Victorian - Part 2 Flog It: Trade Secrets

There are so many antiques and collectables out there,

so how do you see the wood from the trees

and track down those treasures?

I want to share some of the knowledge we have picked up

over the last 11 years of filming Flog It!

That's hundreds of programmes under our belt, and many thousands of your

antiques and collectables sold under the hammer.

There's a whole world of trade secrets out there for you to know.

In today's Trade Secrets, we're exploring the appeal of Victoriana.

You bring along to our Flog It valuation days

more items relating to the Victorian era

than any other period in our design history.

Queen Victoria was on the throne from 1837 until 1901.

And everything designed in that period

has come to be known as Victoriana.

Coming up, our experts offer tips on the good...

The wackier the better.

This is probably one of the first photocopiers.

..the bad...

Some people wonder why we were getting so excited about this

little pile of ugly shells.

..and the ugly of Victorian taste.

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen!

And sparks fly for Adam.

Oh, you clever boy!

The opening up of the world during the 19th century fuelled

the Victorians' thirst for knowledge, and many of the items

that you bring along to our valuation day from that period

reflect their interest in new discoveries.

The world, it seemed, was opening up to everybody.

But they also liked their strange and their quirky.

Odd things can be collectable, because most collectors are odd.

You've got to love Victoriana, you've got to love its eccentricity.

The wackier the better,

and don't be frightened to have a go if you see something cheap.

Pick it up, go home, have a bit of fun, do some research,

you might find something which is valuable, you might not,

but it'll still be a lovely object to look at.

And here are some of the most intriguing Victorian items

you have brought in to show us,

starting with one of my and auctioneer Elizabeth Talbot's

personal favourites.

The shell house was lovely for lots and lots of reasons,

partly because, erm, it was evocative of a time

when the people of this country loved follies and grottos

and fairy stories

and everything which was kind of far removed from "real life".

-I've had it 58 years.

-58 years, OK.

-Yes.

And before that, that was my grandfather's.

-Don't you think it's amazing?

-I do, I do think it's amazing.

Must have taken hours and hours...

-I haven't seen nothing like it before in my life.

-..to do!

It's brilliant, it's absolutely brilliant.

This is definitely late Victorian, sort of around about 1880-1890.

Shell houses are not uncommon as an item of Victoriana, but they

are increasingly rare in terms of turning up on the market,

so to have one brought in by a gentleman who'd known it

for several generations in his family was just a magical moment.

It was just one of those sort of exciting times.

-It's brilliant, look at the turrets as well!

-Yes, yes.

D'you know, I love this. So what d'you think of the value?

Come on, how much?

-200-300.

-Has someone told you that?

-No, no, nobody's told me.

Well, you're spot on.

I think this is going to find a home with a collector.

-It could go in a museum of curios, that's for sure.

-Yes.

People who collect Victoriana or who are interested in

the ways of life of the 19th century,

it would have been a very tangible,

evocative summary of what was going on in the mid-1800s, and

therefore I think a collector would get very excited about that object.

110, 120, 130, 140, 150,

-160, 170, 180...

-Come on, we're getting there.

..190, 200. Are you sure?

It's back with me at £200 now.

At £200 only, 210, 220.

Are you all done at 220?

-It's gone.

-Well, that was satisfying.

We put a reserve on for 200, didn't we?

-You're happy, aren't you?

-I'm happy.

It splits and divides the audience.

Some people will think it's charming and some people will wonder why

we're getting so excited about this little pile of ugly shells,

so I was pleased with the £220 result.

Christina Trevanion also came across an oddity which told her so much

about the Victorians' preoccupations.

This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen!

Robin and Kathleen's egg was just wacky, wasn't it?

Completely and utterly nuts in a way.

I mean, it was just so sort of surreally, wonderfully Victorian

that it just couldn't have been made in any other period of time.

-It's an epergne, isn't it?

-Yes.

It was made to accommodate some sort of floral things

out of these trumpets here.

In a dining room, your epergne would be down

the middle of your dining table, and you would have sugared fruits,

you may have flowers, little sweetmeats in there.

It's obviously Australian connotations.

It's got this wonderful emu's egg here which is carved with

a kangaroo and an emu, like the figures on the base.

