St Andrews University Antiques Roadshow

Mary Queen of Scots is well known for her turbulent life,

but what you may not know is that she was also

one of the first women to regularly play golf.

It's said that when she arrived in St Andrews in the 1560s,

she brought along her own set of golf clubs -

in fact, she brought them from France,

where she'd learned as a child.

Now, I've not played golf before,

but I'm on the world's most famous golf course,

so I'm going to give it a go.

Oh.

Well, I think Tiger Woods can rest easy.

Welcome to a second round of the Antiques Roadshow

from St Andrews in Scotland, the home of golf.

BELL RINGS

When Mary Queen of Scots lived in France

as a member of the Royal Family,

she had military cadets to carry her golf clubs for her,

and it's thought that when she came to Scotland,

she brought the practice with her,

and the term "cadet" evolved into the word "caddy".

But Mary Queen of Scots' love of golf

also placed her at the heart of a scandal.

In 1567, Mary's husband -

Lord Darnley - was murdered.

Now there was much speculation at the time

that she was involved in his murder,

not helped by the fact that she was apparently seen playing golf

just a few days later.

So, not too bothered by what had happened to him, then.

This is the oldest of seven golf courses here.

I wonder if they're dusting down the trophies

ready for the Antiques Roadshow, which we're holding

in St Salvator's quad in St Andrews University.

Do you know what this is?

Not really. I think it's Japanese.

It was given to me by my mother about 20 years ago.

She likes going to charity shops -

still does - and anything with an animal on it she would give me,

usually wooden elephants and china ducks,

and she gave me this, and I thought it was different,

but it was all broken, the piece of string was broken.

It was 50 pence, so...

-50 pence?

-Yes.

I think it is just the most magical object.

-Really?

-Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

-Good.

-This is an inro.

-Right.

-Japanese - you were right -

and the Japanese used to carry small objects around in there -

seals, medicines...

-Oh, right.

-..spices, that sort of thing.

-Right.

-You then come through the cord,

which you've got more or less right there,

to the ojime,

which actually tensions that.

-Right.

-Now, it won't on yours,

because the cord's too thin.

Right.

You need a thicker cord. And then up to the netsuke.

And the whole thing is worn like that.

Oh, right, so you actually walked about with it.

Now, I strongly suspect -

I mean, we're dealing with a time in Japan in the 19th century...

Right.

..when the Samurai have been stopped

from fighting one another.

So you had 200 years of peace.

Right.

The economy's quite strong,

there are not an awful lot of people,

so they turned to making show-off objects...

-Oh, I see.

-..which the Samurai can wear about his person,

and inro were one of those.

Right.

It's basically lacquer.

Oh, I thought it was plastic, actually, so...lacquer, right.

Well, in a sense you're right,

because lacquer could be considered a form of plastic.

It isn't. It's actually the sap of the rhus tree.

Right.

And it comes out of the tree as deadly poisonous,

and all the people who work with it, at that stage, die an early death.

Goodness me.

It's then processed, and they paint it onto food dishes,

wine holders, cups,

bowls, and at that stage it's inert,

and it lent itself to artistic use.

Now, here the maker has made

a netsuke in the form of a house, or hut,

inlaid with a soapstone plaque and an inscription.

I've never seen that before.

Right.

Very, very unusual.

But the real joy is the inro itself

and this fantastic

lobster, crayfish.

It's beautiful, isn't it?

Yeah, and only the Japanese would have thought to do something

literally eccentric - off centre.

-In Europe, oh, no, we'd have to balance it with another one.

-Yeah.

It's an absolutely staggering object.

It's possibly by one of the greatest lacquer artists

-of the late 19th century...

-Good grief.

..Shibata Zeshin, but I don't know whether it is.

I'd have to go and do a bit of work on it.

Even if it's not, it's worth £3,000 to £5,000.

Oh, my God!

-And if it's Zeshin, I don't think I dare tell you.

-Right.

It's a really fantastic thing.

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

Well, this artist occasionally went in for stained glass windows

and, do you know, looking at this, you can really see that.

What colours!

I mean, that rainbow is extraordinarily vivid

and in terrific condition.

It looks as though it's hardly seen the light of day. Has it?

-No, it's not seen the light of day for quite a while.

-Ah.

It was found behind a wardrobe in my late father's house.

-Really?

-Yeah.

It's quite a thing, isn't it? Now what's going on in it?

