for public buildings -

for a town hall, for an assembly room such as this, and would probably have gone in an entrance hall

and...

responded to the architecture of, of the building.

If you look at the end of it, it's got this "s" scroll,

which is a very characteristic feature of, of classical design

and a little lotus leaf carved in here and then these shaped legs which again...

slightly fluted and you can imagine those legs done in marble

-on a Roman bench.

-Yes, yes.

Which is the origin of a thing like this, and this one is made of oak.

I think it dates probably from the middle of the 19th century - 1850s.

I think of designs by people like William Smee who published designs for this sort of bench,

but this might also have been designed by the architect of the building

that it was originally from.

-It wouldn't fit in every house.

-No, it wouldn't, but these things are very popular today.

-You'd certainly want to insure it for about £2,000.

-OK, thank you very much.

We often hear our art experts talking about

whether a painting is worth restoring,

therefore enhancing the value and we've got a good idea.

Rupert, is it generally a good idea to restore pictures?

It depends. In the hands of somebody skilled, like Kenny,

it's an extremely good idea and you can see it's absolutely necessary at times.

This looks a right mess.

I think, as a technical term, yeah, yeah, it is a right mess.

And we have a well known restorer, Kenny McKenzie who's agreed to the challenge

of working on this painting. He's got, what eight hours, to bring at least part of it back to life,

so Kenny, which bit are you going to work on?

I think we'll do this part here, which has got its original varnish on it

and probably these bits down here

with the people and the boat,

a sharp contrast before and after as it were.

Somebody's attacked it, but there's still original varnish on it,

which can be removed at a later time.

But in the meantime, we'll do as I suggest and you'll see a considerable difference.

So what do you know about this picture?

Well, it's by G E Herring

and it's dated to 1862 and it is a very typical Englishman's view

of an Italian lake scene from the middle of the 19th century

and actually a very good one.

Can it be got back? There's a lot of paint missing.

I think that's the problem, but if the rest of it cleans well,

the missing paint is only in these out of the way areas.

It isn't over any faces or over any detail.

I think we can probably put it back, or at least Kenny can.

Well, at least we'll see your art at work today.

-Craft, yes.

-Craft.

The art's been done and the craft's being done now.

But you know in terms of value, this could be a significant difference.

-We'll have to see how he gets on.

-All right, good luck. Over to you.

-Thank you.

We're looking at a drawing by one of the great artists of the latter part of the 20th century,

somebody called Feliks Topolski.

Here's his initial down here and he's signed it down here as well.

What do you make of it? Do you like it?

Yes, I do, really because of the war interest in it -

the fact that it was London in 1944.

In 1944 and Feliks Topolski is probably best known

because he was a Polish refugee really

and he was the official Polish war artist during the Second World War.

-Oh, was he?

-And lots of his sketches and so on, show this sort of busy figurative scenes.

-Yes.

And what I like about this particular scene

is that we have various uniforms.

We have a Polish soldier, British airman and Wren officer -

that's this group here

and then we have a Czech and Dutch and Austrian, French sailor -

here's the French sailor.

So he's got this wonderful snapshot of a scene in London in 1944.

There's something in here though that draws the eye

and we have a double-decker bus full of people,

and on the side is the name Ascher.

Because of course,

although this is a great work of art,

it's also just a headscarf.

Tell me where you got it from?

My husband spotted it in an antique shop, or sort of junky-antique shop really in Oban about ten years ago

and he likes Topolski's drawings very much so he...

-So he recognised it?

-So he homed in immediately, yes.

The name Ascher relates to the couple Lida and Zika Ascher who were Czech emigres.

They left Czechoslovakia in 1938, when it was annexed, and came to England

and set up this incredible cloth manufacturing business.

They provided cloth for some of the great fashion houses, people like Schiaparelli and so on.

But then, they came up with this brainwave of producing headscarves

and they got in touch with a number of different prominent artists and designers

and asked them - commissioned them - to produce drawings for their headscarves

and that's what we have - this Ascher scarf in the most sumptuous fine wool.

It's lovely wool, isn't it?

I sort of expected scarves to be in silk rather than wool, so...

Have you got a number of scarves at home?

-I've got a few, yes, nothing very exciting though.

-Name me some names.

Oh, I've got a Comet one, a silk one, BOAC and I've got Hermes...

-one with falconry on it.