And then it's raised on this rather fantastic central leafy palm tree

that we've got here.

You went to church, you believed in God,

Darwin comes along in 1859

and publishes his Origin of the Species, and he says,

"Actually, you know, we're not related to Adam and Eve,

"God didn't make everything.

"We came from these very simple forms."

So not only are Victorians having their boundaries pushed

with regards to where they came from,

but they're also seeing these wonderful, exotic creatures

that they've never seen before, and that was real revolutionary stuff

back there and something that we completely take for granted today.

You've got these sort of vaseline glass trumpets here.

These are particularly well made, they're wonderful,

with this crimped rim here. And also this trail glass detail here.

If you wanted to identify original uranium glass,

you would stick it under a UV lamp or use a UV lamp,

and it should glow,

cos, of course, everyone carries a UV lamp around in their handbag(!)

I'm slightly wondering

whether these maybe were added to it when it was in this country.

-Oh, right.

-And maybe they've mounted this at a slightly later date

because it was such a curiosity.

The Victorians were really into their curiosities

and their rather wacky things.

I think it would be a bit of an acquired taste, shall we say,

erm, to put it politely, at auction.

We might be looking somewhere in the region of £100-£200.

I mean, it could well make an awful lot more.

The bidders were clearly taken with this eggy oddity.

320, on the book at 320.

Against you online, make no mistake, the bid is with me at 320.

Any interest in the room?

340, back in online. 340.

360, still here with me, 360. 360.

380, may I say?

At £360 I am bid.

On the book at 360, selling against you online, all happy.

At £360...

Fantastic. Well done.

It just shows you, quirky sells, especially if people also like

the story that goes along with it.

And Anita found an item which I can safely say

I had never seen before on Flog It!

Now, the Victorians loved inventions.

They would invent at the drop of a hat.

Everyone was an inventor!

-It's a very useful object if you lived in Victorian times.

-True.

-This is probably one of the first photocopiers.

-Yes.

This desk set was interesting in that it had the added element

of being a printer.

Now, I hadn't seen anything like that before.

If we look inside...

..we see our instructions for copying.

Our book is placed in here,

copying ink, our blank paper.

We close the drawer...

-..and we operate this screw which will press the book down...

-Uh-huh.

..and copy whatever it is you want to copy.

Victorians lived in a time of great change.

Great change brings problems so the Victorians were big problem solvers,

and I'm sure that this little copier would have helped

a gentleman in his, say, personal business.

The interesting thing about it is that we have a maker's name,

and if we look inside again,

we can see that it was made by S Mordan & Co.

Sampson Mordan had made the copier

and Sampson Mordan were famous for making pencils.

Mordan & Co were famous for their propelling pencils.

They were the first people to make propelling pencils,

-and these are highly collectable.

-Mm-hm.

There's a wee joke in here, Geoff!

THEY LAUGH

When Geoff and I opened the little front compartment

we found this... Well, I thought it was an old screw.

In the drawer is a propelling pencil!

Er, not made by Mordan but by Nettlefords.

So, getting two things for the price of one here, really.

Your bottles are still in reasonable condition.

-Now, I would put it in the region of, say, £30-40.

-Yes.

-Would you be happy to sell it at that?

-Definitely.

A really lovely, affordable piece,

but did anyone want a bit of Victorian past

going for a song at auction?

£50 for this, 50, 30?

30 bid, 30 bid, 30 bid, 30 bid, who's going on? At 30 bid.

35, 40, 5, 50, 5,

60, 5, 70, 5, 80, 5, 90.

£90 standing. £90.

Any advance on £90?

That's more like it, that's more like it!

Victorian objects in their diversity,

in their eccentricity, are, I still think, great buys.

Here is a good tip. Look for a patent number

on your object. It is a great way of dating,

and finding out more about an unusual Victorian device.

We love it when you've done some research.

When Lynette visited us in 2009,

she knew as much about her object as Adam Partridge. Well, almost.

-It demonstrates electricity.

-Right.

-And if you notice there,

this is aluminium. I think it was discovered in the 1800s.

-Aluminium was?

-Yeah, they found out very soon that, as well making

aluminium saucepans, it conducts electricity.

Lynette had clearly done her homework on her Wimshurst machine.