I mean, she's quite gloomy, but wonderfully romantic.

There's an angel presenting a baby,

holding what seem to be little posies of flowers

and she's at the bottom of a chasm

with some dark water and some trees, very symbolic strange trees,

and weird figures here.

And some kind of sort of citadel,

almost, at the top of the gorge there,

-and a signature - which is useful to me, always.

-Right.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale, England, around 1900.

Now, she uses body colour,

which, incidentally, is when you mix watercolour

with Chinese white, and it's a thickening agent -

-it's a bit like putting flour in gravy, you know?

-Right.

And what it does, also, is it enables the watercolour

to become opaque instead of transparent,

because normally when you just put watercolour on,

it's completely like a wash.

If you put quite a lot of Chinese white in it,

you get this thickening here,

-and you see how bright it is, as a result...

-Yes.

..in the posies, and I think she's used

a little bit of it in the rainbow,

-just to pick it out and bring it away.

-Yeah.

And there's quite a lot of white here to suggest

the mistiness that this angel -

-the vision - seems to be coming out of.

-Yes.

She also designed her own frames.

The original frame for this would have looked quite extraordinary,

lots of swirly gold, quite thick,

and often they get taken off the pictures, to put mirrors in

in the days when people thought this sort of thing was rubbish.

-Not so long ago, really.

-Right.

-Do you like it?

-I do.

I think it's fascinating, yeah.

Mysterious, and there is a family connection.

The lady in the painting is very much like a young version of my mother.

-Really?

-Which is perhaps why my father hid it after my mother died.

It's amazing what an emotional charge pictures can acquire

over the years, isn't it?

Well, of course, at the time this was done, you know,

there were all sorts of strange ideas about mediums

and reaching the other side, and there were...

the theosophists were going and well, you know,

there's a lot of belief in spiritualism and mediums.

And this comes through in her work particularly.

There's always this very strong symbolism in them,

and not always easy to disentangle now and understand ourselves.

-Right.

-But all we can see is this very beautiful thing.

I don't mind that it's melancholic and rather sad,

because it's absolutely vivid like a jewel.

Right, yeah.

Brilliantly done, superb condition. I absolutely love it.

Pity it's lost its frame. That would have helped.

But actually, even just in this modern frame,

it's still worth £2,000 to £3,000.

Right, really?

Extraordinary.

It was given to me about 30 years ago

by a friend who was emigrating to Australia.

Too big to take with him and I'd known it -

he told me it was a guava bowl, belonged to his grandfather.

His grandfather was a colonial agricultural advisor

and he'd brought it back from somewhere.

-Fantastic.

-So this friend -

he's the same age as I am, about 65, so if you work back,

must be about the '20s or '30s when he brought it home

-from wherever he was an agricultural advisor in some colony.

-Gosh.

Well, I'm so glad you brought it,

and what a story, and what a gift to get.

-Yes.

-I'll put matters to rest. This is for kava drinking.

Kava, and kava was a drink taken throughout the South Pacific,

particularly, obviously, the numerous Polynesian islands

such as Samoa, Fiji,

and a big bowl like this is big enough

to be used by, basically, the whole community.

But the drink's fascinating, it's actually -

it's derived from the root of the kava bush,

known as a Piper methisticum.

And they harvested the root.

Traditionally young men would chew the roots

and it would give a mildly sort of sedative,

state of euphoric sort of feeling.

The roots were then put in a bowl like this, mixed with water,

to create a drink that the whole community could enjoy.

Sounds a bit of fun, doesn't it?

It does. Was it fermented, was it potent, was it alcoholic?

-I believe so. I've never brewed it myself!

-Right.

I'd love to try it. But it obviously had a bit of a punch,

and I think this would be really a very important central item

to that ritual, and what's lovely about this piece is,

it's made of hard wood, but from one big chunk of wood.

By the shape of the bowl, the shape of the angles,

and also particularly the addition of the sea shells,

I think this is from the island of Fiji.

Yes, that does ring a bell, now,

as soon as you mentioned Fiji.

I believe he did say Fiji.

So it's a kava bowl. In Fiji it's called a yaqona.

Communal drinking.

What's it worth?

I think because of the provenance you've given it, in a sale,

a specialist sale of this kind of material,

you could anticipate an auction estimate

-of £2,000 to £3,000.

-What?!

That's amazing.

