Episode 7 Priceless Antiques Roadshow

Can it really be true that behind the civilised facade

of the Antiques Roadshow, there are simmering tensions?

I can reveal that a father and son have been at loggerheads for quite some time.

Welcome to Priceless Antiques Roadshow.

What's the collective noun for a collection of collections?

Well, whatever you call it, that's what our miscellaneous expert Mark Allen has to make house room for.

In this episode, Mark tells us why he's been bitten so badly by the collecting bug.

I seized upon antique drinking glasses when I was very young,

as a collectible, because they were just easy to buy.

I found I could go out and buy them for 20p, 30p, 50p and what better

than drinking out of a beautiful 18th century glass like that?

If you've got room for more stuff at home,

jewellery specialist John Benjamin has a hot tip for the future.

Well, I thought what could I bring along in these rather difficult times that we're in, that would be a

piece that's affordable, wearable, beautiful?

It's quite difficult, isn't it?

Then, I thought, yes, there has to be something.

And a grudge is revealed.

Henry Sandon explains how his son John got the better of him one memorable roadshow day.

I didn't do the Whitney Court roadshow, son John it did it, curse him.

He got the most magnificent slipware that has ever turned up on the roadshow.

If I had been there, I'd have fought in tooth and nail to have it.

Lots of buildings bear scars from bombing raids of World War Two.

This place, Kenwood House in north London,

miraculously survived assaults on the capital during both world wars.

While the damage done to buildings during conflict is usually easy to

repair, the impact on human memory is often much harder to erase.

Our military expert Graham Lay recalls some moving encounters

with descendants of prisoners of war.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 230,000 Allied servicemen were

captured and imprisoned in camps within German-occupied territory

but for many, the war was far from over.

I feel the roadshow is terribly important from one aspect in particular.

It helps to uncover, to show to the general public

those stories that the individual stories, that people could tell

that are mainly kept within the family.

This is presumably him, is it?

It was my father, when he first joined up.

-What's this group photograph?

-It's a group photograph of the Stalag camp he was in.

Which one is he there?

-He's got the curly hair.

-The one at the end, the far end.

In the prison camps, there were specialists of all types, particularly radio specialists.

It was my father's water bottle during the world wars.

OK.

Within it, it actually reveals a small crystal set radio.

This looks like it's just been cobbled together out of old screws

and bits of wood and bits of metal, that he must have come across while he was a prisoner.

-Yes.

-That's astonishing, isn't it?

What I find amazing is the ingenuity of people.

The knowledge they had in the 1930s and '40s,

it was possible to put together a crystal set which was capable of receiving signals from England.

He survived the five years in a prisoner-of-war camp and conveyed messages to the rest of the camp

about what was actually going on back home.

To make something like a radio

must be quite an astonishingly brave thing to do because you ran the risk of being discovered.

If you were discovered, there were pretty severe penalties.

The threat of reprisals didn't stop prisoners coming up with brilliant plans to escape.

Those who made repeated attempts were sent to one of the most famous

camps, Colditz, deemed escape proof by the Germans.

Colditz is Colditz. Now, come on, tell us the story.

At the beginning of the war, Dad joined up with the Royal Engineers

and he was sent as a Royal Engineer to blow up bridges.

He didn't get too far into the countryside, I think he might have blown up one bridge and then

moment, some tanks appear and some bullets come through the windscreen and for him, the war is over.

-Did he go into Colditz straight away?

-No, first of all, he went to Laufen.

We feel terribly privileged when people come to us

with these objects that tell an incredibly powerful story.

Being a mining engineer, he built an enormous tunnel,

-contributed largely to it and for this, he was sent to Colditz.

-Right.

-I see this is dated 1941, so it must have been done there.

-It was done in Colditz.

The portrait was sent back to Britain and was featured in the Illustrated London News.

Now we come to this album. I'm sure it's full of wonderful things.

It's actually the forged work papers.

My dad had worked in Yugoslavia before the war in the 1920s, and

spoke fluent Serbo-Croat so he was down there as a Croatian,

Petar Gribiksch, I think is the name, as a Croatian worker.

When he escaped, these were his work papers.

-Wonderful.

-All forged.

The prisoners' ingenuity didn't stop at forging new identities.

