Hearth and Home - Part 2 Flog It: Trade Secrets

With over a decade of valuation days and auction rooms,

we have a wealth of experience valuing and selling your antiques and collectables on Flog It.

I'm selling at £980.

1,750 over here now.

And finished at 4,100...

Bash! The hammer has gone down!

Our experts are raring to go with some more inside information,

so if there's something you need to know,

you're more than likely to find it right here on Trade Secrets.

Ever since an Englishman's home has been his castle,

we've looked at ways of being comfortable and happy within our own four walls,

whether it's something to sit on, eat from or for passing the time.

The things we buy for our homes have a special resonance.

Coming on today's show, we test the market for brown furniture.

-£35.

-That's good value for money.

-For £70, that was a bargain.

-It wasn't expensive.

'Two phone bidders refuse to let go of a table they are both desperate to own.'

550. 560.

570. 580.

'And we find out what happened when one owner's horse

'romped home at auction.'

It just kept going up and up and when it got to 1,000, I was sort of laid out because I couldn't take it in.

If you're looking to buy a piece of furniture, please try antique shops or auction rooms.

There's some quality pieces out there which you could pick up for a bargain if you look.

It's quite extraordinary how people just don't go to auctions because they think antique is expensive.

And it isn't. Let me tell you, it isn't.

It is currently a marvellous time to buy at auction

if you wish to furnish a home. Prices are still very reasonable,

generally, and therefore everything is good value for money.

Go out and buy!

Brown furniture is a derogatory term. It doesn't sound so glamorous.

It's not a nice way of describing this wonderful furniture that we see.

I think there's a resurgence on its way. Now is the time to buy it. Prices are creeping up.

'Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? They're all auctioneers.

'But you really can find some fantastic bargains because some people can't wait

'to get rid of their old furniture as I found out when two sisters came along to Flog It! in 2004.'

We've got four mid-Victorian, good quality, mahogany chairs belonging to Sandra and Amanda.

-How did you inherit these?

-Well, they came from our Great Aunt Alice, but they were given to her

by her great-grandparents. She had them for years, then gave them to Mum, but they were too big,

so she put them in the loft and they've been there for 30 years until she moved recently

-and gave us two each. And I put them in the shed!

-They've been in the garage for a while.

I can see that! This one has got the bottom rotted out of it.

Furniture like this is just not selling right now. Brown furniture.

The trade for it is on its knees.

We could put a valuation of £80-£100 and then somebody else can put some work on them

and hopefully increase the value. This will be quite interesting.

There's hundreds of people with chairs like this in their sheds and garages

and they want to skip them. But it's worth putting them into auction and let's find out what they do.

Find out what the market thinks.

170. A set of four mahogany chairs. £100 for them?

Oh, dear. Oh, dear.

50, thank you very much. £50. 50.

£60. 70.

£70. 80.

90. 100. 110.

All done at £110, then? Are we quite sure?

Yes! £110! That's brilliant. That is so good, isn't it?

-I'm so pleased.

-I'm made up.

-Thank you so much.

They were delighted to get £110 for four chairs they hadn't used for decades.

With a bit of repair, they'll be a quality addition to any dining room.

So can you get a cheap table to go with the upcycled chairs?

Oh! It's a table!

Oh, my goodness. That's lovely. You've struggled out of the house with this, tucked under your arm?

-Not exactly, but brought it in. My husband had to take it out of the car from here.

-Very good.

What I liked about the small oak dining table

was the fact that somebody struggled in, queued, and had it valued,

and I actually felt that it deserved some attention.

This table is knocking on the door of being an antique, but it's not quite there yet.

It will date from anywhere between the 1920s and probably the late 1930s.

It's made of oak. And it's a drop-leaf small dining table,

which copies very much the traditional style of English oak furniture and drop-leaf tables

of an earlier period.

This one, however, is machine-cut. It's very smooth and precisely-made.

This was in an era when they weren't handcrafting them. It was machine-made for mass production.