My father served in the Second World War

and one of the nights that they were bivouacking,

they were bivouacking in a small village

and it was maybe a toy shop - I'm not certain which -

very close to where he parked, and he was looking in the window

and they wondered what he was up to,

making sure he wasn't going to rob them or something,

and they had all these toys and he bartered with them,

and came away with these.

And he boxed them up and somehow

the army got it shipped back to me

and I got them when I was five years old,

and you can look at them and see that I've played with them readily.

Exactly.

They were meant to be played with and they were played with.

So which part of Europe was your father in?

Well, he was in Germany and then in Czechoslovakia and Austria.

-Right.

-But I have no idea which country he was in

when he acquired these.

OK, well the bulk of the toys that you have here

is made by a company called Hauser,

and they started in business

right back in about 1910,

and what that company is perhaps best known for,

apart from these toys showing the military power of Germany

leading up to the Second World War,

is that they invented a type of material

for making toy soldiers, and that material,

they trademarked the name, and it's Elastolin.

And it was a mixture of paste on a wire armature,

so inside here there is wire -

and occasionally, on badly damaged soldiers,

you can see that peeping through - and the scale was important.

They created soldiers that were 7 or 7.5 centimetres,

so that was really quite a breakthrough.

And the use of this natural material

got away from the use of lead or tin

which is, of course, what soldiers were made of beforehand,

so that's perhaps what Hauser is best known for.

The figures themselves,

because of the ease with which this paste could be moulded,

it meant that, in fact,

particular individuals could be made out of Elastolin,

and in fact, if we look round, we've got the figure of Hitler,

and it was quite normal of what a young German boy

in 1934, '35, '36, '37,

leading up to the war, would have wanted.

And in that hobby shop,

in one of the countries that your father was in,

that's where they were sitting and waiting.

I wonder what he bartered with.

What did he give them - cigarettes, or...?

Well, my dad said that it was cigarettes and chocolate

and other paraphernalia.

Now, I don't know what the other paraphernalia was,

but at any rate, he parted with some of that stuff,

and I was very fortunate in getting this.

I mentioned that most of these are made by a company called Hauser.

The exception, in fact, is this aeroplane here

which is made by a company called Tipp and Company,

and you can see it's got the initials TC on there,

which is a good clue.

This, I have to say, is a complete stranger.

This is a much more contemporary model.

It doesn't date from the same period.

But looking at all this, did it in any way inspire your future?

Well, the answer to that is yes, because what I did is

I joined the Navy when I was 17 years old.

I was very fortunate and I came up through the ranks

and eventually became an officer

and then I became a fighter pilot.

I served in Vietnam,

and my father served in the Second World War,

and my uncle served in the Korean War.

Our daughter is a Daughter of the Revolution,

and so it just goes on and on.

We're kind of warriors.

I did 221 combat missions

in North Vietnam.

I was engaged in a dog fight with two Vietnamese Migs,

and I'm happy to say I'm here today.

It's Tom Cruise!

THEY LAUGH Because, because...

well, they did model him after me!

Yeah, exactly, I can see that!

And from there, I went on, and it was the aviation career,

and I can trace it back to all these things.

That it just kept spawning my interest,

and I became a test pilot

after a while as well,

and so I did that for eight or nine years.

Brilliant!

And met my child-like bride and we settled in St Andrews.

And here you are! Well, it just goes to show,

you have to be careful the toys you give to your kids!

Yes! CROWD LAUGHS

As far as value's concerned, I mean,

the first thing to say

is that with toys, they kind of can only give once.

-Yeah.

-You know, you either enjoy them for the toy value,

and you get that pleasure from them,

or you keep them in their original boxes

and you get the pleasure later.

You kind of got the pleasure early on,

but I'm sure that we're talking about

a couple of thousand pounds.

It's a good collection,

not in great condition.

-No. That's OK.

-But the fact that it led you onto that career...

it's brilliant. Thanks very much indeed.

Thanking you.

St Andrews is always considered as the home of golf,

and I think it dates back to...I think 1754-55,

that sort of period.

But soon after, the Crail Club,

which you are a member and the secretary of, was founded.

What actual date was that?

1786.

They were playing golf in Crail

for a good bit before that, but no records exist.

So the first minute book dates from 1786.

So probably one of the first six or seven

oldest golf clubs in the world?

Oh, yes, indeed.

