New Lanark 2 Antiques Roadshow

The Antiques Roadshow has come back to the banks of the River Clyde near

Lanark in Scotland to this picturesque World Heritage site.

The village of New Lanark was built in 1785 during the industrial

revolution, and at the time,

was the biggest cotton manufacturer in the country.

In the late 18th century, factory workers tended to live close to

their place of work. This meant

housing had to be provided close to the mill.

The exterior of the buildings were constructed using

locally-quarried sandstone, using a style known as random rubble, which

used the natural shapes of the stone.

This room has been reconstructed as it would have looked in the 1800s

and all the family would have lived

in this one room with its one window,

and the cooking happened over here,

and everyone slept on this side.

And look at this bed with its wheels.

It's called a hurley bed, and it would have been pulled out at night

and then pushed back under during the day to make space.

In the 1861 census, Mr and Mrs Gallagher recorded four children,

a sister-in-law and two lodgers

all living together in this small space.

Wow!

At its height, there would have been around 2,500 people working

and living in this village.

High-density, tall tenements were the housing solution.

The names of these buildings tell you all you need to know about them.

So this is Long Row.

Over there, that's Wee Row.

And then just beyond it is Double Row

because the houses are twice as wide.

Double Row, as you can see, is covered in scaffolding as

New Lanark Trust continues with its mission to restore and regenerate

these historic buildings.

So, I'm putting on this hard hat because I've been given special

permission to take a closer look.

This house was occupied by the same family from 1901 until the 1970s.

It was a lucky find because many of the original features remain intact,

like the bed spaces here.

And then the wallpaper.

The different layers go back through the years, all the way back to 1900.

This is the original sink that one of the members of that family,

now in his 80s, remembers being washed in as a child.

And I can imagine quite a few

children were washed in this sink over the years.

Today we're welcoming the people of South Lanarkshire and beyond to come

help us peel back the layers of

a few more stories on this week's Antiques Roadshow.

Do you know, this is one of the finest claret jugs I've ever seen.

Absolutely gorgeous.

But, what have you stuck that in there for?

Yes, honestly, we don't know how long

that has been there with the jug.

The jug originally belonged to a family member on my gran's side.

He was given it as a retirement gift when he left Seamill Hydro.

When he died, he left it to my gran, and my gran's now in her mid-90s.

And, a few years, ago she gave it to my dad. A lovely gift.

Gosh, I wish I could be given a jug like this!

But it is superb.

With so many claret jugs, you find the glass is doing something

entirely different to the rest of it.

Look at what's going on here.

We've got the face engraved at that point and then again we see it at

the head of each strap. Everything is tying up.

These scrolls pick up the scrolls there.

It's a unified design.

And it just oozes quality.

When you look at the top here, the sculptural group,

the female there and little bacchanal with the bunch of grapes,

it's stunning. Actually,

it's going to be even more stunning when you've cleaned it! Yes!

THEY LAUGH

Of course, this surface here is silver-gilt.

So, the whole piece, apart from the glass, obviously,

is made out of silver and then, in this case,

it would have been electrogilded.

So it's silver covered with gold.

Now, we've got...

..a nice set of marks here.

Which are actually quite intriguing.

I mean, they're London, we've got the London Leopard's head there.

And they're for 1891.

OK. So we're right towards the end of the reign of Queen Victoria.

But what I find fascinating is, the maker's mark is WK...

OK. ..which is for Keith Co.

OK. Now, Keith were absolutely fantastic makers of Church silver.

And this is certainly not a Church piece with all the bacchanals

and so on. Wouldn't be quite appropriate!

So when did you last use it?

I don't think it's ever actually been used.

As far as I know, the relative on my gran's side,

he kept it in a pawn shop for safekeeping.

A pawn shop? Yes, because it was a retirement gift,

he didn't want to use it,

he wanted to keep it as long as possible in its good condition.

But when it went to my gran,

it then went to a shelf and it stayed on that shelf until

she moved house and now it sits on a shelf in my parents' house.

So it's probably never been touched or ever been used.

So what about the value of it?

I think, auction estimate,

I think, would be

?2,500 to ?3,000.

Wow!

Wasn't expecting that, to be honest!

And I wouldn't be surprised if it went higher.

OK. It is so good.

Wow, that's... My dad will be very pleased to hear that.

He's always said that it was of value and had a lot of history,

and I always said it had nothing!

So, unfortunately, he's now right and I'm wrong!

Right! So you're going to change your view of it?

I think I'll just go back and tell him it's worth nothing, yeah!

THEY LAUGH

A wonderful exotic lady in Lanarkshire.

Where did she come from?

She came from a beauty salon in

Newcastle which was run by my grandmother.

And how did she end up in Newcastle?

Now, that's a love story!

She started off in Somerset...

..with quite a significant landed family in Somerset.

And she actually fell in love with a chauffeur,

much to the displeasure of her parents.

She ran away with him

and subsequently became disinherited by the family.

So, they moved up to Newcastle

and life grew from there, and how she managed to get

figures like that and artefacts like that in her beauty salon,

which she developed in Newcastle, we have no idea.

This is an exceptional piece.

It's made by the Lenci factory in Turin.

And they started off, 1919, making little felt dolls.

