Kelvingrove Art Gallery Antiques Roadshow

You are now looking at the first - and, so far, the only - place in Britain

to have held the title "European City of Culture".

It came as no surprise to the people of Glasgow, but if

you're wondering what it is about this city

that puts it in the same class as Athens, Paris, Florence or Madrid,

then you need look no further than the fine art galleries and museums

owned by Glasgow City Council.

A few examples.

The People's Palace is a museum of social history,

tracing the roots of Glasgow's prosperity

from the 18th-century trade in tobacco, sugar and cotton...

to the 19th century, when iron, steel and shipbuilding

won the city an earlier title - "The Workshop of the Empire".

SHIP'S HOOTERS SOUND

All of that led to some very wealthy citizens who could afford to indulge

their taste for the finer things in life.

One big-hearted shipping magnate decided to bequeath all his treasures to the city,

but he did impose one big condition -

the whole lot had to be displayed far from the industrial heart of Glasgow,

which is why I can now step out of Pollok Country Park

and straight into Sir William Burrell's Collection.

Altogether there are 9,000 pieces here.

It's a wonder Burrell had time for business.

The Burrell is a newish building containing some ancient treasures,

but this decidedly old building, once the home of a tobacco baron,

contains Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art.

"Modern" did I say?

It's nearly Tomorrow's World here...

we're talking Turner Prize winners

and installations of a challenging nature

that some people refuse to acknowledge as art at all.

Of all Glasgow's assets, this must be the star - the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery

is very nearly the most popular cultural attraction in Britain.

Since it recently reopened after three years of renovation,

people have flocked here in their tens of thousands to swarm over the three floors of galleries.

Today, in the main hall, there's something else for them to swarm over

as Kelvingrove makes room for the Antiques Roadshow.

I'm pleased to say I'm in a Glasgow state of mind.

-Glad to hear it.

-And you've brought me an example

of a name that quite honestly doesn't necessarily travel well out of this part of the world.

-No.

-There's the initials - MHW.

-Do you want to tell me?

-Marion Henderson Wilson.

Who's so well thought of here that in this museum there are several examples of her work.

Beautiful pieces. I've seen them.

I think so, too. Um...

-Bearing in mind that this is a lady who was working here in Glasgow at the right time.

-Yeah, absolutely.

-The motto for this city is, "Let Glasgow Flourish".

-Yeah.

And by gum, it didn't half flourish in the Glasgow School of Art.

In the 1890s and early 1900s.

But what a sconce, I mean there's nothing, for want of a better word, namby-pamby about this, is there?

It's a piece of sculpture.

It's got an architectural presence about it and what we've got is that wonderful face.

She's lovely, isn't she?

-She's gorgeous.

-My heart's going.

You know I've got a flutter.

And just the attention to detail, those flowing tresses.

Are we talking about something that you found in a car boot?

No, my great aunt left me it

on her death.

See you're a canny lot up here.

You're very canny, you don't let anything go that you know is quality.

It's a virtue, trust me.

So, I've not seen one sold but I daresay, it's got to be,

-as far as I'm concerned, at least £1,000 of somebody's money.

-Right.

That's more of a guesstimate than an estimate.

Well, it's not often on a busy Antiques Roadshow day

that I get a chance to sit down on the floor

and play with a toy, so I'm very privileged.

Will you catch it?

Wonderful!

Well, it's a great looking object,

forget the fact that it's just a toy, I just love the object as it is.

I love its stripy pyjama paintwork which indicates that it's a taxi.

But if I may be personal, it looks a little bit old to belong to you, so where does it come from?

It was originally my father's and I think it's over 90 years old.

Have you ever played with it? No, it was put away and that was it.

We just felt it wasn't a thing to be played with, really.

Well, thank you for letting me have a chance to play with it,

because it's actually better quality

than some of the run-of-the-mill toys of the period.

For instance, it's got bevelled glass in the front windscreen here.

Then other nice details.

For instance, it's got windows that go up and down

and, much more exciting for me,

is that it has these three plaster passengers in here.

Now a tin toy will survive because tin is quite a robust material.