You know, and before 1830, there were only a handful of clubs

existed in the world.

As you say, about a dozen, maybe, and we're the seventh oldest.

And so it was formed in 1786 by 11 gentlemen of Crail.

They were all landlords and gentlemen farmers in Crail and the East Neuk,

and by the time of 1831,

one of the local landowners, who became Lord Lindsay of Wormiston,

thought it was inappropriate,

as it says in the minutes, inappropriate

that a society of such standing

did not have a medal to play for.

So he donated the Lindsay medal.

So way back in those days,

it wasn't anybody who could join the society.

You had to be a gentleman.

Yes, they were quite selective

because it was quite an expensive sport.

And not only was the equipment expensive,

in terms of the golf clubs and the golf balls,

but you would be fined if you didn't attend the dinners

and you could not...in one of the minutes it says

you could not absent yourself from the drinking

under the pretence of taking tea.

HE LAUGHS So it was very much a social game.

So what's the earliest one you have here?

So the earliest one is the Lindsay medal, as I say, 1831.

And there are only a handful of golf medals

that are older than this.

And, indeed, all these medals

would have been worn with a ribbon

on their uniforms at the dinners.

Now, what makes the Lindsay medal very unusual

is it was won by Allan Robertson,

the world's first golf professional, in 1855.

Now, when the medal was donated,

it was specifically stated that it would be an open competition.

It would be open to all gentlemen,

and Allan Robertson, being a golf professional,

-of course, fancies his chances.

-Yep.

Travelled down from St Andrews to Crail

and duly won it, in 1855.

It was only two years later that he died,

so I believe his name won't be on many trophies at all, if any.

So there's some fabulous names

engraved either on the trophies, or on the plates afterwards,

like Captain Bruce, the Governor of Jamaica, and so on.

Good. Well, they obviously belong to the club.

-They're never going to sell them.

-Oh, absolutely not, no!

We have to think about insurance,

because these things obviously need to be insured.

Without a doubt, the most important one is the earlier one.

And if we just turn it over, we can see that...

I think you can just see there, it's the date, 1855,

and the name of the professional, Allan Robertson, there,

so it's definitely won by him,

and something like that would command a substantial price

if it should ever go to auction.

But for insurance purposes,

I think we'll talk about

somewhere in the region of about

£15,000 to £18,000 for this one here.

And for the two smaller ones and slightly later ones,

probably around about £7,500 to £8,000.

So we're probably talking about £25,000-£30,000

as an insurance figure for the collection.

Well, I'm relieved that they're kept in the bank, then!

CROWD LAUGHS

This is a lovely, lovely portrait,

this girl with the dog.

I mean, it just, it ticks every box as being a very commercial picture.

I see down here

that it's signed Cyrus Johnson,

and I think it's indistinctly dated 1887.

Cyrus was my great-great-uncle.

OK, and you've brought along a photograph.

-I've brought the photograph of my grandparents' wedding.

-Yes.

Because my understanding is that the picture

was a wedding present to my grandparents,

who were actually married in 1898,

so it was painted before that.

-I don't know what happened to it before that.

-OK.

And Cyrus himself is here.

Looking very, very happy at the wedding.

-Yes, looking very much at his nephew.

-Well, you wonder,

as he gave it as a present,

that it might be a member of the family in the distant past.

What I know about Cyrus Johnson

is that later on he went to do miniatures, didn't he?

He did a lot of miniature paintings

and he exhibited those at the Royal Academy.

-And was he born in Cambridge?

-Yes, yes.

And he worked in London

and exhibited at the Royal Academy.

And here we've got a really lovely 1880s portrait

of a young girl holding what looks like a pug.

-Yes.

-Or a pooch,

and when you get to the commercial side of this,

dogs sell pictures, they really do.

People love them, and especially that type of dog, pooch dogs.

-Right.

-And I think it's lovely.

And the way it's been painted,

when you look at her face glancing sideways and the looseness,

this is very indicative of the period it's been painted in.

The looseness, almost Impressionistic,

the way the background has been done,

and he's concentrated on the face.

And on panel and in a very original condition.

You've got the original frame,

and considering it's been in your family for a long time,

I suppose that's the reason it's in such good condition.

We come to put a value on this.

I think that it's so commercial...

I mean, he's not an artist that always makes a lot of money,

but I think this one, because of the dog,

would be worth somewhere in the region

of £6,000 to £8,000.