It was also vital to keep morale high with entertainment.

It was possible for the prisoners to organise various entertainments to keep them busy.

I remember at Leicester, a lady coming in with some concert party items.

My father was captured at Dunkirk and was in fact a prisoner for the whole of the war, for five years.

He was in three different Stalag camps, the German prison camps.

They were allowed to put on productions and my father had done amateur productions at home.

I see his name here as Aladdin.

It was a wonderful album made by the

cast and the crew, if you like,

of the concert parties that he had organised.

It was fascinating because it also contained photographs.

They also have comments written by the prisoners who were in the shows

and they're very, very personal.

I was surprised and I think a lot of other people had been surprised that they did so much.

They were allowed to do so much.

We don't realise how ingenious these prisoners were.

Where did they get all the equipment from?

They made the costumes in the camps, there were

thousands of prisoners in each camp and Dad used to say that they were somebody that could do anything.

They had lock pickers who went and stole the cameras to take the pictures.

They had tailors who made the costumes out of blankets.

-Right.

-They used to volunteer to carry the washing for the Germans from the washhouse,

things would disappear en route that they used to make costumes out of.

One of the questions that children used

to ask their parents, their fathers, what did you do in the war, Daddy?

-Yes.

-One answer that you wouldn't expect to come back is, I used to dress up as a woman and act on stage.

Some of them did!

It was every officers' duty to try and escape of course and what I think is to me amusing

about the concert parties was the fact that they used the suits, the dinner suits, the lounge suits

that they made for the plays in order to wear when they had escaped,

right under the noses of the Germans. Quite incredible.

Since I've been on the roadshow,

I've discovered a diary of Dad's, which is in the bottom of a box.

It's only a small diary, literally a blow-by-blow account. Fascinating.

But I was never told any of the bad things that happened,

just the fun things they did and the funny things they did.

Treading the boards wasn't the only way for prisoners to keep their spirits high.

They were amazingly adept at making use of odds and ends for sports too.

Here we are in the Lord's pavilion bar with an object that would be more at home in a golf club.

Originally, it was made in a prisoner of war camp.

Its story is quite remarkable.

There were all these prisoners in Stalagluft three who had

plenty of time on their hands obviously.

I've never seen a golf ball that has been made by a prisoner of war before.

I didn't even realise that prisoners of war played golf,

although I suppose they must have played all sorts of different sports.

But golf? That's astonishing.

To see that golf ball so beautifully made was quite astonishing.

If you were anyone with a pair of leather shoes, where you could get the ingredients if you like for

the ball, and this was the tongue of the shoe,

they cut it into shapes of eight, folded it over, stitched it.

I get to see every day, particularly on the roadshow,

family effects.

I do value

every time somebody comes in with something like that, it's terribly

important to me and in fact it makes me feel quite emotional sometimes.

Graham Lay with some remarkable reminders of the ingenuity shown by PoWs.

Every news bulletin at the moment is a stark reminder of the tough economic times.

So we've asked our team to see if they can spot smart investments deep in the credit crunch.

Jewellery expert John Benjamin has an eye for bling that won't break the bank.

I thought, what can I bring along in these rather

difficult times that we're in, that would be a piece that's affordable, wearable, beautiful.

It's quite difficult, isn't it?

Then of course I thought there has to be something and my choice for my £100 buy, if you like,

are butterfly brooches.

Have a look at those. Don't you think they're absolutely fantastic?

Very different, very colourful.

They're covered with enamel on silver.

That looks like a swallowtail butterfly there.

But it's the sheer diversity of these that you can get and you buy them in

antique fairs and car-boot sales all over the place really.

They can be as little as £50, as much as £150.

The ones that were made in the 1920s to the 1950s are probably going to be better quality.

The modern ones tend to be perhaps a little bit tinny.

So do be careful when you look at the backs in particular.

Also, there were an awful lot of makers for them because they were so popular.

I wouldn't look out for anything in particular except possibly Scandinavian butterflies.

They're going to cost you a little bit more. Highly collectible though.

Having an eye for a bargain can be a real asset but things can get out of hand

when a modest interest in antiques becomes something of an obsession.

You'll have seen Mark Allen talk about all sorts of objects over the years.

What helps his knowledge is the fact that he's probably got one of

practically everything that has ever been made.