-The things that very seldom survive are these plaster figures.

-Right.

And they, when you look at the detail, for instance,

in the chauffeur, or the taxi driver, I should say,

and the two passengers in the back, they are wonderfully painted and very lifelike.

Now, it's obviously a nice day at the moment

because they're driving along with one of the other

interesting extras folded down but, if the weather turned nasty,

they could always raise the roof,

a wonderful oilskin folding roof,

a bit like in an old-fashioned perambulator.

I think it's absolutely splendid and what I like also to see

is the original price tag on there.

-One and six?

-I think it says four and six.

And I just think this is the most handsome car.

It would have been made around about 1911-1912

in Germany and I think that four and sixpence today

would be more like £5,000 to £8,000.

What? You're joking.

Oh, dear!

"Oh, dear!"

I'd hoped it would be a "yippee".

So what precisely drove you into the frenzy

that caused you to lay out a tenner on this lot?

It was a secondary auction house in Glasgow and it was 1982 or 1983 and

I was only interested in one piece of glass was that piece there which

I knew was Orrefors and Edvard Hald.

And I hadn't a clue what they were.

But I quite liked it, I thought it was quite futuristic for the time

and I liked the clean-cut lines.

Well, let's take them in turn, your Edvard Hald piece, Orrefors, 1930s.

Orrefors, Sweden, the revolutionary Swedish glass works, probably the most important glass works

of the 20th century, through these futuristic designs really set the pace of 20th-century glass making.

-Right.

-So that's a nice piece, I like it.

The second piece you bought is Kaj Franck for Nuutajarvi.

So we've come forward from the 1930s to the 1960s.

This is 1960, Nuutajarvi, Finland.

Kaj Franck is one of the most influential post-war glass designers.

His stuff really is part of our contemporary repertoire. He's not very famous,

but he was probably one of the most influential designers.

But the piece that really has caught my eye is this.

This is a densely marbled glass called Lithyalin.

There are two forms of this, there's Hyalith, which is black, and Lithyalin, which is coloured.

Now this was developed in about from 1800 for Count von Buquoy in Bohemia.

It was then spread, the idea of these very densely marbled glass, but looks actually like porcelain.

-I thought it was, at first.

-Of course, people think it's porcelain.

So it was then, the idea spread and it was made at St Louis in France,

-at Moser in Czechoslovakia.

-Oh, did Moser make it, yeah?

-But most interestingly it was made by John Ford's Glassworks at Leith, in Edinburgh.

-Is that right?

That's right! So my suspicion is

that this is feasibly a piece of Scottish glass.

Right.

So let's see what your tenner bought.

It bought an Edvard Hald 1930's optic moulded vase worth £200.

-Wow!

-It bought a Kaj Franck vase, signed up, all fully signed

-on the base, with a small chip on the rim somewhere, value £100.

-Wow!

And a potential John Ford piece

with a hairline crack in one of the handles, which is going to knock it.

Nonetheless, in pristine condition,

we would be talking minimum of £1,000.

With its handle not broken, but cracked...

-£400 to £600.

-Right.

So for your tenner I reckon you've grabbed a thousand.

-That's all right.

-Can I come with you next time?

I've got a fiver, let's go wild.

Well, you must have a very big room in your house.

We have actually, yes, and, you know, this doesn't quite reach the ceiling, but nearly.

It's a great joy to see a big piece of furniture that hasn't had the top

cut off or the bottom cut off, or reduced to fit into a small place.

This truly is magnificent.

-Thank you.

-I mean this is a wonderful piece of furniture,

but when you look at it, what sort of image do you get?

-It's romantic, isn't it?

-My wife really loves it.

It's Elizabethan romanticism, I think.

But it's 19th century.

So you look at those two things together, we tie them up and you come to 1850-1860.

-Really, that early?

-Absolutely, because after that it started getting less romantic,

less majestic and more mass produced in appearance. OK?

On a technical point, there was a man called Richard Bridgens

who was very much influenced by the late Regency style.