Then 1928, they moved into

ceramic figures and they were highly desirable.

This was high Art Deco.

This particular figure was made around 1932.

And she's a very exotic character.

But you imagine how in, you know, 1930, I mean, she's naked...

Yes. ..which was a bit shocking.

Except for this elaborate headdress.

The figure is called Lui Tu, as in Chinese L-U-I, new word, T-U.

And, the thing I love about this is the details.

Look at these wonderful Chinese pots.

She is designed by somebody called Helen Konig Scavini,

who was THE designer.

They're very desirable.

This is a particularly rare one.

And they embody the Art Deco style.

Unfortunately, we can see she's badly damaged,

and with lots of ceramic figurines, that would destroy the value.

But interestingly, not so with Lenci.

If this figure came up for sale, with this considerable damage,

she would still command a figure of ?5,000.

Good grief!

Really?

Wow!

57.5 pounds of meat.

33 pounds of carrots.

4 pounds of onions. 14 pounds of flour.

Now, what kind of a cookbook am I reading?

Whose is it? It was my father's, who was in the Second World War.

And this was his log,

his daily log of his daily chores and cooking and everything else

that went on in his daily life.

So he was in the Army Catering Corps, or the equivalent of?

Yes. And is this a picture of, this is not him in uniform, is it?

But it's him off duty.

Yes, it was him off duty, my mother and my father...

Great. ..many years ago.

And looking at this book,

it's written so...

Precise. ..beautifully, isn't it?

I mean, the actual hand that it's in.

Yeah, and it goes all the way through the whole entire book.

So yes, pages and pages of tightly written

instructions and advice and drawings and cuts of meat.

I mean, it just goes...

It's a wonderful insight into, you know, a cook's life in the war.

And it's not just the writing that's so lovely,

there's also beautiful drawings of the sort of really very rudimentary

ovens and things that he'd be using presumably every day, and out

on the field if he was ever called into action.

Yes. The other thing that I love,

which I just caught looking through here, is his daily log.

Here we have,

really by every quarter of an hour almost, his day planned. Yes.

So we've got parade, knife drill, peeling, dicing, prep yeast dough,

prep veg soup,

prep baked pudding,

make tea for break.

Ten o'clock, break.

Phew! Every day.

Every day, on and on it goes.

And when you go through it and touch the pages...

It's just beautiful. It makes me really emotional, it does.

And I think today, just even more than ever, it's just...

It's fabulous. It just feels really close to him, you know.

It's great. It's really nice.

Well, it is a fabulous thing and it makes me feel very privileged to

turn these pages too,

something that was created with obviously such love and dedication.

And it's not a valuable thing, we're not here to talk about the value.

No. The value is really tiny.

But as far as stacking up memories and reflecting on a really important

role, it's got it all.

You know, the Spitfire pilots get all the glory.

Yes. But actually, an army marches on its stomach.

Yeah. On its stomach, it's true.

The glorious Scottish countryside is depicted so beautifully in this very

large oil painting by Joseph Maurice Henderson.

And you have brought in perhaps the biggest canvas that I've ever seen

by this artist. The sun is shining,

you've got lots of gentlemen stacking hay.

Tell me where this has come from?

It's actually a family painting.

The story goes, it was purchased by my grandfather to cover a wedding

that the Hendersons were having for one of their daughters.

Purchased around about 1930s, as far as I'm led to believe,

and that's stayed in the family since then.

And there's a label on the back of the picture

that says ?160, so do I take it that it was ?160 in the '30s?

We assume it was, yes.

That was an enormous amount of money, and of course the Hendersons,

you know a lot about the Hendersons. What's the connection there?

The connection with the Hendersons is my great-aunt is actually

a Henderson and a lot of the paintings have come through

that side of the family. How amazing.

Glasgow-based, Glasgow artist. Yes, that's right, they were.

And Joseph, the father, and John and

Joseph Maurice Henderson were the sons.

They were all the sons.

And, you know, a really fabulous artist,

and to see the Scottish landscape

sunny and breezy and light...

And of course this is painted by the son of Joseph Henderson.

Yes. The whole family were artists.

And, of course, you probably know all of them.

We've heard... We've read a good bit about the family, there's been

several exhibitions done with the family paintings.

This one was taken for a painting exhibition years ago and there is a

brochure confirming it was shown. Right, where was it shown?

I think it was actually shown through in Edinburgh, but,

as I say, this one's stayed within the family since then and it's

the only one we've got that's got a farming-type scene on it, as such.

Most of the rest of the family paintings are a lot of seascapes,

he loved water and seascapes so there's a lot of water and seascape

paintings. Yes.

This is painted in a very impressionistic way.

The sun is shining, there is a breeze.

You get a very good feeling about this big landscape. Mm-hm.

And I suppose artists of this type,

this was probably painted around the 1920s - he dies in 1936 -

they were inspired by the really great

Impressionist landscape artist William McTaggart.

And, of course, McTaggart was a great marine painter.

And you often seen Joseph Maurice Henderson painting very lovely

pictures of children by the sea.

Yeah. So what have we got?

We've got a really fabulous country landscape by Maurice Henderson,

I think this would make at least ?6,000 - ?8,000 at auction...

Really? ..in the present market.