Although it's a table that's got many decades behind it and it's good, solid oak,

-the value is going to be modest.

-OK.

-So if you're happy to sell it, I'd advise you put it into auction

for a £60-£80 estimate.

The gate-leg. Lot 500.

At £35. On commission at 35.

35. It will be sold. Do I see eight anywhere quickly?

£35. All done? Quite sure? And finished away at £35.

Good value for money, £35!

Luckily, Chitra wasn't too disappointed with the result.

The buyer got a solid oak table at a great price. Good news if you're on a tight furnishing budget.

Instead of going all out clean lines and minimalist, mix it up a bit.

Maybe have shabby chic old pine drawers in a modern bedroom setting.

You know, the contrast works.

If your taste is for more traditional furniture, there are plenty of quality items to find.

Adam is convinced there's a market for it.

You've brought along this very pretty Edwardian occasional table. Why have you brought it today?

-It's been in my loft for 10 years.

-Wrapped up in a plastic bag?

-A plastic bag over it.

-Why has it been in the loft?

-Because it doesn't go with my house or my decor or my grandchildren.

It's Edwardian, so it dates from the early 20th century, about 1905 or so, 1910. Around about there.

A lot of the items then were inlaid in this Sheraton revival style. With satinwood and boxwood banding.

Ron's table was quite a nice example. He kept it in the loft.

It was nicely inlaid, so a very pretty table.

I find Edwardian inlaid furniture sells extremely strongly.

That one had had a crude repair, but it didn't detract from the aesthetics of it.

-These tripod legs, very pretty, but not very...

-Strong.

Not very strong or practical. I can see a couple have been off in the past. That's standard.

-They've been broken and repaired. Is this your handiwork here?

-No, that's exactly how I got it

-about 10 years ago.

-I'd suggest an estimate of £60-£100.

-I think we'd just about get three figures. How does that sound?

-It sounds right.

-Good.

'So was it worth Ron getting the table out of the attic?'

-Will we get that £100 top mark?

-We should do. I reckon we'll get £120-£150 when it's all finished.

Don't want to get your hopes up.

Start me at £50, please, for this. 50 I'm bid. 55. 60.

65. 70. £70 now. Yours at 70.

Are we all done at £70 now?

-For £70, that's a bargain.

-It wasn't expensive.

-It's gone, Ron.

It's gone now.

I was a bit disappointed, but I suppose that's auctions.

It's all down to two people on the day. Thank goodness we had a reserve on it.

It'd be a great shame to make less.

You can't squash Adam's enthusiasm for long and Ron got money

instead of having an unused table in the attic.

It just goes to show that if you want to buy quality furniture, you can still get bargains at auction.

Take a look at what Catherine found.

We've brought this outside to show it in its full glory so we can open it fully.

You probably know what it dates from about the late 19th century, but where did you get this from?

My parents got it from a sale at a house near Midhurst around 1945.

Right. And did they buy it because they collect Arts and Craft or...?

No, I think they just bought it to be a useful piece of furniture.

-They were setting up house.

-Ah, OK.

I was attracted to the Arts and Crafts screen

because it really epitomises the whole ethos

of Arts and Crafts, which is to have something in your home which is practical,

but also to have something that has a little bit of design on, but is not too fussy.

You get these wonderful panels, these wonderful colours.

They have got the flower heads as well. A popular motif.

And also these lovely, twisting stems, which are almost bordering on Art Nouveau, aren't they?

But it is definitely a piece of Arts and Crafts furniture. The colours are really lovely.

Dark greens and reds and I just love this.

It really is a smashing piece.

Arts and Crafts can still fit in with today, but you have to be clever mixing old and new.

It has to be done cleverly and really think about the design.

There is a bit of damage on this, Tim... You're nodding your head.

-You know. You've seen the damage. You haven't done it, have you?

-No.

There is quite a bit, mainly on the panels, which is a shame. That's obviously the decorative part.