And he tied together those late Regency proportions, which this has,

and this revival of Romanticism and the age of medieval chivalry and so forth,

which started in the 1840's, 1850's really gathered momentum.

Now Bridgens inspired many people

and there was a publication called Blackie's Catalogue.

-Which was published in 1862 and this is in it.

-Really?

-Yes.

That's how you can really date it.

Now, nice elements which give it this positive dating. One is,

of course, the fret panels to the doors at the base.

And also, there are one or two little bits come off here,

but the quality of that is undeniable, and when you close it,

I mean, nothing's shifted in 150 years!

Amazing, and I think that's just so smart.

Then you come to these columns.

This was an idea of the 17th century - barley sugar twist turning.

This one is actually a little bit loose.

It gives you an idea of how it was made.

You had this huge pole on a lathe and you literally walked

-up and down it, gradually creating this barley sugar twist.

-Wonderful!

Now the nice thing there, is these.

Now those are Tudor-esque, Elizabethan little medallions

and you think, "When did that all happen together?"

And it is 1850-1860.

We come right to the top and then you've got those

Disneyworld little balls with pearls on and spires on the top.

But we know that the man who ordered this bookcase was a serious librarian,

I mean he didn't just buy books,

he bought books which were beautifully and expensively bound,

and that's why we've got these curtains here.

-I've got the books.

-Have you really?

-Mm, mm.

-So you inherited the bookcase and the books?

-And the books as well.

-How wonderful! Oh, what a joy!

Golly gosh!

Solid rosewood everywhere, the quality is unsurpassed.

We have to talk about value and there's a lot of conversations these days about

antique furniture being down in the market.

Well, that's not across the board, that's only for certain things.

The best things have remained as good as ever, and this is one of the best things.

Today, if you went into a shop or at a good sale and you wanted to buy this, you'd have to give £8,000.

Right.

As an exceptional and most wonderful bit of furniture.

-Lovely, thank you very much. And thank you for giving me the history.

-Pleasure.

Now, I see you're wearing a costume brooch there.

Would you call that costume jewellery as well?

-Yes, I would.

-Why?

Well, maybe when I was about 20, I would wear marquisite brooches.

-Marcasite?

-Yes.

-Right, and that is set with marcasites.

-Well, I thought it was.

Where did the necklace come from?

I was given it by an aunt

and I haven't worn it because it's too small for me.

It's very short isn't it? Now we see an awful lot of what might be called costume jewellery, that's brought

into the Roadshow and the vast majority

of costume pieces are frankly nominal value,

decorative colourful pieces.

Then occasionally you come across something

that sets it off as being slightly more special.

The necklace itself is mounted in silver.

The little glittery gems, they're marcasite.

Now these green and blue stones, let me tell you what they are.

The light blue gems are stained blue chalcedony,

and the green ones are called green amazonite.

-Will you remember those two names?

-No, probably not.

I'm going to turn it over and I want you just to have a look there.

Can you see the little stamp on the back?

-Yes.

-OK, now under my lens,

that has a little monogram and "935"

and the little monogram is "T"

and a little small "F".

That tells me that this necklace is by a celebrated German craftsman

by the name of Theodore Fahrner.

We've got to date this to perhaps the end of the First World War, running up to about 1925,

so it's quite a forerunner of the Art Deco look.

As a piece of costume jewellery, what do you think it might be worth?

£30-£40?

Maybe as far as 50, I don't know.

I think this necklace is worth in the region of £1,500.

-Well, I'm really shocked at that.

-I thought you might be.

Because it's just in a cardboard box in my dressing-table drawer.

His jewellery is exceptionally collectable.

There are people who absolutely go for Theodore Fahrner,

because he worked in what was called the Jugendstil style, the young style.

He's an important craftsman.

You've got a piece of Fahrner jewellery.

It's no costume piece, ma'am.

Have you ever been to Russia?

Yes, last year we went to St Petersburg in Russia.

Right, and did you see all the Matrioshka dolls?

-Yes.

-And you saw that you could get lots of political ones?

-Yes, I saw that.

-Which do world leaders.

-Did you see the connection between those and this?

-Yes, I did.