Oh, oh, dear.

Well, that's got to be a surprise now.

Yeah, cool. Thank you very much.

I really think it's possibly one of the nicest pictures I've seen by

the artist, and over the years I've handled quite a lot.

Really? I haven't seen any like this,

this is the only one I've seen.

Really super picture and I hope you enjoy it at home.

Yes, we do, thank you very much, indeed we do.

We're in a time when we're thinking a lot about the Centenary of

the First World War, quite rightly,

but there are aspects of it that

don't seem to come into our consciousness.

And one of the ones that has always meant a lot to me is

conscientious objection.

It was a very strong cause in the First World War and yet no-one

seemed to talk about it.

Now, I can see I'm looking at a conscientious objector here,

now, who he was he? Well, this is my grandfather, William Tetley,

who I never knew, unfortunately.

But he was a conscientious objector,

he was a Quaker and he was quite strong in the socialist movement.

What was he? He was a photographer.

So here he is, he's got an established profession,

where are we talking about? He was in South Shields at this point

but he was actually born in Leeds.

OK, so along comes the First World War and what does he do?

In 1916, conscription began so he was called up

and refused to go to war

so he was arrested and sent to a military tribunal

and the process just kept going on over the next few months.

He would be called up, he would refuse to go,

he would go to yet another tribunal, he would spend a few weeks in a

jail - Wakefield, Wormwood Scrubs and ultimately Dartmoor Prison.

The Quaker tradition of antimilitarism is very strong

and, in fact, it goes back into the 18th century when

there was a tolerance of what were then not called,

but were conscientious objectors,

they didn't have to serve in the militia.

Nothing then happened until the 19th century,

we come to the First World War,

1914, 1915, in effect nothing happens

cos all those who were

fighting were volunteers and if you simply didn't volunteer,

you run the risk of a white feather, but you didn't have to do anything.

Conscription comes in in March 1916, and suddenly there's a problem.

And the conscription act did consider -

how do we deal with conscientious objectors?

And there was a process, as you say, you could object,

file your objection,

you went before a tribunal and if you were exempted, you had choices.

As a Quaker, you could serve up to a point in the military,

you could be a stretcher bearer, you could become a medical orderly.

You could also join something called the Non-Combatant Corps which meant

you could be a dock labourer, you could build roads,

you did nothing military.

Now we've got a letter here, tell me about that.

This letter was written to verify that my grandad had always been...

..a seeker of peace, not war.

And this gentleman wrote and explained

that William Tetley had always been

a seeker of peace, not war,

and that he wasn't jumping on

an anti-war bandwagon just at that time.

So you had to be supported at the tribunal by images like this?

Yes. I mean, the photographs are interesting,

I'd never seen photographs taken inside prisons showing groups.

I mean, here we have a group of conscientious objectors.

Is he in this photograph? Yes, he's the one with the moustache there.

Right. And this is in October 1916.

Now, here we are in Dartmoor, shoesmith's and tinsmith's shop.

I think the prison didn't really know what to do with these people

because they weren't conventional criminals.

That's right. They had to be employed and so they were put to

work wherever they could,

and I think it's a tragedy that so many people who

were driven by their conscience

ended up actually outsiders in society.

More importantly, outsiders in their family.

Yes. What do you think about him now?

I just stand in awe, really, of all that he did,

not just in conscientious objection

but in other areas of social justice.

And it's that link between

Quakerism, religion,

political principle which fired so many people at that time.

Yes absolutely. It's an extraordinary archive

and I think because I've never seen anything like it,

it's actually worth quite a lot of money

to the history of the conscious objection movement. Right, yeah.

There's obviously much more than we've got here, so we're looking at

several hundred pounds,

just as a historical archive,

but actually it's really showing the spotlight into your family.

To us it's priceless, really.

Boring plate,

interesting plate.

Do you have any connection to the Staffordshire Potteries?

No. OK. I'm afraid not.

Well, this does.

Wenger's were a very well-known colour manufacturer so this is

a sample plate and it says here, "Wenger's, Etruria, Stoke-on-Trent,

"specimen underglazed colour 421."

So this is colour 421.

And that's why it's got a hole in there, so in a pottery, they could

hang this on the wall, and when they came to make colour 421,

this was the sample which they mixed the colour to. Right.

So this is a real piece of ceramic history.

So, as a boring plate with nothing on the back, it's worth 30 quid,

but with that on the back, it's worth ?300.

Wow.

So the back makes a big difference.

This is the sort of thing a ceramics historian like me gets giddy over

because they're very rare, because when potteries closed down

they often were smashed, so it's a really

rare thing, a real bit of ceramic history, so look after it.

You've no idea how many scores of these I've seen that I wouldn't give

a second glance, but this one made me do a double-take because it's

the best one I have ever seen.

Lovely. Where did you get it and why did you bring it here?

Well, it was given to my parents as a wedding gift in 1933.

Wow. I don't know who gave them it,

but it's always been known as Reggie.

And he's always lived in either

my mother's front room or my own front room.

He had cigarettes in him and a box of matches for visitors.

My father didn't smoke cigarettes, he smoked a pipe,

but they were always there and I can always remember the cigarettes

being in it.