That's the bit you're drawn towards. I think we should probably say £100-£150, with a reserve of £80.

I loved this unusual screen, but did the bidders recognise its quality?

This is it. Good luck, Tim.

A couple of hundred for it? 100 away? 50, then?

Nice thing. Thank you, sir. Over the back at 50.

Five. 60. Five. 70.

Five. 80.

At £80, then. Far back of the room. All done? 80.

-Yes! He's done it, but only just. That was close. That was right on the reserve.

-Yes.

-£80.

It was a shame that it only just clipped the reserve.

I think the reason was really the condition.

If you're buying at auction, always check for damage or get a condition report from the auctioneer.

If you don't mind a bit of wear and tear, you can get a real bargain.

£55 on the net and done. Thank you.

There's lots of beautifully-crafted pieces in your local saleroom

which are much cheaper than most mass-produced items.

You can easily keep up-to-date by getting to know the staff and checking upcoming sales online.

But it's not only cheap and cheerful in the saleroom. You can get fantastic antique furniture, too.

-Colin, where did you get it from?

-My late father-in-law bought it for my wife.

He bought it in Birmingham in the late '40s, we think.

-It's been in our house ever since.

-It's lovely. Why would you want to sell a delight like this?

-Well, it doesn't quite match the modern furniture.

-So you've gone a bit modern?

-A bit more, yes.

-OK.

-Any idea what age it is?

-We don't know what period it was from or anything.

-Well, it's Edwardian.

Made of mahogany. It's called a Pembroke table - a wide top and small flaps.

Colin's Pembroke table was quite a good example - it was neat, it was small, it was oval.

A lot of them are square. It had a drawer. It ticked all the commercial boxes.

A lot of antique furniture isn't selling so well, but pretty stuff like this sells extremely well.

This is all boxwood, ebony and satinwood.

When one comes to a valuation, it's all down to your experience and selling similar items in the past.

I could grade this - it's better than some, not as good as others.

-Its auction value in today's market is maybe £300-£500.

-Yeah.

-You've got to put it at a realistic level.

-Yeah, yeah.

-I think we'll put a reserve of £300 so it doesn't make any less.

-No.

I'm confident it'll make more. All these small, pretty things sell very well.

I was on holiday when this table went to the saleroom. Kate Bliss did the honours.

-This is your lot, Colin.

-Edwardian mahogany Pembroke table.

-Lots of bids on the book. Two telephone bids.

-Sounds good!

-500.

-Top of our estimate.

-510. 520.

-Still going.

-530 here? 530.

-Telephones are coming in.

-540.

550. 560.

-570. 580. Can I say 600?

-Yeah.

-600.

-620.

-620!

-650.

-It's still going!

Once you start bidding at auction, you might think, "I'm only going to pay £300,"

and you're still in bidding at £800, £900. There's something addictive about it. It drags you in.

And 20. 1,050. 1,080.

-1,100. 1,120.

-1,100!

-No.

-At £1,120. Any more? Then I sell at £1,120. Done!

-£1,120!

-What's all that about?!

-What do we know?

To make £1,120, I think it made, under the hammer was an exceptional price.

It can only be two private buyers locking horns and neither of them wanting to give up on this table.

There's no doubting that that was a top quality item.

Perhaps the key to it was as well as being top quality, it was quite small.

It's small, can fit in any home. It makes it more marketable.

We all love our homes. We're terribly house-proud. Buying an antique is a great way

of creating a special, unique style for any kind of interior. It doesn't matter if your house is modern.

Don't be afraid to mix it up.

Back in 2011, I visited a house in Nottingham

which not only has tales to tell spanning hundreds of years of history,

it is still a family home.

This magnificent Jacobean house is Thrumpton Hall and it dates back to the early 1600s.

Even though it's in this secluded setting, it's certainly had its brushes with history

and seen some turbulent times.

So much has happened here in the last four centuries,

I've picked a few of the more intriguing and colourful stories to tell you.