Mmm. Mmm, lovely.

This is a really pretty box. It is in fact a tea caddy.

Where did you get it from?

My aunt bought it, about 1950, I think.

And handed down to you?

-Yes.

-I see.

Well, there's something

a little bit surprising about this,

because at first sight you might think it was made in London,

or even in France, because it's got Edwardian-style decoration,

these swags on the front and the sides in the Neo-Classical style,

very typical of the late 19th century, early 20th century.

And if we open it up,

we can see it's silver-gilt inside...

..and the tea was kept extra fresh by that inner liner.

But the surprising thing about this is,

is if we turn it upside down...

..it's got some very good marks here.

-Has it?

-And there's one particularly important mark.

Have you any idea what it is?

Well, I thought that the characters looked Russian, but I'm not sure.

Well, it is Russian, and it's got the most famous maker's mark

that you're ever likely to find in Russia,

that of Carl Faberge.

Oh, my goodness!

And this was made in the 1890s in Moscow,

and because it's Faberge,

it makes it far more interesting

than any other bit of Russian silver.

Now, there is good news and bad news about Faberge.

His mark has been faked more than any other mark.

-Oh.

-And it's been faked for decades.

Oh.

There's also some good news.

-This is absolutely genuine.

-Oh, it is! Oh.

Oh.

It's a little beauty.

Wow.

And a lovely piece of Faberge like this

is going to be sought after in many, many countries.

-Mm-hm.

-So we have to now put a figure on it.

If I said £8,000 to £10,000, would that make you happy?

You're darned right!

Oh, that's amazing. Yeah, absolutely amazing.

My aunt had a good eye, obviously.

She had two good eyes!

Last time we visited this area, back in 2009 in nearby Dundee,

a visitor brought along a remarkable letter

from the First World War.

Remember this?

These refer to my grandmother's brother.

His name was Bernard Douglas Taylor.

This is him?

That's him, yes.

Was he a Friend, was he a Quaker?

He was a Quaker. The whole family

turned Quaker before the First World War.

And once the war had started,

he helped out with other conscientious objectors and so on.

When the time came for his drafting, he appeared before a panel

and pleaded his case for not having to join the military.

What's this dated?

1916 it looks like, from the postmark.

Oh, it's a letter to him.

Oh, oh my...

Oh, goodness me.

It's a white feather.

It's a white feather. As in the Four Feathers film.

It says, "Noble sir, if you are too proud or frightened" -

underlined - "to fight, wear this".

-He obviously was a man of great deep beliefs.

-Absolutely.

But how must he have felt when he received this?

I think from what I've read of his background that he would have

accepted it as an example of how human beings can

look upon each other, and feel sad and sorry, perhaps,

for the person who wrote it.

Well, that's an interesting perspective, isn't it, I suppose?

And I have to say that I've never seen another

-white feather letter, ever.

-Yes.

Because I doubt whether anybody kept them.

I would have thought that...

I think most people would have been very anxious

-to get rid of them completely, very quickly.

-Exactly.

I actually feel quite privileged to be able to see it -

it's quite incredible.

Now Martin, who brought in that letter,

has returned to the programme,

-so Martin, lovely to see you again.

-Nice to see you.

We had quite a response to that item on the programme.

I just wanted to share some of the letters and the e-mails we got.

Very different, and we had a chap who'd been in the RAF

who felt that we shouldn't really have been -

he felt we were celebrating the feather and the letter -

and said it was shameful then, it was an act of cowardice then,

and it's just as cowardly now.

Then, on the other hand, we had other letters who felt

quite the reverse, actually - a lot of sympathy for your great-uncle,

and there was one person who wrote in and said,

"It was particularly significant to me,

"as my grandmother's youngest brother was a strapping

"thirteen and a half-year-old, but he looked much older

"than his years, and he kept being given white feathers,

"which upset him so greatly, in fact,

"he enlisted and lied about his age."

So he went in and served in the war far younger

-than he should have done.

-I think many did, in fact, yes.

So we had very different responses.

-I don't know - what do you think about that?

-I don't know.

My grandmother's brother, he was a Quaker, a pacifist,

and very, very sincere in his beliefs but, as in the programme,

I said that he went to France later to try and do even more

for the Quakers War Victims Relief Association.

What have you done with the letter? What's happened to it subsequently?