Well, Reggie is a blackamoor stand and he's a revival

of a renaissance popular object

that was used for proffering exotic things

like sweetmeats in Renaissance times in the 15th century, and so on.

And they were more exotic,

they had turbans and so on,

and black people were exotic and admired for that

and, therefore, as objects they were used to proffer exotic things.

That exotic theme goes back to Greek and Roman times -

they've always been exotic -

and this is a revival in the 1920s and '30s

which fits in with what you're saying.

But this isn't so much as for proffering something exotic,

this was connected with the jazz era. Oh!

The Negro revues in Paris and the jazz age.

And he represents a black bellboy that possibly would stand outside

a Parisian or London hotel,

but the quality of this is unbelievable.

You've got fruitwood here, you've got a kind of rosewood here,

you've got coromandel here,

you've got another wood as a sliver just joining the head and you've got

what looks to me like palm wood buttons and palm wood base.

And it's even got inlaid teeth. Yes.

I mean, it's extraordinary.

They're normally just, as I say, painted plywood,

they're really boring,

they're worth about ?40-?50, if you're lucky.

But I can see this one gracing the apartment

of someone very fashionable

in Paris, this would have shown guests where they were,

how fashionable they were,

cigarette smoking, as this one has been used for,

as a sort of compendium, was "de rigueur",

it was the height of fashion.

It's fantastic and it's great decoration, it's so period,

it's very Art Deco and it's got a value.

Right. Horrible plywood ones are ?40 or ?50.

One like this would be

?350.

Oh, my goodness!

Well done, Reggie. I love him.

When one first looks at these you think,

"Now, is that an oil or is it a watercolour?"

And then you look closely and then

you suddenly realise that it's stone.

And I know it as "pietra dura", which means hard stone.

Which, of course, is Italian,

so tell me how they came to be with you from Italy?

My father worked in Italy before the First World War and he hurriedly

came out of Italy and came back to Britain

to join the Army and he was able to bring these

and other paintings, so I know that

they came to this country just about before the First World War

or during the First World War.

From Italy? From Italy, yeah.

Wonderful. Well, this type of picture

is one of my favourite mediums, if you like, because,

to me, there's a lot of work in it,

as all pictures are,

but these are beautifully crafted, handcrafted stones.

Some of them are semiprecious stones,

hard stones inlaid into a base which is usually either green,

white or black marble.

And then they are slotted in,

they're like a mosaic but they're a large mosaic, if you like. Right.

It was started in the 16th century, King Ferdinando I

started the Museo Del Lavoro in Rome

in 1588, and that's when it all started -

in the 16th century in Rome -

but later it became bigger and better in Florence until by

the middle of the 19th century,

there was a famous chap called Giovanni Montelatici

and he was churning them out and they

went all over the world with tourists.

So the likelihood is that Giovanni Montelatici,

it came from his workshop in Florence

between 1864-1930

so it could well have been circa 1900.

So you've got lapis lazuli here, which is one of my favourites.

What's your favourite?

I think the green one.

You know what the green is?

No. It's malachite.

Malachite, oh, is it?

Which is again a semiprecious stone, rather like the lapis.

There are people that collect these and I think we're talking about,

for the pair, ?1,500- ?2,000.

That's good.

Good? I didn't think that, I just had them hanging for a long time.

Do you like them? Yes, I do. Good. I LOVE them.

Clearly not a book, it's a banner.

It's painted, I think, in gouache on cotton or linen,

obviously very large format, the legend at the foot, "Leadhills."

Large motto, "And leave the rest to heaven."

A symbolic column with a dove perched on the top.

And at the foot, these are mining tools, surely.

That's right, yes. There's a pick, shovel and a bucket.

Well, this is the banner of Leadhills Reading Society

and it was founded

in 1741, and it's the oldest subscription library in Britain.

So this banner would have hung in the library at a certain point,

the library was founded in 1741.

That's right, yeah. So, that makes it, certainly, yes, the earliest

subscription library in the British Isles.

It does. That's exciting in itself.

This is a little bit later, isn't it? Let's be clear,

this doesn't date from the 18th century, I don't think.

To me, this looks early 19th century, 1820s, 1830s.

Tell me about Leadhills.

Leadhills is a village on the Lanarkshire, Dumfriesshire border

in south-west Scotland,

and the reason it's there is because

for about 300 years the Leadhills area was a major centre of

lead mining, and this was a library for the miners.

This really excites me because what you're saying is this takes us right

to the beginning of that tradition which we perhaps began to

take for granted. Well, very much so. In Scotland, we're

particularly proud of the fact that library activity in the 18th-century

involved quite ordinary people like these lead miners, who were pick-men

or lead washers or smelters or whatever,

they were very ordinary people.

I think it's a really wonderful piece, a very emotive piece.

I think anyone who is interested in books, in reading,

in literacy, to see something like this which somehow takes us back to

the very origins of the way in which

we interact with books is very exciting.

Hard to value, but I can think of lots of people

who'd be very excited by something like this.

At auction, ?6,000- ?8,000.

My trustees will be very interested to hear that.

Obviously it's not for sale, but we're delighted to hear that.

If anyone was going to win a prize today at the Roadshow for the most

romantic husband, I think you would win it.

Really? And it's all connected to a chair, so tell me how it started.