The house is built around the remains of an earlier Tudor house belonging to the Powdrell family,

but as Roman Catholics in the reign of Elizabeth I,

their involvement in the notorious Babington Plot to overthrow the Queen cut short their tenancy.

The Powdrells were evicted when it was discovered they were hiding a priest in this very room.

I can show you, behind all this oak panelling is a little secret door

which leads to a priest hole. Follow me.

Look at this. This is a remarkable survivor from the original building.

Like any secret hiding place, it's full of intrigue, excitement.

There's an atmosphere about this because we're talking high stakes.

It was a matter of life and death.

And they weren't hiding any old priest. It was Father Henry Garnet,

one of the leading conspirators to plot against Queen Elizabeth.

I wouldn't like to be down there for too long.

Soon after, the new owners, the Pigots, rebuilt the house, as we see it today.

At the end of the Civil War, having come through another, Gervase Pigot the younger embarked

on more improvements to the house.

He celebrated the restoration of Charles II to the throne

by commissioning this rather understated staircase. I'm joking.

There's nothing understated about it. It's grandly over the top,

in keeping with the spirit of the time.

The improvements didn't stop here. The staircase leads to the saloon, remarkably unchanged,

yet still very much in use by the current owners.

Gervase's extravagance was the ruin of him. Unable to pay his mortgage,

he forfeited the house to his lawyer Mr John Emerton and his descendants have lived here ever since,

right down to its current owner, Miranda Seymour. Hello, Miranda.

-Thank you for letting us film here today.

-It's lovely you're here.

You grew up here in this house.

I was terrified here when I was a little girl. My parents were beginning to get

a derelict house back after the war, getting it back into shape again.

There were dust sheets on all the busts, cobwebs on all the windows and the staircase was black.

-Gosh.

-And I was living on the top floor. I was scared out of my wits.

-Were you?

-I was.

-Now I know you're a writer. Does the whole atmosphere of this house inspire you?

-I love writing here,

particularly in this room. It's a very calm space to be in.

-I gather there's a connection to Lord Byron.

-There is indeed.

I always feel very excited by that as a writer. What a person to be connected to!

But Byron's cousin inherited the title and it was through him it came down to my father's uncle.

So we've got all these wonderful Byron relics here.

-You've got a few items to show me.

-I have.

-What have you got?

I've got three things. This, as a writer, is the most exciting one to me. Byron's very own signet ring.

The first he ever had. And it fits just perfectly on my signet finger.

-It's meant to be.

-So I hope!

-Now this is a rather wonderful relic. I don't know if you can see here.

-What's in there?

It's B on the front for Byron. And in the back it's got a tiny little strand of his hair.

-Oh, I can see that.

-Which was given to his half-sister, Augusta Leigh, the one he was so in love with.

She passed it on to Byron's first cousin and so that's real, authentic Byron hair in there.

-Wonderful provenance. It doesn't get any better.

-I think it has to be the genuine thing.

This is more funny. This is a little bit clipped from Byron's bed hangings

at Halnaby on his honeymoon night.

And he had an absolutely disastrous marriage. Poor Annabella.

He woke up in the middle of the night and screamed out, "I'm in hell!"

Can you imagine, on his honeymoon night? It's quite clear that what had happened was you've got

this very deep red damask and in those days in a bedroom

-you'd have the fire blazing in the corner.

-He's looked at the fire and thought it's Dante's Inferno!

-Wonderful artefacts. Thank you for showing me.

-Lovely you could come. Thank you.

What an amazing inheritance

and home to generations of one family.

There's something very fundamental about the desire to adorn our homes.

If you're looking for something special for yours, Anita Manning has a suggestion.

I have a special affection for Monart glass. Monart glass was made in Perthshire.

It was made at the Moncrieff's factory in Perth by the Ysart family.

They were a family of glass blowers from Barcelona.

They came to Scotland after the First World War

to make laboratory glass in the Perthshire factory.

In their spare time, they started making these little pieces of beautiful decorative glass.