I thought others should be able to see it and learn more

about the background of my grandmother's brother,

and so I donated it to the Imperial War Museum in London.

Well I understand that the Imperial War Museum,

which is planning its centenary

for the start of the First World War very soon,

is planning to put your uncle's letter in their exhibition

-for other people to see.

-I was unaware of that.

Yes, they did say at the time that any exhibition which included

the letter, they would let me know. So far they haven't, but...

Well, that's the idea and it will be there for everyone to see.

That's great.

And your uncle's story will be told all over again.

I'm very glad of that. Thanks for letting me know.

-That's wonderful.

-Thanks, Martin.

Well, we've got a bit of a dark and overcast day here today

in St Andrews, but this would brighten anybody's day,

so how did it come to be in your collection?

Well, it was given to me by my mother round about 1986,

and it came to her from an aunt round about 1944.

-It was always known as Aunt Kate's brooch.

-Right.

Yes. Aunt Kate's brooch.

And did you used to go and look in the jewellery box

and take it out and admire it?

-I think it was in the bank.

-Oh!

-I'm pretty sure it was in the bank.

Yes, safely under lock of key,

which of course with a piece like this is probably essential.

Yes. But my grandfather actually was the only boy in the family

and he had about eight sisters and I think they all wanted it,

so it caused a bit of trouble in the past.

-Oh no, oh no.

-Yes, they all wanted it.

-Oh, that's a shame.

Sometimes jewellery can do that - it can cause so much love,

but also jealousy as well.

-And do you actually wear it?

-I've worn it once to a wedding.

I'm terrified of losing it.

Well, it is important that we do wear our jewellery

and, of course, look after it as well,

but it's... The family history that you've given fits in perfectly,

because it actually originally dates from round about 1870-1880.

And it's set with what we call old brilliant-cut diamonds,

which are a cut which has got a nice softness to it,

they look a little bit cushion-like and they give off this beautiful

bright shininess to the stones, they're really absolutely adorable.

Set in a flower head setting,

as we have here, which again was very traditional of jewellery

produced in the Victorian period.

It was a very romantic time as far as jewellery's concerned

and flowers were a way of expressing true love.

The diamonds have been set in what we call collet mounts

so it's rather like a little collar which is securing

the rather large centre stone that we have there.

One of the ways that we value diamonds is by looking at what

we know as the four Cs, and it's the colour, the cut, the clarity

and, of course, the carat size, which is very important

when it comes to valuing diamonds.

Now, here we're looking at something that is somewhere between 4.5

and 5 carats in size,

and on the outer sides we've got individual stones

which are about 50 to 60 points, so just over half a carat.

So in total, we've got somewhere between eight and nine carats' worth

-of diamonds, which is really quite fantastic, isn't it?

-It's amazing.

Fabulous.

Looking at the colour of them,

they've got a lovely whiteness to them,

there's not too much yellow coming off the stones,

so they're good quality colour diamonds as well.

And the clarity, which is the internal condition of the stone -

they are very good, so all in all, it's really quite a stunning brooch.

Now, of course, something like this is just amazing

and highly collectible as well.

Not just because of the fact that it's a very well made

and interesting piece of Victorian jewellery, which sums up that

very sentimental side of jewellery during the period,

but of course because of the carat weight of diamonds.

And if this came up for auction,

it is easily going to get

somewhere between £10,000 and £15,000.

Really?

Oh! That's just amazing.

A fabulous bit of jewellery, I think, I absolutely treasure it.

This is a really pretty Chinese bowl.

What brings it up to St Andrews?

My mother had it

when she lived in Jersey -

I have no idea how she got it.

Well, it is a very interesting bowl.

It's, as I said, it's Chinese,

but it's really quite old.

This dates to the middle of the 17th century.

What was going on then?

Thank God I kept it carefully!

Cromwell. But in China, more importantly,

the Ming dynasty fell in 1644 and was replaced -

the Manchurians - the Manchu dynasty came in, known as the Qing dynasty

and they established themselves

-and they moved into the Imperial Palaces.

-Yes.

This type of bowl is usually referred to as an Immortals bowl.

We've got a little character here, this is Shu-lau, you can tell this,

he's got a great big forehead, he's holding a sceptre.

He certainly has.

And he's usually accompanied by a crane or a deer,

so if we look on this bowl, there'll be a crane and a deer.

You might see them before I do. There.

-There's the deer.