I don't think she knew what it was called, but she knew

how it worked, which was quite pleasing for me, because it saves me

trying to explain how it works. Whilst I am interested in all these

quirky things, the mechanical side of things absolutely mystifies me.

Thee is a handle here and this goes round and, then,

-you know Frankenstein?

-Yeah.

-When the electricity went zzzzt!

-Yeah.

-Like your tie. Then, this arcs here, so it show the students

-how electricity was conducted.

-Were you a science teacher, Lynette?

No. I did come... I did come first in science,

-many years ago.

-Oh, did you?

-When I was a girl, yeah.

So, it's called a Wimshurst machine.

I never knew that.

-The inventor was a chap called James Wimshurst.

-Oh.

And it was invented between 1880 and 1883.

'So, there was a great interest in science and the development'

of technology and I can imagine this Wimshurst machine,

which would now be a quirky talking point, a sculptural, kind of,

object being used 100 years ago to demonstrate electricity

to classes of eager children and the next generation of inventors.

So this is going to be Victorian, typical Victorian contraption,

-really.

-Yes, do you think anybody would want to buy it?

I think they would. They're generally making from £50-£200.

-Really?

-Yes.

-Oh, I'd like the £200.

-Me too.

And it's not out of the question.

The Wimshurst machine is relatively rare.

I've only ever seen three or four in 20 years of auctioneering,

but it's the sort of thing that, once you see, you don't forget it.

Well, I certainly wouldn't anyway.

Once you've seen one of those, next time you see one you think,

yes, I know what that is, I've seen one before.

-We can start at £90.

-Oh, you are clever!

At £90.

Do I see 95 in the room anywhere?

-95, 100. 110 anywhere?

-Oh, you clever boy.

-130.

No-one. 120 on a commission bid. 130 anywhere else? At £120.

At £120, all done?

-That's £120.

-Excellent.

I love it when we can keep the Flog It! customers satisfied.

I would love to know who bought the Wimshurst machine

because of course it's not practical,

it's not functional, it's not even that decorative to most people.

You can't put flowers in it, you can't eat off it,

you can't hang it on the wall.

So it's solely an item to use to show other people, to demonstrate,

to play with, perhaps even as an educational device.

So I'd be really curious to know who bought that.

Nevertheless, people do love Victorian instruments

because they speak to us of great scientific endeavours of the times.

If you find one, blow off the dust

and do a bit of research like Lynette, to see what you've got.

And here are some more tips.

Look out for odd or unusual Victorian pieces.

Chances are someone else will find it intriguing too

as a window into Victorian taste.

Victorians loved their marks and manufacturer's labels,

so if you find a gadget, these should give you

a good starting point to do some more research.

There is a very buoyant market for collecting

scientific instruments and gadgets.

This rare mechanical cometarium,

designed to show the movement of a comet around the sun

was recently sold at auction for over £39,000.

So don't overlook those curiosities.

They can give us an insight into a time in Britain

when innovation was the name of the game.

Adam's love of gadgets is reflected in his own collection.

People often laugh at me for a variety of things

and a lot of people laugh at me

because I've got a collection of these curious little teapots here.

In the 1880s, there was a Mr William Royle, from the North West,

who went to friends for tea once and noticed the lady of the house

struggling to lift the great big Victorian teapot full of tea.

So he thought, I'm going

to invent something to get around this problem.

So he invented one of these.

It's called a Royle's self-pouring teapot.

A great example of the Victorian wacky inventor

inventing something that really didn't need inventing.

The idea of it is you place your cup and saucer

under the spout here, you lift this bit here.

And then you push it down again and it dispenses an exact cup

of tea from the spout without you having to lift the teapot, thereby

saving the repetitive strain injury to the Victorian ladies' wrists.

I collect them because I think

they are rather aesthetically pleasing

and I like anything that's unusual, quirky,

and these patents that really didn't need to be invented.

Some of them can be quite expensive, but if I see one and it's affordable

and I haven't got the same model, I'm probably going to buy it.

There are some things that seem to us

to really embody the Victorian style.

On Flog It! we see quite a few fancy epergnes

and centrepieces and other highly decorative ornaments.

But do these things really reflect the way the Victorians lived

during the latter part of the 19th century?

Well, David Fletcher went to find out.