I don't consciously go out there looking for them, I don't think, a lot of the time.

They're things that have kind of come to me.

I've been influenced by things which have happened in my life,

that pushed me into wanting to acquire something at some point, for a short while.

I started off very young, maybe eight or nine years old.

I started off with old bottles and fossils, stuff I could pick up for free or dig up.

My bedroom when I was a kid was my own little museum

because it wasn't going to be allowed anywhere else in the house.

I seized upon antique drinking glasses when I was very young as a collectible because they were

easy to buy. They were an unsung object and I found I could go out, I could buy them for 20p, 30p, 50p.

What's better than drinking out of a beautiful 18th century glass like that?

I'm not precious about objects. I believe objects are to be used.

I'll lay a table with period cutlery because

it's an experience.

It's what makes it good fun.

My parents were wonderful and I don't think I appreciated enough of the influence my

parents did have on me because they weren't interested in antiques.

There was nothing old in the house.

I can remember one singularly important event.

My parents took me to this amazing house

and one of the rooms, it was full of samurai armour,

and the samurai were arranged around an imaginary fireplace.

Here is the postcard I bought when I was a kid.

I couldn't get out of that room.

I was filled with a complete sense of wonder

and also, it pushed me into wanting to own a suit of samurai armour.

So there he stands, a testament to my visit to Snowshill Manor when I was a little boy.

As I became a teenager, I was interested in everything.

I started playing the electric guitar and I discovered girls and I was still collecting.

By the time I got to college and I was doing my degree, I was still collecting but

I was really starting to get the bug on a serious level because I found that essentially I could buy things

with knowledge that were extremely good.

And there were a couple of occasions where I did find good items very cheaply that set me up, bought me

a car and enabled me to move forward and gave me some money in my pocket to go and buy bigger and better.

That was important. I knew that the thrill of

the chase existed then because there was stuff out there to find.

Mark also found a kindred collecting spirit in his wife, Lisa.

It's like a cut in half water tank.

-It is.

-It's two of them.

-Yes.

-Two of them.

-It's a big, steel...

That's really interesting.

I suspect it's heavy. We're not gonna get it in the back of the car.

So, where on earth did they find

space for 30 years' worth of combined collecting?

A 25-room chateau in France, of course!

Although even this spacious house is beginning to feel rather full.

But Mark and Lisa are confident that they still have a sliver of space for a few more treasures.

Pardon, monsieur, qu'est que c'est ca?

C'est un boule pour per'ruque, dix-huitieme siecle.

-It's an 18th century wig stand.

-That's like nothing I've seen.

You never see them in glass, do you.

-We don't need it.

-It's superfluous, but then so is everything.

-Well we don't need any of this.

Interestingly enough, many of the things that

I've wanted to own, I've come to own because I had the skill to find them

and was able to buy them cheaply, so there are many objects in the house that were acquired in that way,

through patience and waiting and after many years, just coming across one and the right situation,

knowing that it was just an absolute bargain.

As Mark and Lisa wait for their latest delivery from the local antiques market,

they wonder how they're going to cope in the future?

We either need a bigger house or we'll have to move next door.

I can't cope with a bigger one.

We'll just have to move into the pigeon house next door there.

So, now you know where a childhood interest in digging up bottles can lead you.

Like Mark, we make room for just about every

and any object at Antiques Roadshow, all shapes and sizes are examined, sometimes that can mean booking an

articulated lorry or dusting down the magnifying glass.

We have unearthed some of the largest and the smallest finds ever seen on the show.

This has to be the smallest book that we've ever seen.

I think it's at times like this when I realise my first love in horology is actually watches.

We had a full-size model of a horse that was appropriately brought in in a horsebox.

Just the scale of the thing, it's so fantastic.

Because it's absolutely massive!

It's quite a size, isn't it?

What a whopper!

I've seen huge objects on roadshows.

I've valued cars and then down to tiny, tiny little

Viennese bronzes which would fit on your little finger nail.

This is a little fox, isn't it? Yes.

There's something about a small version of a bigger version which

appeals to all of us, so miniature furniture,

John Bly would go all gooey over a little apprentice piece.

What an absolute little treasure. It's lovely, isn't it?

But is size really important when it comes to what it's worth?