Here we are looking at the world as it was, what, in the 1970s?

In the 1970s.

So it's the East versus the West, isn't it?

Yes. I bought it in the 1970s for my daughter who was a toddler then.

I wanted her to have an interest in current affairs and political figures

and I bought it for that reason

so it would be a fun way for her to learn to play chess

and use history as well as playing chess.

Now, with the advantage of 30 years,

it's amazing how things have changed.

You know, we've got really famous people of the time

in this confrontational situation. Let's look at some of the key players.

We've got Kissinger, obviously, as the castle,

we've got the Pope as the bishop.

We've got... This is Miss World, who is the Queen.

It's everything about American society and culture.

And Ford. And other world leaders of the West along there,

from Mrs Ghandi, Giscard D'Estaing, and others,

facing Chairman Mao...

Makarios...

That's Idi Amin, I think.

Others I look at and think, "Who on earth is that?"

That in itself is interesting, how history has changed.

Do we know who made it?

-I don't know.

-They're wonderfully modelled.

That's Harold Wilson stretching the pound in your pocket.

And they're made by somebody with a very sharp eye.

That is the most extraordinary thing about it.

But did you sit there, you and your daughter,

-fighting the world wars?

-Yes.

-Who used to win?

-My daughter.

Was she the reds or the whites?

-She was the whites.

-She was looking ahead to the way it was going to be.

I think this is a remarkable thing.

It's a wonderful period piece.

Normally we're dismissive of things made of resin as it's a material used often for copies and fakes.

Here the material is irrelevant, it's what they're saying that is important.

-Yes.

-What did you pay?

I paid about £30 for it in the 1970s.

Well, the value is almost academic. I mean I think it's probably...

-say, £300.

-Really?

-It doesn't matter.

-No.

To a collector of the politics of that period,

this is a wonderful object.

Well, here we are,

this is part of the Lewis Carroll industry, really.

These were printed, these little postage stamp cases,

in the late Victorian period.

And they slide out like this,

and this bit is for your stamps.

-Where did they come from?

-My father gave me

the book and stamp booklet for my 40th birthday.

And it came from my great grandmother whose father was a don at Oxford

at the same time as Lewis Carroll was.

And apparently my great grandmother was one of Lewis Carroll's young lady...

-Little ladies, yes.

-Yes, his little ladies, indeed.

This is not in good condition, it's foxed.

But you've got this lovely inscription here,

"Millicent Bigg, from the inventor, May 25th '96."

And this other one here, which is rather nice, "Millicent Bigg

"from the author May 25th 1896."

Instead of being worth...£80,

we're talking about £1,500.

That's wonderful. That's lovely.

-Well, thank you so much for bringing them in.

-Thank you very much.

I'm always intrigued by boxes. What's in this one?

It's just something I found in a skip.

I'm a bit of a midgie-raker.

-What's a midgie-raker?

-Somebody who wastes their time looking through skips and things, for wee goodies.

So let's see what's inside.

Is this the best of your finds, then?

Yes, the most interesting, yes.

-Should I look at these...?

-Well, some's a bit iffy.

-Yes. I mean, beautiful, beautiful glamour shots.

-Lovely costumes.

Aren't they fantastic glamour shots?

And some of these are signed here.

Most of them are signed.

-Where are they from, then?

-I think they're from the Windmill Theatre.

-London's Windmill Theatre?

-Yes, I think so.

Right. They're a bit bent.

Yeah, they were a bit crushed so I spent three nights ironing them before I came here.

-You ironed them?

-Yes, I ironed them.

Put them in a book and flattened them down. That was the best I could do.

Well, well done, you.

I can imagine they would have been even more bent before you did that.

I love these, "To Bertie, sincerely, Susan Denny".

Bertie's been a lucky man because every girl in there has been signing a photograph to him.

The Windmill Theatre in London, I'm sure you know,

was a very well known theatre.

I suppose we remember it for being open throughout the war years.

-The theatre that never stopped, really.

-Yes.

Some of them say 1950, 1951 and 2.