We all know what row and rows of Victorian houses

look like from the outside.

But do we know how people really furnished and lived in them?

The Panacea Museum in David's home town of Bedford is a house

that's a time capsule of the period

and which offers a snapshot of one family's life there.

-Hello, David.

-Hi, Janet, good to see you again.

Every time I come to this house,

I marvel at this encaustic tile floor here.

-And of course, the arch.

-Our very grand arch.

It's a modest house, but a most amazing arch,

-it's a real eye-catcher.

-And that's just a taste of what's to come inside.

Jolly good, lead on.

Now, Gemma, I've been to this house two or three times before

and one of the things I love most about it is it enables us

to put Victorian furniture and Victorian objects in a context.

This table here, I've sold hundreds of these in my time,

but I don't think I've ever actually seen one in its context.

Yes, we've got this wonderful table, which is good to see in context.

We've also got a piano, a typical asset of the Victorian house,

which the children would have used and a writing desk

which perhaps would have been used by the gentleman of the house.

What sort of family were they?

We've got some wonderful photos

of the Barltrop family living in this house.

They were a fairly typical conservative, educated,

and I would say broadly middle-class family.

Arthur Barltrop was a priest.

They had four children - three sons and a daughter.

Also Mabel Barltrop's elderly aunts lived with them,

which wasn't uncommon.

They would have had between one and three servants,

we're not sure, but certainly some help.

The children attended the local Bedford schools.

Mabel was involved in her husband's work in the church.

She did a lot of charity work and she would have wanted

people to come in to see her home, to see her place in society.

Where d'you think these Japanese vases might have been bought?

These could have been a considered purchase by the lady of the house.

This would have been perhaps not from Bedford, maybe a day trip

to London, a little luxury, a treat for the woman of the house.

Many of the possessions in this room would have either been

an aspirational purchase or perhaps a gift from someone's travels.

So the Victorians, yes, a real eclectic mix.

But next door, where the Barltrops would have done their entertaining,

we've got some far more impressive furniture to look at.

-So if you'd like to lead the way.

-I'll lead on.

-Thank you.

Home was very important to Victorians.

They defined spaces within their homes as public spaces,

private spaces, shared spaces.

Some rooms only had one purpose,

other rooms had more than one purpose.

It's quite a complex thing,

but the home was definitely very important

in the average Victorian middle-class person's life.

This is obviously the dining room. And this is a public room.

Very much a public room.

This would have been a space for entertaining and your guests

would have been in here for quite a while to sit down for a meal.

I think it's noticeable that the furniture in here is grander than in the rest of the house.

I think there is an element of showing off in that, really,

that this is what they wanted people to see.

Talking about showing off, I love this overmantel arrangement here.

Three tiers of shelves, it just goes on and on and on.

I know the Victorians used to think that

if your overmantel was wider than it was high, it was rather coarse.

If it was higher than it was wide, it was very grand.

What's interesting is that this house,

though not terribly affluent and grand, might have had some features

that an older, grander house might not have had.

So upstairs plumbing, you could have found in a fairly modest house

like this, but not in a grand house built 20 years before.

-Getting down to the nitty-gritty, a loo that flushed!

-Exactly.

-And was indoors.

-Something to show off to your guests.

While ordinary Victorians were busy keeping up appearances,

there was a tiny section of high society

who could really flirt with their own fancies.

David popped around the corner to the Higgins Museum

to admire the work of William Burges,

a maverick designer of the day.

It's pretty obvious, Tom, that this is not mainstream stuff.

There's so much going on, we have Pre-Raphaelite style painting,

you have a glass inserts, you have mirrored effects, you even

have what looks like Arabic trellis work in some of these pieces.

He wasn't afraid to mix and match elements from different periods.

The key thing is that Burges was influenced by medieval furniture,

but particularly the way, as he described it,

it spoke and told a story.

For instance, in the washstand, that we have here,

we have the legend of Narcissus.

The bed tells the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty.

Presumably the public didn't have access to these houses,

so they wouldn't have been familiar with what Burges was doing.

Is that right?

It wouldn't have been possible for the average person to have seen it.

This really was at the extreme end of a Victorian design

and not the sort of thing that would have been accessible or even

wanted or desired by most people.