-There's the deer, these are attributes of Shu-lau

so we've got the eight Taoist immortals and Shu-lau.

Mm-hm.

What makes this bowl special, though, is what's on the bottom.

It's a very unusual mark,

it was made for a specific place in one of the Imperial Palaces.

It says,

"made in the antique style for the Pavilion of Moral Obligations".

Oh, dear!

The Pavilion of Moral Obligations.

Well, I do sometimes do some of my moral obligations.

-I don't know if you've been to the Forbidden City?

-Yes, I have.

-1982, it was just opened.

-Fantastic. You didn't try and count the rooms?

No.

There were allegedly - I may not be right -

over 8,600 rooms in that palace alone.

-Yes.

-And there are other palaces.

I don't know anything about this particular pavilion.

It's probably possible to find out.

But it is a very unusual bowl.

-It's very, very interesting and very exciting to see it.

-Good.

-Um...

It does have a problem.

There is a crack, very faint.

I thought I heard a slight ping when you did that.

Yeah, yeah.

Doesn't sound too bad, but there is still a crack there,

it's about a two-inch crack, very clean in the rim.

So I suppose it's only worth, maybe...

£10,000 or £12,000.

Oh, that's very unkind of you.

LAUGHTER

Take away the noise and we'll put it up a bit.

There's a bit of a buzz going round the Roadshow,

cos apparently a rather important collection has come in.

Geoffrey Munn is going to be looking at this assortment here

of Royal memorabilia, I guess you could call it.

He's very excited about it,

so excited he's insisted that we put it under this very special

Antiques Roadshow pagoda, we're calling it,

because - actually, we've been quite lucky so far -

but there is the odd spot of rain.

Anyway, the owner doesn't know very much about it,

Geoffrey thinks it's significant.

I wonder what he's going to say.

Well, this book has no words, but it does have

about 200 exceptional hand-coloured engravings.

-Do you know where it's come from?

-It was my great-great-grandmother's

and it was just handed down in the family.

-Do you know who it's by?

-Buffon - am I right?

Yeah, absolutely, spot on.

It's actually only half the plates from Buffon's work on birds.

-Right.

-So we've got 200 wonderful hand-coloured plates here

of all sorts of birds. They are in fact titled in French.

And the engravings are by Martinet, or Martinette,

and that's all that the book actually tells you.

So we've got to have a look through

and see some of these wonderful coloured illustrations.

-The colour is all hand done, and you can see it's really vibrant.

-Yeah.

It's as fresh as it was done back in 1770-1780 -

something of that sort of date - the late 18th century.

Mm. How has it kept its colour so well?

-Well, I think it's been closed up.

-Yes, that's true!

-And not much looked at, is my guess.

-Yes.

-Keep it away from the sun.

-Yes.

-And then the colour will survive.

We have here an image of the Great Bustard.

I think just being re-introduced into this country.

-I understand that.

-Salisbury Plain, isn't that correct?

-Yeah, yeah.

We've got a water bird,

a puffin or something like it.

A lot of those round here.

Indeed, and one of my favourites,

the toucan.

-Yes.

-Always a superb picture.

Other good pictures include parrots.

-The parrots are at the end.

-Some of those at the back.

Here's a green parrot

and a grey parrot.

-Have you been all the way through it?

-I have, yes.

Somebody once suggested that we remove all the pages

and make them into pictures,

-which of course I declined.

-You haven't done.

-No.

Well, that's very honourable of you, very laudable.

That would have made quite a lot of money that way. Sorry!

-It's the way we have to value them, as a price-per-plate, I think.

-Yes.

-So, my calculation says 200 very fine hand-coloured engravings.

-Yes.

Auction price at least £10 a plate,

so somewhere between £2,000 -

possibly up to - £3,000.

It actually belongs to my son.

My mother left it to one of our children.

-So he's going to inherit it.

-So I hope he doesn't watch this programme,

cos he's rather keen on money!

So it seems that St Andrews really couldn't get any more royal,

but here we are, surrounded by royal memorabilia.

To be frank, it was hard to arrange it all on the table

and every single one of them is a fascinating souvenir

of the British Royal Family going back really about 120 years.

But they've fallen to you - and how did that happen?

Well, it was all given to my husband when he was young.

They lived next door,

and were very friendly with two elderly ladies who in fact

had been brought up at Sandringham when Edward VII lived there.