What's lovely are the costumes that they're wearing,

very glamorous indeed. And, for a collector, what a treasure trove.

-Have you any idea how much they might be worth?

-No, nothing at all.

To a collector I think, um...

a single image like this could be worth £2, £3 or £4.

The glamour element adds a lot to a collector's interest.

And what do you think - 200 in here, maybe?

-Have you counted them?

-That's about fair, yes - 200.

-So 200, I mean at least £400, £500 worth.

-Oh, great!

-So off you go midgie-raking!

-Yes, I will.

The only people I know who use white gloves to touch objects are the National Trust.

-Are you from the National Trust?

-Strangely enough, no, I'm not.

I'm dressed as the ghost of a highway robber, Adam Lyle deceased.

And that's quite apt as I've brought a rather macabre object in today.

-It doesn't look macabre.

-Well, it might not do,

but it's a business card holder

made from the skin of an executed criminal,

William Burke, who along with his partner, William Hare,

used to engage in body-snatching, where they would find unsuspecting people, take them home,

murder them and sell their bodies to be dissected at medical schools.

-The infamous pair.

-Indeed.

In a twist of irony, when Burke was caught, they took his body to the medical school,

had him dissected and decided to use some of his body to make a few souvenirs,

including this little object here.

How did a reasonable chap like you come across THAT?

My boss, a few years ago, back in 1988, actually managed to buy this

at auction from the family of one of the doctors associated,

descendants of one of the doctors, Dr Hobbs,

and they sold it at auction and we managed to buy it back in 1988 for £1,050.

How do you know that is what you think it is?

Has an historian proved it?

At the auction in 1988 it was verified by a Home Office pathologist

and we do know that Dr Hobbs, whose family owned this, was a colleague of the famous Dr Robert Knox,

who dealt solely with Burke and Hare back in the 1820s.

It has been well kept and it's been

on loan at the Police Museum in Edinburgh so it should be quite well kept.

-But then you yourself have been dead for several years.

-Yes, a century or so.

Well, I look at ceramics virtually every day and I've never seen a pearl-ware tea bowl like it.

Where did you get it?

From a second-hand shop about five or six years ago.

-And how much did you pay for them?

-Ten pence.

Ten pence?

Early 19th-century tea bowl in good condition should be at least £30, but one with soldiers on,

commemorating the Battle of Waterloo,

with a portrait of General Blucher there,

one of Lord Wellington there, and dated 1815,

-it's got to be £300.

-All right, as much as that?

-That's a surprise.

-It's a fantastic thing.

I've never seen one before.

We bought the clock in an antique shop in Ayr in 1970 and

we just had moved into a Victorian house with high ceilings and cornices

and we saw this clock and we said, "Well, we have to find a home for that clock", and we've got one,

-so we just bought it.

-And you fell in love with it?

-Yes.

-Fantastic!

-It's been sitting in the corner now for 36 years.

Everything about it is Georgian, from the hollow-cornered panel on the plinth, reeded quarter columns

with their gilt metal Corinthian capitals, all the way through to the swan-neck pediment at the top.

Absolutely through and through this is 1770s-1780s,

-but it's not.

-Right.

It's almost 100 years later in the 1870s-1880s,

so it's a fairly late Victorian mahogany long-case clock.

And if we turn it through the half hour....

MELODIC TINKLING

Terrific. And you hear that every single day, doing that, fantastic.

-All day, all night, yes.

-Can you hear it lying in bed?

We can hear the chime.

We hear the hour chime right through the house.

I have it.

Absolutely massive movement,

huge, but totally typical of the Victorian period from the 1880s,

very high quality, beautifully made, almost certainly made in Clerkenwell, which is the

centre of the clock-making industry in London at this particular time. How much did you pay for it?

I paid £400 for it, but that was a long time ago. That was in 1970, I think it was.

OK. If this was a Georgian long case clock

from 1770 and it was quarter chiming,

at auction it would be worth between £6,000 and £8,000.

-But it's not.

-It's just as good quality, if not better quality, than a Georgian long case clock,

but today, at auction, it's worth between £3,000

and £5,000, but in my opinion they're greatly under valued.