Now Mrs Moncrieff, the owner's wife,

saw these beautiful vases they were making and saw a business opportunity.

She encouraged the Spanish glass blowers

to make these fabulous pieces and they were sold in prestigious outlets

like Liberty's, Tiffany's and so on and they were beloved in the Art Deco period.

They brought colour into a post-war world.

I like this one in particular because in these lovely oranges at the base

we see the fire of Spain.

But as we travel upwards we see the beautiful green of Scotland.

And I think of it as a lovely collaboration of Spain and Scotland.

If there's one thing I'd love to see more of on the show, it's paintings.

When one does come in to a valuation day with a fascinating history, I fight the experts for it.

In Watford, back in 2006, Mark Stacey beat me to it.

Christine turned up with a great example.

I really like this picture, but there's a little history to it. Can you fill us in on that story?

The story that I know about it is it's Watford's only Derby winner

and I think it was in the 1800s and it was bred in Watford at a local farm.

I couldn't believe from the programme people said, "You speak posh!"

I can't believe that was me.

-And you inherited this?

-I inherited it, yes.

-When was that?

-About 10 weeks ago. My fiance died very suddenly.

-Oh, I'm sorry.

-Thank you.

-Well, it's a great subject.

-It's very good local interest.

-Very good local interest.

It would be nice to prove that. If we look at the painting,

-we've obviously got the owner standing there in his best Sunday outfit.

-Yes.

We've got the trainer next to him and the jockey on horseback.

Then the local training field in the background.

-From the costumes, we're certainly looking at the 1800s.

-That's right.

-Probably 1860, 1870.

Around about that era, I would say, from the costumes.

My late fiance had taken the picture to one of the big auction houses in London,

but he was rather disappointed. They offered him about £200.

So he just came back home and put it in a black bin liner up in his bedroom.

Bearing in mind the slight damage and the fact we haven't got a full provenance,

I'd like to be a little bit cautious. I would suggest maybe around £150-£250.

-Yes, smashing.

-You like the sound of that?

-Yes, I do.

But when she went home, Chris had second thoughts about her valuation.

-Christine's raised the ante.

-I have.

-Tell us.

-I've raised it to £300.

-Fixed reserve.

-A slap on the wrist for that. I don't think we have any worries.

-I think we're backing a winner.

How about this for something local and interesting? What shall we say?

600. 620. 650. And 80.

700 we're bid now. And 720.

It just kept going up and up and up.

When it got to the thousand, I just sort of blanked out. I just couldn't take it in.

At 1,000. And 20. And 50.

Romping home, isn't it?

I had no idea it would be worth anything because it wasn't signed.

I'm sure my John was looking down at me to say, "That's my girl."

It's a good valuation. Are you getting Mark round to do some more?

3,000 we're bid for it. 3,100? No?

At £3,100 we're selling.

-At £3,100.

-Here we go, here we go.

-That is a sold sound!

-Oh, lovely!

-Well done, well done.

Thank you very much.

I had a lovely little hug from Paul at the end. Yes, it was a great thrill, great excitement.

So, after the excitement died down, what did Chris spend it on?

I spent the money on a cruise because my late fiance, before I knew him,

spent 11 years in the Merchant Navy working on the big liners.

I desperately wanted to do that.

I went for 11 days round the Caribbean, 10 different islands.

It was a marvellous experience.

That wasn't the only new experience because Flog It! is broadcast worldwide.

-There was another surprise in store.

-It wasn't until six years later,

somebody had written from Australia contacting the Watford Observer nostalgic page

saying he was tracing his family tree and said that the owner of the horse, he believes,

was his great-great-grandmother's brother.

Chris made contact and plans to meet the horse owner's descendants on a forthcoming trip to Australia.

It seems Flog It's reach has truly gone international.

Chris's appearance on the show led to a beautiful new relationship,

so if you've got something you want to sell, you know where to come.

I hope you can put some of our tips to good use. Please join us again soon for more Trade Secrets.