Their father was private secretary to Princess Victoria

and bit by bit, they gave him things,

and when we married,

-we were given the plate and various other things.

-Marvellous!

Well, they are true souvenirs,

there are specimens of royal handwriting here,

which of course is the most ghostly of all, isn't it?

I mean, handwriting - a real autograph -

is a very exciting object to have and it says,

"Her Royal Highness the Princess Victoria at Sandringham".

And then there are photographs of Queen Maud of Norway.

It seems really the focus are on

-the children of King Edward VII, aren't they?

-That's right.

And these are intensely personal objects, there's a little dance card

here from Sandringham in eau-de-nil coloured card,

and its original pencil held in with a silk tassel

and as you whirled round the dance floor, you made notes of who

you were going to dance with next.

Tell me what you know about the tortoise.

An inkwell that was given as a present to Princess Victoria

and it's I believe tortoiseshell.

Tortoiseshell and it's a sort of tortoiseshell box, really, isn't it?

Oh, it is an inkwell, of course it is!

And it says quite plainly on the front "Her Royal Highness

"Princess Victoria of Wales, July 6th 1885",

and it's a beautiful object, an amusing object,

it's a pun on tortoiseshell. And how to value it - I don't know,

because there are dozens and dozens of pieces of plate here

from an Imperial Russian Service with the cipher

of Alexander III on it, and tell me about the leather cigar box.

That belonged to Edward VII. It came with the other things.

Marvellous, made of leather in a 17th-century taste.

But how to value them? Bits of paper, photographs, but I think

the most astonishing thing I've got to tell you is that this collection

is not worth - you know - perhaps three or four hundred pounds...

-No.

-But I think my estimation of it is that it's worth £12,000.

Good grief! LAUGHTER

Yes, right.

-And would you like to know why?

-Yes. Yes, indeed!

-Yes, you would.

Because there is one object in here that positively radiates royal,

-not only royal, but imperial majesty.

-Ah, yes.

And I think you can probably guess from what I've said,

it's the stick pin here and the hint of its majestic power is that

it's made of red leather and it has the twinned imperial eagle

of the Russian - of the Romanovs, frankly.

And it has no hint of the supplier's name in the lid,

but when I was looking at it earlier, I took a lens to the pin

and there's a tiny, tiny fugitive little mark that says

"AT". Now, "AT" doesn't seem to add up terribly well either, does it?

No, except that old bossy boots here knows that AT was a work master

to the most famous goldsmith that ever lived, to Carl Faberge,

and so this is a Faberge stick pin decorated in two colours of gold

with the Romanov eagle with a tiny sapphire

and a triumphal laurel

and we have to now guess when this is likely to have been given.

And it's easier than you might think.

And the most significant time that the Tsar came to Sandringham,

where the Princesses were living, was in 1893

when he came to visit Queen Victoria

to tell her that he wanted to marry her granddaughter

-who was Princess Alix of Hesse.

-Ah, right, yes.

And he needed her permission for that marriage, and as he went,

-he strew his way, STREW his way with stick pins.

-Right!

He actually... I knew earlier and I recognised this instantly.

Right.

Because when he got off the train at Wolferton, for Sandringham,

he gave the station master an almost identical pin.

-Oh, right.

-..which I saw 25 years ago.

-Oh, goodness.

And so I knew what this was, and I stalked you,

and I think I've done it quite well, if you don't mind me saying so!

-Yes, very well!

-How's your heart? Mine's nearly...

So £12,000 for the entire collection.

£10,000 for a Faberge stick pin with an imperial provenance,

and you can't ask for a royal object to be more than that.

But curiously enough, what's in a name?

These other things are just as valuable, but it's not about money.

-No, no. No.

-No, it's very, very touching,

these are little ghosts

that are ebbing ever so slightly away from us.

Very few people know who these people are

and now we've got a chance to show them

in a town of royal, deeply royal significance,

and I couldn't be more pleased, so thank you so much.

-Thank you.

-It's been wonderful, wonderful.

-Thank you.

-Brilliant.

Wonderful to see that collection of royal memorabilia,

and of course here at St Andrews,

which has that most recent of royal connections

with William and Kate - or Duke and Duchess of Cambridge,

as I think we're supposed to call them now.

We've had a wonderful day here in St Salvator's quad.

I hope you've enjoyed it as well,

until next time, from St Andrews, bye-bye.