In certain circumstances, size can add value,

middling size stuff makes middling money.

Tiny things make a lot of money, and really big things make a lot of money.

It's sometimes suggested that large pieces of furniture are seen as status symbols.

There again, a status symbol could be equally represented by a fine jewel.

Not necessarily the biggest jewel.

Size is completely irrelevant.

Size doesn't matter.

One thing's for sure, our experts have all got big opinions on how size affects value

and they've all got favourites.

One of the smallest items we regularly

see on the roadshow is a big hit with our Oriental specialists.

I suppose the epitome of miniaturisation is the Japanese netsuke.

That toggle that you wear from which you suspend your pouch, your tobacco wallet, whatever.

I think this is the most wonderful little carving.

I mean this really shows the skill of the Japanese netsuke carver.

It's fantastically well carved. It's one of the nicest netsukes I've ever seen on the roadshow, I have to say.

You need to insure it, I think you need to put £5,000 on.

-Oh, gosh.

-When the Japanese netsuke is by one of the great masters, it's £100,000 plus.

A gigantic price for a tiny piece, and at the other end of the scale,

Hilary's dwarfed by old style surround sound.

We've seen a lot of gramophones on the roadshow,

but nothing quite as big as this.

I feel as like I'm being sort of eaten by it.

One of the biggest things I saw was a

gramophone, which had an enormous horn, I mean it was huge,

that diameter, it must have been.

The horn is made of papier mache, and there was always the rumour

that it was made of old telephone directories.

-I heard that.

-I'm not going to melt it down to find out, are you?

-No.

I think, as people, we're drawn to either huge things or tiny things, because they're unusual.

We love extremes.

It's a super gramophone.

I think the value would be around £1,200 to £1,800.

Big enough to make a noise in the saleroom.

And Bill thinks his next miniature find is right on target.

I have to say, that in some 25 years of looking at guns,

I've never seen a pair of tiny pistols that are as good as this.

They are exact miniatures of pocket pistols from about 1840-1850.

These tiny pistols were never made for use.

Although I expect if you could have found the percussion clamps that were small enough, they

probably would have worked on the basis that they were made in exactly the same way as a full-size one.

-Have you any idea what you think that might be worth?

-No idea.

No, they've just been in the drawer.

I'm going to say £3,000 at auction.

-Good heavens!

-Gosh!

I just put them in my pocket at the last minute!

To find two in exceptionally good condition, in a

tiny, tiny little fitted case,

with the majority of their accessories,

I just thought, that was exceptional.

Those owners were amazed by the value of their little treasures.

And John's about to reveal that finding houseroom

for that huge piece of furniture can sometimes pay off.

Wonderful! Look at the life and the joy in all of this.

The biggest thing has to be a particularly big chestnut chest at Chugborough.

This is the period I grew up.

The third quarter of the 18th century, the quality, the proportions are so good.

Prior to that, they were no where near as beautiful, to my mind.

It's the sort of furniture that was broken up such a lot in the 18th century.

In those days, the farmer went to the lord of the manor's sale

and would buy things made for the castle to put in his cottage.

When the farmer got it home, he couldn't get it in,

so he'd take it to pieces and put a top on the bottom, use it as a

chest of drawers and put feet on the top part, use that as a cabinet.

And that's how so many pieces of furniture were split up.

They were modified for use.

-To replace it, you'd have to pay between 30 and 35,000.

-What?!

I haven't seen a better one for years and years and years.

And of course, in the 1960s and '70s, people tried to put them back together again.

Usually, unsuccessfully, which is why they're known as marriages.

But when it came to the smallest item ever on the road show, it took some children to amaze our experts.

I have to say that in doing 20 years of the Antiques Roadshow,

this is the smallest object we've ever had on.

It's just a seed. Isn't it?

No.

I had a little pod, and you take the stopper out, and up end it,

and out came 12

small ivory animals.

I don't believe it.

All of these are tiny, tiny little animals.

I can see an elephant there.

Quite appropriately. Because of course, they're made from ivory.

And it seems these tiny animals come on the roadshow two by two.

-These are the smallest animals I've ever seen. What have we got?

-Should be nine.

-What's there?

-There's a lion.

There's a giraffe.