Well, we bought this old basket chair at an auction for about ?5,

and at the time, well, it was in a filthy state,

so we needed it reupholstered

so, at the time we couldn't afford it, so we decided to put it in

the attic for five years or so,

forgot about it, and then when we eventually decided to have it

reupholstered, my husband thought,

to save money, he would strip the chair first.

So, that's what he did and we had it upholstered, came back,

looked lovely and then, come two months later,

our wedding anniversary,

he presented me with a diamond ring and said,

"Guess where I found this."

And he'd found it inside about three layers of cloth inside the chair.

So it was hidden inside the chair? It was hidden inside the chair.

And you've got the ring there? I've got the ring here, yes.

There you are. So this is it?

So he presents you with this...

The ring? ..at your anniversary?

Yeah, and then, come following Valentine's Day,

he presents me with diamond earrings...

And again these were hidden inside the chair?

Hidden inside the chair.

And then also a brooch.

Is there any more to come? Well, that would be nice, wouldn't it?

I don't think so, I think that was it,

but obviously somebody hid them at one time

and forgot about them or died or... We just don't know.

You have no idea why? No.

Joe Hardy, our jewellery specialist, I know would love to see these,

but no matter how much they're worth,

just a lovely story, so romantic.

You never know what you're going to find

when you buy something at auction.

I bought a chair for a fiver at an auction, it's now

in my son's bedroom, it never occurred to me to look inside it.

I would get it stripped and see what you might find! I might have to!

That's right.

Well, you could have been standing in the paintings queue,

couldn't you? I could have, with these scenes of slightly bawdy life.

Well, certainly this scene here shows gentlemen sitting

around a table drinking punch from this punchbowl,

this fellow here's taken a fall.

He's obviously had too much. He's had too much.

Well, I can tell you, this is James Figg,

the 18th-century prize-fighter

of whom it was said only alcohol could knock him out. Oh!

We know who he is, in fact

we know who the others are, but I'm going to have to skip round to

the other side and show you this scene.

This is Tom Rakewell. And who is he?

Tom Rakewell is the antihero of a series by William Hogarth.

OK. And in this scene from The Rake's Progress,

he's cursing his luck at the gaming table, and just to reinforce this,

this black dog is looking at him and the black dog in the 18th-century

meant the same as depression, the black dog today.

So it's an ancient, ancient sign.

Now, let's put the lid to one side and look at the scenes

on the base.

Now, here you have a scene of

what is called the election entertainment.

What is that? Well, when politicians wanted to make sure that a vote,

like, for example, a referendum, went the right way,

they treated the voters to a great feast,

in the hope that they would...

Vote for them. Vote for me.

The election agent has just been delivered a blow by a brick

that's come through a window.

But, best of all, for medics especially, is this gentleman here.

He's just eaten a surfeit of oysters.

And he's not feeling very well. He's not feeling very well,

and so the local physician has come along with his cure,

which is always to be bled.

And the last one here is this, a violinist.

You can just see he's holding a bow.

He's flung open his window, because outside there is cacophony.

All of these people are making a noise.

The milkmaid has come to town, shouting, "Fresh milk!"

The pig gelder is blowing his horn, a man with a toothache,

a man sharpening a cleaver, a boy with a drum...

And the only moment of silence, there,

a girl with a rattle.

She's stopped cos she's horrified by what she's seen.

Now, this is where

the 18th century meets the 19th century.

I've told you that these scenes are Hogarthian.

Yes. And they are all recognised scenes from Hogarth's works from

the 1720s right through to the 1750s. OK.

But by the time we get to the 19th century,

people are rather more precious about the raucous, bawdy,

18th-century world. About the bad behaviour.

About bad behaviour. And in the original version, here,

the reason she has stopped rattling her rattle is that this little lad

in his red coat is relieving himself in front of her.

We have been spared that scene by the tasteful decorator,

and the tasteful decorator, what nationality was he?

I thought he might be German, but he obviously isn't.

You're absolutely right. He IS German.

Because, turn it upside down,

there is the mark of the Berlin Porcelain Factory.

So the question is, why English scenes

of an 18th-century artist on the 19th-century bowl?

And the answer is - the Germans loved Hogarth.

Hogarth became an internationally famous artist in his own lifetime.

There was a huge Hogarth revival,

both in England and in continental Europe in the 19th century,

and this bowl probably dates to around 1850.

Why would they put a horrible cherub on the top? A horrible cherub?

My goodness! Well, English punch bowls are open punch bowls,

because we drank cold punch, but the German punch is served warm.

That's why there is a cover,

and if you've got a cover you've got to have a finial.

Valuation... Well, it's damaged - that has an effect on value.

It's a lovely thing. I'm a Hogarth nut

so I would probably put quite a higher valuation than another of my

porcelain friends down there.

I'm going to say it's probably worth somewhere in the region of

?600 to ?900.

Wow. For something we keep corks and party poppers in.

Now, where have you got these from?

These were hidden in a chair we bought at auction,

and my husband gave them to me.

My goodness me. Well, I don't know...

I wish I had a chair, A, that I could find jewellery in, and B,

have presents given to me...

Well, let's start with this beautiful little flower brooch.

Why I love it so much is because of this...

this real movement that these petals have.

You know, the goldsmith has really spent some time

to try and replicate nature.

And it's made in silver and gold,

and they're cushion-shaped diamonds.

And there's a couple of rose-cut diamonds,

and it's made in about 1890, that sort of...

that sort of period. I would say, at auction,

you'd be looking at about ?1,200 to ?1,500 for that.

Right. Gosh. So that's very nice, isn't it?

Very nice Easter present, yes. So, now, that's the Easter present?

That was the Easter present, yes. OK. OK.

So we've got this ring here.

Slightly later in style.

It's platinum and 18-carat gold.

It's got cushion-shaped diamonds and it's about 1900, the period.

Right. Very pretty, charming...

You'd be looking at about ?500 to ?700 for that one.

And then we have this pair of earrings.

There are rather superb, aren't they?

I would say there are just under a carat in weight, though, again,

cut at about 1900. OK.

So it's all the same sort of period, these three, these three items.

Because of the inclusions, you know,

you're only really looking at about ?2,000 to ?2,500...

I say "only". Yeah!

I mean, I say only... It's quite a lot. But... Yes.

But for the size...

OK. So, for a chair that cost you how much?

?5. ?5!

Well, a chair that cost you ?5,

out popped a collection of jewellery

which is worth around about ?4,000 to ?5,000.

Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

So I understand that you acquired this

from a well-known online auction website.

Yes, yes. Quite brave, I would say.

It certainly was. Can I ask what you know about it?

What you bought it as, even? What did they describe it as?

It was just described as antique wooden Guan Yu statue.

And I lived in China for some time,

so when I was there I was looking for a statue of Guan Yu,

and they were all really tacky-looking.

I couldn't find anything I liked, so when I came home and I saw that,

and looking at the photographs of it,

all the time I was in China, I didn't see anything as old as that.

They all got destroyed or stolen during the revolution,

so when I saw that, immediately I had to have it.

Right. And they described it as that.

So, Guan Yu, the god of war.

Yes. And he was around in the, sort of, eastern Han dynasty...

Mm-hmm. ..way back in 200 BC.

What attracted you to it?

I mean, what... Why this particular one?

Well, I'd been in China studying martial arts,

and Guan Yu is prayed to by police,

law enforcement, martial artists, and,

ironically enough, Chinese Mafia. But just from the martial arts side

of it and from the Daoism side of it,

I'd been quite interested in him, and him being

such a prominent figure in China, that when I saw it, I just...

I had to have it. Also he is known to bring good fortune and knowledge

and wisdom as well, so I thought it'd be good for my shrine.

Rub off on you? Yeah, yeah.

So... Be a good influence on me. I'd better be a bit careful about my

valuation later, if you're a martial arts expert.

LAUGHTER

So I'm going to ask, what did you pay for it?

He was asking for 360.

I offered him 240 and he accepted it.

There you go. Good at bartering, obviously. Or did you persuade him

in other ways? I learned my haggling in China,

so I managed to get the price down.

They can be particularly good at it.

OK, so what is it?

Well, it's from the Ming Dynasty...

Excellent.

..which gives us a fairly broad range, going from, you know,

anything from 14th century up to 17th century,

but this one's 17th century.

OK. And it's a carved wood figure, and I can see, you know,

traces of old paint here, some traces of old red paint,

and indeed some traces of blue paint there.

It's a softwood that it's made of, and then...

Which is why they've... They would have polychrome painted this,

so it would have been quite ornate, possibly with some gilts,

but certainly, as we can see,

there's rich blue and reds and maybe some other colours in there also.

I really like the, sort of, stance of him,

and I like the way he's kind of stroking...

pulling his beard to one side, you know,

ready to make a decision about his next...

Very bold. Very bold, and looking to make a decision about his next battle

and what he's going to do to, you know, his...

his armies that he's up against, or what he's going to do with his army.

Well, look, he's a wonderful piece, desirable today,

and I think if that came up for auction,

I like the condition and I think other people would like

the condition. I think he'd carry a presale auction estimate

of between ?2,000 to ?3,000.

That's all right. That's not bad!

Everybody's going on this auction website later.

LAUGHTER

He's not for sale.

Now, earlier on in the programme,

Fiona was talking about life here at New Lanark,

and about the lives of people who lived here,

and actually we've got a photograph

of a group of people relating to New Lanark.

Now, who are they?

Well, the gentleman on the left is my great-grandfather, James Purvie.

The woman is my grandmother, Margaret Graham.

She has in her arms my mother,

also Margaret Graham, and my two uncles are the two other gentleman.

On... On either side.

On either side. And how long were they involved here at New Lanark?

The family originally arrived in New Lanark in 1820,

and my grandmother was the last to leave in 1920,

when she moved to Lanark to live with her son and daughter-in-law.

So they were here for 100 years. 100 years.

That is extraordinary, isn't it?

And I'm trying to imagine life here in New Lanark.

I mean, it must have been a hard life,

but obviously comfortable in a way that, perhaps,

a lot of other working folks didn't have it comfortable,

in that everything was provided for you.

That is correct.

I remember my grandmother telling me that with the electric light,

it went on at six o'clock in the morning

and it went off at ten o'clock at night.

And they thoroughly enjoyed their life.

It was a simple life. On the table in front of us,

we've got a number of things which actually relate to...

to that life of your...your forebears.

Now, what I love is this little Valentine card.

On the front, you've got a lovely verse,

pretty flowers, gold decoration, and it looks like a...

..a little envelope. You can't open it.

It was given by my grandfather to my grandmother the year before

they were married, and they were married in 1860.

Perfect. So, I mean, by that time, actually,

the exchange of Valentine cards was quite, quite the thing.

Wonderful to have that.

And then we've got two ale glasses here, pressed glass,

probably made in Newcastle, dating from the 1850s.

Then, the other things on the table I like very much, too,

because they also tell another part of the story.

Because here you have two Staffordshire hounds.

That was nothing to do with food.

It was nothing to do with providing for the family.

That was TOTAL, unbridled luxury.

Yes. You could only consider having something in your house that was

decorative when every other necessity had been ticked off...

..and they were as excited about owning those

as any millionaire would have

been at owning a piece of Meissen.

It said exactly the same thing in their house,

so, lovely to have that.

So it tells a really lovely story.

So it tells a really lovely story.

What do we do about valuing them?

Well, the little Valentine, perhaps worth ?40, ?50.

The rest of the things on the table

perhaps adding cumulatively to ?250.

But to me it's all about using these few things here

to open the door and to be able to

look in on a wonderful piece of history,

and that is working life here at New Lanark.

Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

This is almost like a picture frame to me,

because it helps me date the contents.

And a red leather box of this style

and this shape often heralds a jewel

from the 1840s. And we open it up and, yes, absolutely bang on,

a magnificent suite of seed pearls.

Tell me all about it with you.

Well, I wore them when I got married.

My grandmother, Dad's mother wore them to his Government House balls

in New Zealand, erm, with the Governor General, obviously.

And she said to me, "Oh, maybe you ought to wear some of that when you get married,"

and I said, "Well, absolutely."

And then she says, "Well, you can't wear the necklace cos I've worn that,

"and that's not looking good any more, and you can't wear a bracelet."

So it ended up I wore the earrings and the hairpiece.

Well, that's wonderful,

and in a way that's exactly the job for which this was designed,

because pearls are absolutely magical -

since time immemorial they've been associated with Venus,

because they are born of the shell and the sea,

and so they are one of her attributes,

and so always associated with the amatory significance of jewellery.

And here are masses of sea pearls, and it's a miracle of craftsmanship,

because the allusion to the shell

and the sea is doubled up on the back.

We can see that this is sawn mother of pearl,

this the shell of some sort of mollusc.

Oh, I see. And so the allusion,

the metaphor is extended beyond that.

But it goes deeper still.

One might suggest that this was a wedding gift for a girl in 1840,

because it encapsulates everything she would ever need in later life -

the necklace, the bracelets, the earrings,

and this frontlet - a tiara, if you like.

Were you frightened by it when you wore it or not?

No, not at all.

And then looking back now, 24 years later,

I'm thinking maybe that was a bit of a stupid thing to do.

Yeah, oh, no, well, it is horribly fragile,

and actually one of the miracles

of discovering it today in such stunning condition

is that pieces turn up all the time and they're always broken,

and it's a great challenge to restore them,

but I'm completely fascinated by the concept of you wearing it at your

wedding, because I think that you were acting instinctively here.

There is an extended metaphor beyond the pearls.

This is a...a sprig of roses.

The central rose is en tremble - literally trembling

on a watch spring here. Yeah. The rose, too,

is sacred to Venus.

And so there is a double emblem of love,

but equally these are ivy leaves,

and ivy in the language of flowers is emblematic of marriage.

Oh, I didn't know that.

But the rose is good cos that was my maiden name.

Was it? Oh, that's even better, isn't it?

So a piece of jewellery of huge amatory significance.

Where was it made? That's a big problem.

I think technically it's difficult to imagine that this is London work,

and I don't think anybody's pinpointed exactly where

these things were made, but maybe

perhaps somewhere in the Empire. But retailed in London.

I mean, this is... Or at least in the United Kingdom.

This is an English box. It is.

And...

And a thrilling survival doing its job,

the very job that it was supposed to do in 1840, doing it for you,

and possibly doing it for future generations.

That would be wonderful too. Do you think it would hold together for future generations?

Well, frankly, no!

I think you've got to be hugely, hugely careful of it.

It's immensely fragile.

What we should say is that each element is actually strung with

horsehair onto a background of mother of pearls,

and once the horsehair is broken,

it's enormously difficult to restore it.

Here we can see that somebody's attempted it with a bit of cotton.

But this is collectors' jewellery,

and any collector would be very pleased to give you

well, in the region of ?7,000 for it, in my view.

Wow. Oh, right. OK. That's lovely.

Quite surprising.

Well, you have to admit, it's a very smart-looking, quality,

typically Art Deco cocktail watch.

Did you used to wear it regularly? I used to wear it a while ago,

but then I was given by my husband a nice new Rolex for having my second

child, so it's not really been worn since then.

Well, that's a shame, isn't it?

It is. So you did used to wear it fairly regularly, and

the only thing I can fault on it at the moment

is that the strap is later.