-Oh, that's nice.

-But it's got a hole in it, so...

I really love this. It's difficult to think of something

that would be more typical of its, of its moment, that precise moment.

Going back to that shop in Oban,

what do you think your husband paid for it?

I know he paid £10 for it.

The market for late 20th-century and post-war design

has grown in an extraordinary way in the last five to ten years

and in a specialist sale of 20th-century design,

this would probably fetch between £1,000 and £1,500.

-Really? Oh, that is astonishing.

-It is, isn't it?

Well, I'm almost overwhelmed by this vast collection of royal memorabilia,

but it mainly centres round the Duke of Windsor, doesn't it?

-Yes.

-"Dear Storrier,"

this letter reads, "Thank you for your letter telling me of poor Osborne's death,

"I'm afraid when we pass the milestone of three score years and ten,

"which he had, these afflictions are to be expected."

Then we get to the second-last paragraph and this is something that I've never seen before.

It says, "It was very nice to hear from you again

"and now that I have your address I will call you the next time Her Royal Highness."

Well, this is Mrs Simpson, Wallis Windsor,

and she was denied that status by the crown after Edward abdicated anyway.

He was known as "His Royal Highness",

but she was never known as "Her Royal Highness" and here is her husband making that point

and he makes it twice, the last paragraph reads,

"With constant appreciation of your loyal and devoted services

"and Her Royal Highness and my best wishes," signed Edward.

We then go to a much earlier letter here.

This one's signed "Wallis Simpson".

"Dear Storrier, here is a book I forgot for His Royal Highness. It has made such a difference

"having you come here and I want to thank you for all you have done for HRH.

"Faithfully yours, Wallis Simpson."

Now she normally, I mean,

-autographically Wallis Windsor is normally how she would sign herself.

-Right.

So Simpson is rather, rather interesting and rather good.

Now why have you got them?

Well, they were left to me really by my uncle when he died.

Uh-huh, and he was...?

He was a personal bodyguard, shadow to the Prince of Wales originally.

-Right, yes.

-Then King and then when the abdication came, my uncle went to France with them.

-He actually went to live in France with them?

-Yes.

He was still employed by the Metropolitan Police.

-I see.

-But he was a link between the London establishment and the Prince.

-Because nobody else was with the Prince at that time.

-No.

He was just the Duke of Windsor and all royal connections had really...

all establishment connections had really been broken.

So my uncle liaised between the establishment in London

and his family because his brother wanted to be kept informed

-of how he was, his health was.

-What you mean George VI? Yes.

Yes, how his health was bearing up.

-You think he could give him a phone call.

-Yes.

Instead of waiting for a policeman to have to come...

Yes, you see, the government...

did want to know too what he was up to and all that sort of thing.

Yes, I'm sure, and there was all this scandal of the going to Germany

-and meeting Hitler.

-Well, they did go to Germany and...

-Did he go with him on that famous...?

-Yes.

And one comment that's made about his pro-Nazi feelings was when he came out,

back to the car, the Duchess turned to the Duke and said,

"There aren't many lounge suits in Hitler's Germany."

Because everyone was attired in military uniform.

Yes, yes, that's very, very interesting.

So that, my uncle never had any doubt he was loyal to Britain.

Yes, I mean, this is an incredible lot, look this private photograph here

of Edward and Mrs Simpson on the beach. I suppose they were married by then, but there they are,

on the beach, which is quite remarkable really.

To get a private photograph like that -

and you've got wonderful press photographs as well.

I mean, this one here...

-what a dress! I mean that is quite a dress, isn't it?

-Yes.

That's presumably in Venice?

-Yes.

-They were in Venice, but you've got private photographs here,

stacks of them, you've got more over there...

Oh, yes! And this wonderful photograph of his youngest brother.

-That's George.

-Prince George, um, looking very, very good, I suppose,

signed 1932. Of course, he was lost during the war, he went up and never came down,

or so they, so they say, and of course he was, um, he, Noel Coward absolutely loved him.

-Oh.

-Thought he was... he sang Mad About The Boy

-in the Palladium straight at the Royal Box where Prince George was sitting.

-Oh, right.

You've got wedding cake, you've got this lovely,

um, cigarette case with the famous W/E -

Wallis and Edward monogram on it.

You've got...

-these are from where?

-The royal car -

these were his personal standards on the car.