So why don't we just finish off by hearing it right through the hour.

CHIMING FOLLOWED BY GONGS

And away it goes.

Now, when I saw you carrying this in, I thought it was just a standard Gladstone leather bag,

but when you open it, it's something else. Let's have a go.

Up comes this and then at the back here

these sort of instruments of torture, and this is obviously a burner,

-but what does this do?

-For curling your hair.

-You'd have heated it up there.

-Yeah.

And put these tongs in your hair.

-And rolled your hair.

-Just roll it around, so it's the Carmen rollers of the late 19th century.

-And what were these other pieces for?

-They must have been for other bits to do with hair.

-So this would have contained your powders and soap.

-Yeah.

This is probably for a lady to go travelling with. I've never seen something in this sort

of design before, so quite unusual, and probably dates from round about 1890-1900.

And then over here is something a bit earlier.

Yes, this is more special.

And this was made, as you can see by the side handles here,

for travelling, so you would have taken this wherever you went in your horse-drawn carriage.

Well, we always presumed it belonged to a doctor

-and he travelled with it round, no?

-Well, probably the other way round.

It was very expensive to call out a doctor in the 19th century

so therefore you would try to dose yourself.

So at home, or when you were travelling, you'd

have had these wonderful cabinets which open up and up and up,

to cure every possible illness.

And just a bit on health and safety on this, because

you've got to be very careful that some of these bottles don't

hold their original contents, because they often contained laudanum and also often poisons.

So this dates from around about 1820 and this was given to your family?

-It was my daughter's great- grandmother's, and she got it for her 21st.

-She got given it for her 21st?

-Yeah.

-That was quite an expensive present.

Even back in the 1820s, this would have been an extraordinary high class expensive piece of kit to own.

They're called medicine chests or apothecary's chests, but this really

-is the very best you can buy.

-Really?

The Gladstone bag is a novelty thing, probably worth £100 to £150.

This, however, is something much more exciting

-and to a collector you're probably talking about £3,500 to £4,000.

-That's nice.

-Very nice 21st birthday present.

-Yes.

Well, tell me about this mug that you've brought to me today.

I only know that it belonged to someone in my grandmother's family

and passed to her, and in turn to me, and so I've...

really no idea what it is exactly or where it's come from.

I think there may be a Russian connection, but that's all I know.

Well, there's a very strong Russian connection indeed and in fact the first thing that one

notices about this beaker is the fact it's emblazoned with the Romanov crown, and beneath it are

the initials NA in Cyrillic, and not only NA but NIIA and

this refers to Nicholas and Alexandra, and this is the year of their coronation in 1896.

And in a sense it's not a terribly valuable object because it's only enamelled base metal.

-Have you used it at all?

-No, it's simply been stored.

Right, and curiously perhaps a little bit unloved in a way and a bit misunderstood?

Yes, I think just probably it

wasn't believed to be of any value so it was just held as a kind of mysterious object.

Well, it is a mysterious object and in fact it's simply not even a rare one.

Nearly half a million of these were made at the coronation of Nicholas and Alexandra.

But they do have rather a baleful history and I don't know whether you've ever heard of this,

but at the coronation in 1896 it was thought a good idea

for the commoners to celebrate this with a party, a festival in the Khodinka Meadow, and what seemed

to be a jolly good idea turned out to be one of great tragedy,

because free beer was to be distributed amongst the people who wanted to celebrate the coronation.

Half a million people turned up and it's possible that half a million

people were given a beaker much like this, to drink the beer from.

But the Russians are very fond of alcohol, and when they learned that there was

free beer available, they charged forward and knocked each other over and it turned into a blood bath

because 1,500 people were drowned in the mud as they trampled each other to death.

This is part of Russian history that people put enormous store by, because it was one of the very

first tragedies of the reign of Nicholas and Alexandra,

and it's a miracle really that this beaker that you've brought us today tells that very silent story.

Of course, in a way it would be nice to carry away something of

a happy note from the Antiques Roadshow, but this is a deeply

sensational thing to tell you and I couldn't resist it really, but it's very redolent of Russian history.