It would have had a lovely black moire strap,

and you can imagine very elegant ladies in the '30s

wearing this sort of thing.

The flappers would all have worn this sort of thing,

and that is seriously nice.

Do you know anything about it? It was my godmother's,

and she gave it to me, and I used to play with it as a wee girl.

You played with it? OK. I played with it.

So you haven't actually opened it up and had a look at it. Oh, no.

Oh, no. I didn't even know it opened.

OK, OK, well, let's have a proper look here for you.

That opens like that.

OK. And I'm just going to tease this movement out...

..and we can just pop it down there,

and there you will see the magic name Rolex.

Oh! So you didn't realise it was a Rolex?

No, no, not at all.

OK. Well, not only is it Rolex, but it says "observatory quality",

so it is one of their really beautiful movements. Oh.

And the case is also signed Rolex Watch Co, platinum.

So what we've got here is a lovely platinum endowment case,

and this serial number on the back here...

..tells me... I'll just have to use this loop.

Very roughly, it's just in excess of 64,000.

That equates to a date of manufacture 1934, 1935. Wow.

Now, the Rolex company was started

in the early part of the 20th century.

In 1926 they produced the first Oyster,

the first waterproof wristwatch,

and in 1931 the Oyster Perpetual, which is what you're wearing now -

a modern version of the Oyster Perpetual.

So that...

..type of watch was around before they made this.

Wow. But this is lovely.

So...

Fully signed by Rolex. Lovely diamonds -

and these are not just chips, these are proper diamonds -

and I'll just slide it all back in.

There we go.

Which would you rather have? As I look at your husband there...

LAUGHTER

They've both got very good sentimental value, so...

OK. I'll keep them both.

Roughly, how long have you had that one for?

21 years. 21 years.

OK. Well, this is, as we said, rather older.

80-odd years. If you walked into a jeweller's or a saleroom,

they'd probably be looking at something between 2,500 and ?3,000.

Wow. Oh, wow.

What pleases me is that I've shown you that it is Rolex,

and you didn't realise you were

replacing one Rolex with another, did you?

No, I did not. I definitely did not.

Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Thank you.

So, this is my 11th season on the Antiques Roadshow,

and it's quite common when approaching a show,

when arriving at a show,

to think in your wildest dreams what would you like to have brought in?

And this is the first time it's ever

happened that my dream has come true.

So, what we have is an Irish decanter dating from about 1800...

..that has a legend behind it that

locks it right here to the people of Lanark.

So I'm really grateful to you for bringing this in,

and the reason that I thought about the "Land We Live In" decanter

is that they were used by Irish people abroad,

and if you look where we are in this mill,

many of the employees would have been Irish.

The Irish were driven out of their homeland by poverty,

and came over to Scotland and worked in cotton, worked in the mills.

That's an absolute classic.

Thousands of Irish worked in the Scottish mills.

So where does it fit into YOUR life?

Well, I particularly like glass,

and I saw this in an antiques shop in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh,

it must be 15 or 20 years ago.

My brother is married to an Irish girl,

and I recognised it as being Irish, and so I persuaded...

I didn't have the money to buy it,

but I persuaded my mother to buy it for him as a Christmas present.

It wasn't expensive. It'd be maybe ?50, maybe ?60 at the most,

but I'd thought it was unusual and rare.

So therefore it belongs to my brother, but it doesn't live

in his house, because he's got grandchildren,

so it stays in my mum's house where it's safe, as does the stopper,

which I didn't bring today.

So that's the story behind it.

OK, well, let's examine what we're looking at.

So we have a decanter with the legend, "The land we live in," here,

with the initials of the owner, WJ, here,

and if we turn it round to here,

we have further wheel engraving, where we have the shamrock

and the thistle,

so this has locked it down to Irish-Scottish.

There's the connection.

So the meaning of this, "The land we live in,"

is a toast, so you'd lift the glass, and you'd say,

"The land we live in,"

and then you'd turn

round to the riposte, which is, "To the land we left behind."

Oh. They lived here!

They lived in Lanark.

They worked at the mills here,

and Ireland was the land they left behind,

so those were the two toasts that this speaks of.

Now, these are generally Cork Glass Co,

that's where most of them come from.

There was one that was sold about ten years ago,

at the peak of the Irish glass craze.

It became the most expensive decanter ever sold at auction.

Which, bearing in mind how rustic and...

..poor the glass is, really,

this isn't sold on the virtues of the splendid glass,

this is sold on the sentiment. Yes.

So that decanter sold for 14,000 euros at the time.

The Irish market's fallen back now,

but, nonetheless, the decanter that you bought in those days for

50 to 60 quid is worth between ?600 and ?800

with its stopper at auction.

So, what's the best thing to do with it now? Fill it up.

LAUGHTER

That's my kind of thinking!

Of all the things that have been brought along to the Roadshow today,

what I was REALLY hoping to see was

items that belonged to the people

who used to live and work here,

when this place was a thriving

cotton manufacturer's, and, as you've seen,

their homes were so tiny, and people

were so tightly packed into them,

they didn't have neither room

nor money for objects.

But, in fact, a few things HAVE turned up today.

They've been very humble, but nonetheless treasured for that.

From the Antiques Roadshow here at New Lanark, bye-bye.