I think what we're saying is, you can't nail the Victorians down.

There's no such thing as the Victorian style, is there?

That's exactly right.

I think people have this idea of what Victorian style

and Victorian design is like, but you come across someone

like William Burges, idiosyncratic, unique, really.

I think that's a good way of describing him, as a unique designer.

Three tips if you are thinking about buying Victorian objects

and furniture.

Firstly, scour your local saleroom, your local antique centres,

your local car-boot sales.

There are thousands of items of Victoriana out there

waiting for you to own them.

Secondly, visit the sort of house I visited today.

They are all over the place.

You can find them, go to them and learn from them.

Thirdly, get to learn about design and designers.

Who knows, you one day might find a piece of work by Burges,

a piece of jewellery perhaps.

Unless you know what his stuff looks like,

you won't know what you're looking at.

As we've heard, the Victorians were great innovators, and a lot

of modern technology has its roots in 19th-century inventions.

Elizabeth Talbot loves a good gadget, so she was delighted

to meet up with Pete and Ben at a valuation day near Windsor in 2011.

-Hello, Pete. Hello, Ben.

-Hello.

-I understand you must be on half term this week.

-Yes, I am.

-So you've come along with your grandfather.

-Yes.

To produce for us today...this.

The photograph was in an oak box, and on the side

of it, there was some wax discs, or tubes, which it plays on.

But we never actually put any on because I was

frightened of breaking the machine.

My dad said he could remember listening to this,

-but we just couldn't find the horn.

-Ah, the horn.

-That was a shame.

That is a shame.

Now, phonographs were invented in 1887 by Thomas Edison.

He was an American. You know what the original usage of these was?

-No.

-No.

-No?

It was originally intended to capture dictated human voice

so that it could be played back in office use, basically.

Like early Dictaphones.

They would record on these very delicate wax discs.

By the early 1900s, they were used for home

entertainment for playing favourite music hall songs

and classical pieces

and perhaps a bit of human voice that was recorded as well.

When we spoke to Elizabeth on the table,

she happened to mention that the phonograph that I had was a red one,

which she said was quite rare, because most of them were black.

So she said this might be a good one.

It was called a Maroon Gem.

And its little horn, which you possibly imagine being brass,

-was also maroon coloured.

-Oh, that would have been nice.

It would have been nice, wouldn't it?

I have seen them with horns sell for as much as £300,

but I think to be realistic on this occasion,

it's in very good condition, so that counts for it.

But I think we need to be looking at about £100-£150 as an estimate.

That's nice.

What can I say? £100 for it, please, to start. 100.

80 if you like, I don't mind.

Of course, when we actually went to the auction,

there were two telephone bidders.

And of course, that put the price right up.

130 now. 140.

150. 160.

-Battling it out with the commission bidder.

-170. 180.

-This is more like it.

-190. 200 now.

It was unbelievable really, and I looked at Paul's face

and Elizabeth's face, and they couldn't believe it either.

So, they were well pleased.

20. 240.

260. 280.

280, telephones out. £280, against you in the room. All done?

The hammer went down at £280

and I was well impressed.

I thought, oh, what can I do with all this money? My grandson had an idea.

A couple of years later, Pete helped grandson Ben achieve his dream.

Hi, my name is Ben Hindle, I'm Pete's grandson

and this is my Demo 8 downhill bike.

-# I want to ride my...

-Bicycle, bicycle... #

He had a BMX bike before and he wanted an upgrade which he

wanted to do all the tricks boys wanted to do.

# Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle

# I want to ride my bicycle... #

I thought I'd only get between 80 and 100 if I was lucky.

But luckily, somebody wanted it more than I thought it was worth.

And eventually it went to 280,

so, you don't really know what's in your loft and how much it's worth.

That bike might be a world away from the model the Victorians

would have recognised.

But how appropriate that Ben went for something invented by them.

So, if, like the Victorians, you love flamboyance,

you appreciate inventiveness, and you want to make a statement, I hope

we've shown you that you can't beat Victoriana in all its varied glory.

If, like Pete and Ben, you want to turn an unwanted antique

or collectable into some instant ready cash,

then bring it along to one of our valuation days.

Well, that's it for today,

join me again soon for more Trade Secrets.