I don't suppose you think it's a very valuable object now.

It would be hard to put a value on something like that, certainly.

Did you say it was made of metal or enamel or something?

Yes, it's enamelled base metal and so it has no intrinsic value whatsoever.

Yes, so in that sense it seems quite basic.

Very basic and in a way it should be measured in perhaps under £100.

But people are very interested in Russian history now and I think

there's absolutely no doubt that if this came up for sale that it ought to fetch £400 or £500 because it is

redolent of that very tragic moment.

Thank you for bringing it. I wish it was happier news in a way.

I found this watercolour about a year ago in an antique centre.

It was quite anonymous.

I bought it for £115 and on the back there was just a little bit of information about it.

It said "The mermaid and the fisherman, "

a monogram "CR"

dated 1890. And when I first saw it, I just got this wonderful kind of...

cold shivers went through me, I just thought it was such a beautiful jewel-like thing.

At this point it was just the beauty? It didn't have any further resonance for you?

Well, it looked to me like a book illustration, so I thought it might

be fun to track down the book that it appeared in, so I looked on the net

and it led me to a story called "The Fisherman and his Soul"

which was written by Oscar Wilde, which was published in its first

edition in 1891, so it was the year after this had been painted.

-So the dates worked.

-The dates worked.

I went to the British Library search engine and got some bibliographic details about it, and it turned out

that it was illustrated by a man called Charles Ricketts, so this could have been the mysterious CR.

So, from there, I went to the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh to look

at an original copy of the book, and it so happened that the illustration appeared in it, but in woodcut form.

So that's really all I know about it.

-That's as far as you got.

-Yes.

But how decadent is that subject?

-Here is this androgynous figure feeding this mermaid oysters from its, or her or his lap.

-Yeah.

And this...

all these sea shells and this coral and these pearls in the mermaid's hair are extraordinarily beautiful.

And this tinge of pink in the sky.

-I suppose that, if it's dawn, makes that Hesperus.

-Right.

Oh, no, that's the evening star, Hesperus.

-I can't remember what the dawn star is, but...

-I don't know.

-But anyway it's all very allegorical.

-Yes.

The whole thing gives off this wonderful whiff of that decadent time of Wilde.

And of course Wilde's great illustrator

previous to Ricketts, or alongside Ricketts, was Aubrey Beardsley

and it's his interpretation of Wilde's books, the Yellow Book and so on,

that we're used to seeing, the visualisation of Wilde's works.

But Ricketts was at least as evocative and actually, in a way, though not so simple as Beardsley,

this, I think, encapsulates the whole spirit of the age.

You know Wilde met Ricketts through having seen a copy

of a periodical that they'd produced called The Dial.

-You know this.

-Yes.

And of course,

Wilde instantly became friends with Ricketts and his partner Shannon.

So if this is by Charles Ricketts, and I think it is...

you might have to do just a little bit more work on it, to place it

in time and space, you know, just to be absolutely 100% sure.

But if it is, then this has got to be one of the most evocative images

of that era that I've ever seen, that exists, really.

This is the Ricketts that everyone wants to find and never does.

You know, this is the thing, this is the kind of picture

that epitomises that era perfectly, and it's in wonderful condition.

-Yeah.

-So I think that, and this extraordinarily powerful erotic

charge that it seems to have, will get the collectors off the mark.

It crosses borders. Not only is it visual, it also appeals to the book collectors.

There's going to be 100 people who'd like to own this, well, thousands I think...

Only 100 would be able to afford it because I think it's worth between £10,000 and £15,000.

-That's amazing.

-It's an absolutely stunning picture.

-Thank you very much.

-Definitely the find of the day, if not the year, for me.

-Thank you.

Apart from the exciting items brought in by our visitors,

there are over 8,000 pieces on display here at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

and I've only seen about 4,000 of them, so I've

decided I'm going to come again, and the Antiques Roadshow team has kindly agreed to come with me.

So, until Kelvingrove Part Two, with thanks to the people of Glasgow for being with us, goodbye.

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