And tell me, where does the bottle of Cognac come from?

That's supposed to be from the wedding reception, at the chateau.

-Oh, la Croe, yes.

-In France, yes.

Just tell me one thing,

how did you manage to drink that much without taking the cork out?

Oh, I didn't actually, I just received it like that.

Someone had a swig before it got to me.

Well, that's absolutely splendid and such a pleasure

-to see such fabulous royal memorabilia.

-Thank you.

Have you any idea of the value?

I mean, it's obviously a difficult thing to put a price on.

Not at all. I've never had it anywhere to have it valued or anything.

Well, I think we're looking somewhere between £10,000 and £15,000.

Ooh, my goodness!

-Thank you.

-Well, thank you for bringing it in.

As I say, I think it is the most extraordinary lot.

My father had an old Citroen before he was married, he got married in 1934

and this was on the radiator and I guess they sold the car when they got married.

Well, it's very exciting for me to see this

because apart from anything else this is the long-nosed Mickey

and they were the much earlier Mickeys

before they became less sort of bulbous on the nose.

He's got the original, what we call the pie crust eyes which go in here.

Oh, yes, yes.

And he's enamelled tin plate basically.

He's had a bit of wear and tear, maybe your father went into something...

He actually knocked a lamppost down in the car.

He always told us which was his lamppost.

-Oh, really?

-So that is possible, possibly true.

That's a shame because it has slightly devalued him.

Um, having said that, it's difficult to be absolutely sure who made him

because he's essentially a mascot, but he goes on the grill of the car.

-Yes, yes.

-And on the back you see that he's got two pins here,

which would have been attached to the grill.

There's a company called the Desmo Corporation of England

and they are listed as starting in England making mascots -

car mascots in 1934 - but if you say your father got married in 1934

and he didn't have the Citroen then, it is possible that these were made before they registered.

This particular... it's got no marking on it,

it's got no copyright, register, patent, nothing,

so I surmise that it's the Desmo Corporation.

They're very collectable,

even with this lamppost damage, between £800 and £1,200.

-What?!

-Between £800 and £1,200.

Good gracious! For that?

Now tell me about this vase.

Well, it was given to my father, I think, many years ago

by a patient - he was a GP in Lincolnshire -

and I think he was given this just as a gift one time.

A grateful, living client.

Yes, indeed, you could say that.

Yeah, well let's tackle the date first of all

-because the giveaway is miniaturism.

-Right.

In Japan, towards the end of the 19th century,

all the crafts of Japan seemed to move towards miniaturism -

everything that could be made smaller was made smaller

and smaller and smaller and also the ceramic technology.

And so much so, that here you have an almost extreme example.

-Oh, right.

-Of how miniaturistic a painter could get, in fact you could almost say he was wasting his time

because you have to be myopic, like me, or have an incredibly powerful magnifying glass

-to see some of the details on this.

-Yes.

But I think that, that's possibly the secret, there is a sort of delight

in an object where the detail is so fine that

-it's almost hidden, it's almost like a sort of secret code between you and the person who made it.

-Right.

So when, you're looking at it, even at this distance,

what you see is a blue vase with a couple of panels

and some pretty sort of flowers in between.

Well, let, let's sort of...

I'm lucky of course being myopic I don't need magnifying glasses

so I'm going to take off my glasses and look closely.

On one side, we've got this sort of market scene.

At the top of the picture...

is a fruit and veg stall laid out with melons,

long white radishes.

Then we move down into the bottom left hand corner

and we seem to have a little fish stall.

Right.

Tiny, tiny fish, look, I mean the way that they are depicted, different colours with a different skin,

the way they're lying there, their fins floppy.

I mean, it's not just any old fish, that is a dead fish on a bench.

-Uh-huh, right.

-Now to be able to paint like that,

using one hair of a brush and probably, probably going blind in the process...

-Oh!

-..is breathtaking.

-Yes.

Now on this side, we have a totally different idea.

Here we have a still life with flowers.

Actually, inside amongst the flowers,

-there's the occasional flounder up here in the corner.

-Really?

This pink fish. Never seen him before?

-Then on the fan, because that's what this is, this is a fan.

-Yes.

You have another landscape.

-This is even finer than the one we saw on the other side.

-Right.

You've got a receding distance, you've got figures in paddy fields,

you've got figures...

I think they are probably harvesting rice and there is a water wheel

and the, the sluice is running right in front there.

I mean, this is just fantastic

and then right in the foreground, another fish, another prawn,

or is it a lobster? I suspect it's a lobster.

-Right.

-And some sort of a shell fish.

I mean, this is miniaturism gone completely mad.

I hadn't realised all that detail was on it.

Well, there you are, I mean this is a universe on a small piece of pottery.

-Good grief.

-And it is exceptionally fine.

Now the...unfortunately this is not by the finest of all the miniature artists

on Satsuma, this is, from the workshop of a man whose seal appears at the bottom there.

-It's an impressed mark.

-Mmm.

-It says Kinkozan...

Nevertheless, a good maker - he made low quality goods,

he made high quality goods and this is probably the upper, upper scale.

It's still not that magic name of Yabu Meizan,

-but it's about as close as it comes to Yabu Meizan.

-Right.

So it didn't cost your father anything,

-it doesn't cost you anything.

-No.

So you're not at all interested in what it's worth?

I like it a lot, I suppose it would be nice to know how much it's worth,

but if you don't want to tell me, fine.

-Well, I will tell you.

-Good, thank you.

If you sold that in a Japanese works of art sale in the current climate,

I think it would probably fetch somewhere between...

£1,200 and £1,800.

Oh, right, yes. Ooh! That's good. That's good.

Well, this is a view that gives me a great deal of pleasure to look at

because I've known this place since I was a boy.

It's The Tweed At Melrose, so it says here. There's Melrose Abbey

and it's by Tom Scott, probably the best known

and best loved painter of views in the Borders.

You can hardly go into a house in the Borders

without finding a watercolour by Tom Scott, so it...

-is it a family picture?

-Yes, it was left to my late father

by an elderly lady, about 40 or 50 years ago.

-Yes.

-And it's been in the...

family ever since, it belongs to my mother now.

-But you've always known it?

-We've always known it.

-And you know this place?

-I know Melrose well.

-Yes, yes, so do I.

-Lovely place and the River Tweed.

My parents had a holiday cottage just off there,

in the middle of the Eildon Hills, three Eildon hills

and they were at the foot of the middle one and I fished here.

-Oh, right.

-Yes, I may have even caught my first trout,

so this is a view that brings back very happy memories for me

-and further up the river is Abbotsford.

-Yeah.

Sir Walter Scott's house - he's another great hero of mine.

So it gives me real pleasure to, to look at this.

Tom Scott is well known in the Borders,

but I wouldn't say he makes terrific amounts of money.

I think he's perhaps a bit under-rated actually,

so at the moment I would think this is worth about £700 to £1,000.

-Ooh.

-Something like that.

Kenny, I've noticed a lot of people watching you restoring our picture.

Now we're all interested in the technique,

I mean what, what materials do you use?

This is what you call an easy clean, which is quite fortunate

and I'm using a fairly low strength mixture of acetone and white spirit,

which I apply with a swab...

without any pressure, as I can demonstrate to you, right,

on this wee bit here.

It takes the varnish... This is a technically very well painted picture

and it's very nicely varnished, very thinly.

See that's the varnish coming off.

-Yeah.

-And it comes off very, very easily and very cleanly.

Now you're a professional, do you recommend people at home do the same thing?

No, I do not. I frequently get the results of such excursions.

At which point do you,

are you, might you actually start removing the paint itself?

Well, the thing is, on a picture like this, as I say, it's very hard -

there's enough oil in the paint,

so you can actually feel when you go through the varnish, and the varnish has come off.

-And you're not going to go any further because nothing else comes off.

-Right.

But of course some pictures are more soluble than this one is,

so you have to be extremely careful.

You've still got a few hours left so there's a lot more you can do.

I'll round up Rupert and we'll see the finished work later.

Right, I'll do what I can.

Now you've been a good Samaritan today, haven't you,

because you've queued for a few hours for...

on behalf of the lady who owns this particular woodcarving,

-which just happens to be your...?

-Daughter-in-law.

So how long has your daughter-in-law been the proud owner

of this rather lithe looking lady?

About five years, she had actually inherited it from her mother

who had received it from an old lady that she had known for several years.

OK, well the sculptor's name's on the back, let's turn it

because we can see it quite clearly.

-You've got the initials N J and Forrest.

-Yes.

For Norman John Forrest. OK, now anybody might be forgiven,

looking at a figure like this, for assuming that it's a mademoiselle.

But in all truth, this is a Scottish lassie

because Norman Forrest was a native of this very same city

and he was quite a celebrated son

of this particular city when it came to sculpture.

He's probably best known for some of the,

some relief panels that were to be found on the liners -

the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth -

so he's really at his zenith, if you will, in the 1930s.

He's got quite a decent pedigree

and his work is quite keenly sought after.

So I'm assuming that no thought has been given to value?

I had thought it would probably be a few hundred anyway,

but I'm no expert at all.

That makes me feel as though, you know, today's important

because I'm here really to tell you that

if I went into, into a gallery to try and buy this today,

I would not be able to get out of that gallery with this under my arm

without writing a cheque for somewhere in the region of around about...

£3,500 to £4,000.

She may be naked, but at least she's on home turf.

Here we have a wonderful picture by Richard Simkin -

great artist of watercolours.

There's Harry Payne, there's Richard Wymer and there's Richard Simkin.

All three are sought after by militaria collectors

and this is a most delightful painting

because you have all these various facets of one regiment.

Now, often, you'll get the single pictures come up in auction,

but rarely you see these multi-coloured and multi-uniform pictures.

The regiment was formed in Scotland in 1742

and it was called Cunningham's Regiment.

And then they were Dragoons to begin with, they became Light Dragoons,

onto Hussars right through the Napoleonic Wars.

After the Napoleonic Wars, they adopted this type of shako here,

which was against tradition, if you like,

because then they went back to the busby again, you see?

Well, how did you come by it?

Well, it was, it belonged to my godfather and due to the fact

that I think I'd spent 24 years in the Royal Marines, he thought

I would appreciate the military history behind the painting and he passed it on to me,

so I actually then found a restorer in Edinburgh and had it restored to its present state.

Now, I would say that this painting, if it was put into an auction

of militaria, or military paintings,

should fetch something between £2,000 and £3,000.

-Really, great.

-Because these single pictures can fetch up to £500 each.

-Oh, right.

-So if you look upon it in that light, five, ten, 15 -

you're looking at a lot of money.

-Yeah, yeah, thank you.

-Great.

-Well, what can I tell you?

-I've thoroughly enjoyed reading

The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe myself and my children,

but I'm just wondering whether it's safe

to hand it over to the grandchildren to enjoy.

Right, right. Well, let's have a look at it.

It's got a dust wrapper

and we want to see whether it's a first edition, so as we turn over,

-back of the title page, there it is, "First published 1950".

-Ah.

-So this is a first edition.

-Oh.

-Now, let's have a look.

Cover not very good I'm afraid -

there's a little bit of damage there, there's some damage at the top.

It's been in the sun somewhere, but overall it's quite a good, good copy.

Now, whether the children can be let loose on it,

or the grandchildren, rather, can be let loose on it?

The modern first-edition market is a very strange one

and it has been going completely bonkers recently, but CS Lewis,

Tolkien and people like that are all making a lot more money,

so your Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe now...

-probably cost half a crown when it was new.

-Yes, yes.

A fine copy of this would make somewhere in the region of £5,000.

-Heavens.

-Yours is not a fine copy, I have to say.

-No, no.

So can we put it down to £1,500?

Now you decide whether you want the grandchildren to have it or not.

If I was you, I'd let them buy, I'd let them buy the paperback,

or buy them the paperback anyway.

Yes, I would agree with you there.

This fellow here is definitely the worse for drink, his name is Silenus

and he's being helped into oblivion by this bevy of maidens

who are also rather the worse for drink and then these little putti.

I don't know what they're doing there - they're underage.

The dance going on here and the whole thing is covered in vines.

They're drinking, it's a Bacchic scene.

My sister can remember it from when she was younger,

but I can't, where my mother got it from I do not know.

But let's turn it upside down

because that's where we're going to see an awful lot of information.

We have a really unusual back stamp -

that's what we call the mark on a piece of pottery, a back stamp.

And around the outside it says "The Society of Arts Medal presented

"to Charles Meigh for the best model of a mug

"ornamented in relief".

Charles Meigh was one of those factories in the 1840s

who perfected this material, because when you rub your finger on it,

you can feel, you know, it's got a waxy, almost marble-like quality.

-It's called Parian ware.

-Right.

And this is right at the beginning of Parian ware,

this is almost the birth of Parian ware.

I think if you were a Parian collector and you wanted

a really early piece of Charles Meigh,

this is the piece you'd go for.

I'm going to put a price of somewhere between £120 and £180 on that.

-Interesting.

-And now back to your ceilidh.

-And the whisky.

Now we have this autograph album, you're not thinking of giving that to...

No, no. I'm not letting, turning the grandchildren loose on that, no.

No, I mean you've got a lovely load of autographs here,

they're just absolutely splendid.

I should make it clear that the autographs are my mother's

and she's still very much with us, so it's up to her to decide

what she wants to do with them.

Yes, there's a lovely one here of George Robey.

That really is rather good.

And you've got lots of fascinating people in here.

Yeah, I was asking my mother about it and she said that she...

it was a hobby of hers and it was quite fashionable in the 1920s,

when she was a girl, and she wrote to people

or she went to stage doors or to people after concerts.

-Yes.

-And she said people were very good and co-operative.

Well, that's absolutely splendid.

This one of Ernest Shackleton, this is particularly good.

I have to say that that is particularly good.

-Oh.

-Because there's a great, I don't know, polar revival,

possibly it never really went away,

but certainly the man people all want to collect now, autographically,

is Ernest Shackleton...

-Oh.

-..whose ship was crushed in the ice, if you remember,

when he made the famous boat journey

over to Elephant Island. Well, that is a very good one

and one that people would pay quite a lot of money for.

You've got lots of other lovely people in here.

There's our dear friend Edward Elgar, your mother must have gone to the...

Well, she had a friend who was a theatre manager or a relation

and I think he was in Malvern and I think he probably got her quite a lot of the theatrical ones.

Yes, yes, it's a lovely dazzling array of some old-fashioned stars,

old-fashioned music-hall stars.

-Yes.

-Some really good names.

Now if I told you, the Shackleton,

you'd probably get...or at least one would probably get for it...

somewhere in the region of £400 or £500.

I mean George Robey is not so much, but I mean he's down

in the sort of 30s, £30 sort of thing, but when you add this up.

-Yes.

-You've got an album worth, I suppose, in the region of £1,000.

-Not for the grandchildren.

-No, not for the grandchildren.

My husband's grandfather bought them. He likes antiques -

he collected a lot of different things, furniture and all sorts.

-Anything that took his fancy.

-Yes.

Well, these are actually, they're Japanese

and if they've been in the family for a long time that wouldn't be surprising

-because they actually date from the end of the 19th century.

-Right.

They are really a rather spectacular pair of vases of their type

and it's called shibayama.

And the shibayama is, is this decoration which is basically ivory

and then this is inlaid with stained mother of pearl, tortoiseshell...

It's a very beautiful and very colourful, very refined technique

and then of course the bodies of the vases themselves are silver.

This would all have been hand-raised, handmade, and then enamelled.

And then the panels and ivory set in separately

and this of course is the dragon chasing the flaming pearl.

-Really?

-Which is a very typical motif both in China and Japan.

And they are really extraordinarily decorative

and generally speaking in pretty good condition as well because they're often damaged and there is...

-Yes, one of them's...

-I have noticed

that there is one section missing there.

Are the dragons supposed to move?

-I think the dragons were fixed because I notice that this one is quite loose.

-Yes.

But you can actually see the bit of solder there and I think

probably the tail, or something, was attached

-and you can also see a bit of solder there as well.

-Yes.

So I think that they were,

they weren't intended to move around but the contact point's so small...

-Yes.

-..that inevitably, with handling over the years,

they have shifted about. I don't think it really matters.

The most important thing is the decorativeness of them,

that's really what people go for.

-Yes.

-And of course the condition - with the exception of the odd missing piece -

which is quite easily replaced...

Really outstanding.

Well, I think that they are quite surprisingly valuable, these

and I think that these probably should be insured for something in the region

-of £8,000 to £10,000 for the pair.

-Oh, that's very good.

Well, if I was going to use the word exquisite about anything,

I think I'd use it for this.

It's very small, concentrated and extremely beautiful.

Tell me about it.

It came from my grandmother, my maternal grandmother,

who was raised in Ireland.

And it came to me because my mother, when she died about eight or nine years ago,

there were a whole lot of artefacts from my grandmother,

which she wanted to divide up between myself, my sister and my two cousins.

And she said, "You can draw lots for who goes first

"and all the artefacts can be laid out on the dining room table and then you pick them in order."

And I took an instant shine to that

and I said, "Well I hope I'm going to get it."

I was the one that got the fourth straw

and so I had to wait while my three others chose

and luckily they were all far more practical than I was

and they all took things like toast racks or knives and forks

and so when my turn came I got that.

A heart-stopping moment -

when the roulette wheel's not spinning in your direction,

-but it absolutely did.

-Yes.

-And my goodness, what a fantastic condition too.

What do you know about its contents?

Well, it's got this little paper almanac inside.

Yes, full of all kinds of interesting facts and a very sweet engraving

of a view of London at this time.

-And there are the phases of the sun and the moon, aren't there?

-Yes.

-And there are lists of the Lord Mayor of London and lists of the...

-Kings and Queens.

And the senior dignitaries of Queen Victoria's Court - her favourite

Lord Melbourne is mentioned, top of the list. Weights for stamps...

Very conveniently, it's dated 1840

and I'm sure the goldsmith's work is exactly from that period.

It's very interesting to me actually because

had we not that external evidence I might have been, for a while,

thinking along the lines that this could be a piece

of 18th century English goldsmith's work.

It's in the manner of a goldsmith called Strachan

working in London in the second half of the 18th century

and I think in a strange way this is an 18th-century revival.

1840 is certainly in the reign of Queen Victoria.

It was the year she was married.

So this is an early Victorian piece of London goldsmith's work and why does it exist?

It's hopelessly impractical, isn't it?

Bound in beautiful silk here and its function is really

very much secondary to the fact that it's a truly beautiful object.

For these sort of hopelessly useless and beautiful things

there is a terminology.

We call them objects of virtue, which has its etymological roots

-in the fact that they're toys for grown ups.

-Yes.

They come from an age really when there's no television, no radio,

in the evenings amusements were taken in odd ways

and one would have a collector's cabinet with goldsmith's work

and get these beautiful things out

in candlelight and look at them and view them with amazement.

Well, a beautiful thing to give a beautiful girl in 1840.

We don't know exactly who that is,

-but we share in that life by seeing it.

-Yes, yes.

It'll probably be the grandmother of my grandmother, that would,

that would fit date wise, I would think.

Marvellous and it's very rare

and this is an enviable object and with envy of course comes value.

I mean if this were...

but if it, if it turned up for sale, it would excite an enormous amount of interest.

I'd want it really badly and I would bid, my goodness, what would I bid?

I'd bid £5,000, £6,000.

-Good gracious.

-And I might even go one more at £7,000.

-I think it's a marvellous thing and thank you for bringing it.

-My pleasure.

-Thank you.

Now for our final visit to the restoration scene. As you know

Kenny McKenzie has been working hard putting his magic to this canvas, a very dilapidated painting indeed,

and he's restored whole sections of it, so let's see what it looked like this morning.

And...

what it looks like now.

I mean entirely fresh, Rupert, whole sections of it.

I think, I think now you can see,

what probably a dealer or a more trained eye could see before,

but now you can really see its potential, you can see what it's going to look like.

So much brighter - these areas on the right

where all the light and all the action is -

those sun-kissed walls, they are beginning to make sense.

And what a lovely pink that is in that wall

-and the texture of the plaster.

-You can see the knitting needles here.

-This woman's holding...

-Yeah.

-Brilliant.

So this is what he has done today, over several hours,

but has it actually improved its value?

I think it's important to realise that the work that Kenny's done today

hasn't so much increased the value of the picture,

but simply revealed the value that was always there.

A dealer, a dealer can see it sooner perhaps than a member of the public,

but it's certainly a lot more apparent now how good this picture really is.

And this artist, Herring,

or "Hearing" - I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it -

he's worth a bit of money, and rightly so.

I think this picture's worth about £10,000 in any condition.

-In any condition?

-In any condition and you know, by the time Kenny's

worked his magic on it, I think, er, why not £15,000 in a nice frame?

-Why not indeed? What a happy ending.

-It's good.

Talking of endings, Kenny, your day's work is done, thanks.

Work is done for all of us because it's time to go home,

so thanks very much to Edinburgh for playing host and until the next time, goodbye.