When I recorded it, David Battie came up to me afterwards and said,

I had one of those last year.

The camera was on it.

But there was a little bit of fluff which showed up in the frame,

so the camera man went up and went...

And suddenly, there were no animals there.

And it took one-and-a-half hours to find all of the animals which were somewhere on the floor.

They found them in the end.

-How much pocket money do you get?

-We normally get about

£1 for doing jobs.

£1 for doing jobs a week, OK.

The little animal zoo would certainly be a couple of years pocket money.

Woah!

As the saying goes, size isn't everything!

Our last item tonight shows that the mild-mannered exterior

of the roadshow often disguises a much stronger emotion.

Some objects are so special, they stir up passionate rivalry, even between father and son.

The competition between John and Henry Sandon began when Henry found

the ultimate piece of slipware back in 1990.

I suppose my favourite recording of all time on the roadshow has to be with Ozzie the owl.

It's a remarkable example of a rare class of thing.

So rare, that for many, many years I've never had the privilege of handling one

so it's a joy to have it.

And it was wonderful. It was a lovely item and a beautiful pot.

Of course, John was also on the programme, but he deferred to seniors and I saw it first, so I got it.

Do you know what I think its value is?

-No.

-Are you comfortably sitting.

Yes. I'm OK.

Something between about 20 and £30,000.

Good gracious. Never!

Oh, my word! I carried him on the bus!

You brought him in on the bus!

-I should get a taxi and take him back home!

Henry's discovery of Ozzie the owl was top of the roadshow tree for 14 years.

Until he was knocked off his perch one fateful day at Witley Court,

by none other than his son, John, who had been waiting quietly in the wings.

I didn't to the Witley Court roadshow. My son, John, did it.

Curse him. And he got, I suppose the most magnificent slipware that

I've ever seen in my life.

It has these multiple handles, which you'd use to pass it

around amongst your guests for celebration and drinking.

Here, we've got the owner's name written in wonderful letters, and the date, 1678.

An early date, isn't it? What an amazing object.

'If I'd been there, I'd have fought him tooth and nail to have it.'

When the piece comes in that you want, you've got it in your hands and you hang on to it like grim death,

-and no one else is gonna get it.

-I saw it at this auction.

It had an estimate on it which seemed reasonable by a Staffordshire slipware estimate.

How much did you have to pay for it?

With the commission, it was about £500.

You're not going to find another one of these in a hurry, in a little local auction.

The purchaser told John that he bought it at auction

because he thought it looked a bit like Ozzie the owl.

It's decorated with joggled clay or at this lovely clay, it's joggled about.

It comes in a harlequinade of colours.

With little tiny dots.

White slip put on dark slip.

That's just like the decoration around the face of Ozzie the owl.

Isn't it?

I went to look at Ozzie the owl to try and do a comparison.

It's one of the things I did when I got it.

There's no doubt in my mind that this is exactly the same as Ozzie.

I'm just so glad you said that.

There's absolutely no doubt about it at all.

So, thinking about what it's worth?

Um, about £50,000.

No! Really?

It's better than Ozzie! It's wonderful!

Sorry, I just got goose bumps.

I mean, I'd hoped, but I didn't think it was gonna be anywhere near that.

I was so excited that I rang my father and said, guess what, I've beaten Ozzie the owl!

I've found an even better piece of slipware.

And you could feel the jealousy on the phone as I described to him

how wonderful this piece was.

He said, don't you worry, I'm going to find an even better one next time! And he's still looking!

The best pot that has ever turned up on the roadshow.

That's what I'd have liked to have had!

Henry Sandon on the one that got away.

I'll keep an eye on that rivalry.

That's just about it. Tomorrow, meet some of the most curious collectors to pass our way.

I have to say, this really is a collection to die for.

When I see collectors that are really living the dream and kind of dressing like their heroes,

I think it's fantastic.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

MAKES QUACKING NOISES

Well, thank you, I can see you have a lot of fun in your household.

I think we do!

And Michael Aspel chooses his favourite moments from the roadshow archives.

I was so lucky that in my very first show, an object came up which meant something personally to me

and that was the watch that had belonged to Lawrence of Arabia.

It's one of the most fascinating characters of the early part of the century and it's actually his watch.

Good God! I'd better get it insured then.

Bye bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd