Hidden Treasures

by Leigh Keno

  Dad had no trouble hearing or spotting Jack, who arrived at the show within moments of my departure, his private curator in tow.

  “I've come for the secretary,” he said to my father, who walked up and introduced himself.

  “So I've been told, Mr. Warner,” Dad responded.

  “I didn't realize I would have to wait on a line,” Jack said with obvious impatience. But having already been forewarned as to Jack's character and knowing how important this sale was to me, Dad carefully disarmed him with a few words. “Mr. Warner,” he said, “not even General Patton and all his legions could get past this entrance before the opening signal.”

  Jack cocked his head sideways for a moment and looked hard at my dad. “Damn it,” he said with a sudden broad grin, “if Patton couldn't get in, then I guess I can't either. I'll wait here.” With that, Jack and his curator stepped into place near; the front of the line.

  When the show opened at 5:00 P.M., Jack and his curator walked swiftly into my booth, where the well-traveled secretary—with a $440,000 asking price—stood front and center. And I, who had managed to change my clothes and then make it back to the show with a minute or two to spare, was standing proudly by its side. Jack looked the piece up and down for approximately twelve seconds and then turned to face me.

  “I'll take it,” he said, beaming. “It looks even better than in the pictures.” He then pointed to a wonderful pair of Classical New York card tables that I had displayed on either side of the secretary. Each featured an inlaid brass star on the front edge of the skirt, and a five-figure price tag. “Throw those on the bill, too,” he said.

  I've never sold three pieces of furniture more quickly in my life.

  My booth on opening night of the New York Winter Antiques Show, 1995.

  9

  Two for the Road

  AS I JUMPED INTO A TAXI outside of Sotheby's York Avenue headquarters not too long ago, I was surprised by the greeting from the driver, a heavyset fellow with a turban and a dark beard. “So how's the family up in Mohawk?” he asked, peering at me through the rearview mirror. “How are Ron and Norma?”

  For a brief moment, I was stunned. How did this perfect stranger know my hometown and parents' names? Was this a prank? Was that Alien Funt beneath the turban? I half-turned in my seat, looking for a hidden camera, but then suddenly I knew: The driver was a fan of the Antiques Roadshow, the PBS television series that takes a team of antiques appraisers on a city-to-city tour of the United States to evaluate objects brought in by local residents. Leigh and I have both served as guest experts on the show since its inception in 1996, which means that by now, our faces and stories (as well as those of our fellow evaluators) have grown familiar to the almost 15 million viewers who tune in to each show. The program has been a huge success: Within its second year, it quietly eclipsed such perennial favorites as Masterpiece Theatre and This Old House, becoming PBS's top-rated prime-time series. As a result, incidents such as the one in the cab are beginning to happen to Leigh and me and the rest of the Roadshow appraisers with increased regularity.

  For instance, recently I was grabbing a quick bite to eat at a restaurant up near Sotheby's cavernous warehouse in the heart of New York's Spanish Harlem. Salsa music was pouring in through the loudspeakers overhead as I settled into a booth near the back and began my meal. Suddenly, the front door of the restaurant swung open and a burly dark-haired man lunged into the place, pushing a handcart stacked high with cases of beer. Slowly, he began to make his way toward the kitchen, but then he abruptly changed course and brought his cart to a halt right next to my table.

  “Say, aren't you one of those brothers from the Antiques Roadshow?” he asked in a Spanish-accented voice.

  I looked up from my plate, hastily swallowed my food, and answered, “Yes.”

  “That story about the Boston highboy,” he said, “de veras me afectó. I felt for those people.”

  I smiled and nodded in agreement, knowing that he was referring to a segment taped during the show's premier season (it was our very first on-air appearance), in which Leigh and I appraised a circa 1740 bonnet-top high chest of drawers that had been brought in by a young couple from Concord, Massachusetts. Though crafted primarily of walnut, the piece also featured vivid crossbanding (or thin strips of veneer cut across the grain) on the front and star-shaped compass inlays on the sides (so called because the form was layed out with a compass tool). In addition, both the central upper and lower drawers featured magnificent inlaid fan motifs.

  Fairly recently, the piece had been cleaned, save a small section of molding that had fallen off the upper cornice. Leigh and I had found the molding in an upper drawer (along with a small stack of old Valentine's Day cards).

  “We forgot to take those out,” said the wife, coloring slightly as Leigh drew them out for the camera.

  “That's okay. I think they really add to the interest of the chest,” said Leigh. Then he held up the broken shard of molding and said, “This piece actually has the original grungy finish that was on the chest before it was cleaned. The interesting thing—and the sad thing in a way—is that if the entire item still had this kind of old crackled finish, it would be worth in the neighborhood of one hundred thousand to one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”

  Turning to me, he asked, “Les, what would you say this would be worth as a cleaned piece?”

  “About fifty thousand dollars,” I said carefully, casting a sympathetic glance toward the owners. It was an edifying television moment—unfortunately, at the expense of the owners—and really hammered home to viewers the notion that original finish is highly prized among Americana collectors.

  And that is, of course, the essence of the Antiques Roadshow—educating people and helping them figure out whether or not they have that proverbial winning lottery ticket stashed away in their attic or garage. The premise is simple but thoroughly intoxicating, probably because collecting is a universal impulse. Who hasn't collected something at some point in his or her life—be it baseball cards or comic books or simply shells on the beach? Even seasoned professionals such as Leigh and I, who are accustomed to looking at beautiful objects, are genuinely moved by the show's conceit. Why? Because at every taping, without fail, a genuine treasure is always unearthed. And when it is found, the news sends a charge around the appraisal room that is comparable to an electric shock. For me, the experience correlates directly with the adventures Leigh and I had as children, browsing the open fields of Brimfield. The main difference (camera overviews and spotlights aside) is that now the treasures are being brought to us.

  The success of the Roadshow is due in no small part to the energy and commitment of Peter Cook, the show's talented executive producer, and Aida Moreno, a petite powerhouse of a woman, who was the show's original executive producer. After WGBH bought the rights to the show from the visionary Dan Farrell in 1995 (its concept is based upon an identically named program produced by the BBC in England) Aida basically took the ball and ran. I met her the following year, in January 1996 when she came to Sotheby's to meet with a number of department heads whom she wanted to audition for her panel of on-air personalities.

  (left to right) Leslie, Aida Moreno, and Leigh.

  On the day of her visit, I had just launched the preview exhibition for one of the most important single-owner sales of my career—that of the Americana collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adolph H. Meyer of Birmingham, Michigan. The Meyers had spent over forty years, beginning in the 1930s, assembling a well-chosen group of furniture under the guiding hand of a local dealer named Jess Pavey. Wisely, Pavey had cautioned his clients not to refinish their furniture—a reflection of his pioneering good taste, rather than of the pervasive connoisseurship mantra it has become today. As a result, the collection was a real gem, and I had taken particular care in displaying it to its best advantage within the brown-carpeted, blue-walled interior of what was, at the time, Sotheby's primary exhibition space—the south gallery on the second floor. (It has sin
ce been demolished and replaced by a ten-thousand-square-foot glass-walled high-tech exhibition area eight floors up.)

  I was standing at what amounted to the center of the Meyer exhibition when Aida walked into the gallery. We did a quick tour of the Meyers' property and then came to a stop virtually where we had started, in front of a magnificent block-and-shell mahogany bureau that was without a doubt the sale's star lot (it ended up selling to Leigh, bidding on behalf of a private collector, for a record-breaking $3.6 million). There, Aida turned to me and said with characteristic efficiency, “Tell me everything I should know about this desk. You have two minutes.”

  Although it was a dress rehearsal of sorts, I couldn't help but smile. The bureau was my favorite object in the entire Meyer estate and I could have talked about it in my sleep (which, as my wife, Emily, will attest, wouldn't be an altogether-unusual occurrence). It was the sort of piece that caused true lovers of eighteenth-century furniture who visited the gallery that week literally to drop to their knees in awe. Once owned by a powerful Newport merchant, Capt. Samuel Whitehorne, Jr., the desk was attributed to the master craftsman Edmund Townsend, based upon its similarity to another example bearing Townsend's label. (That bureau is now the crown jewel of the M. and M. Karolik Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

  But more than its impressive provenance and distinguished maker's attribution, the Whitehorne desk seemed to possess a sense of dignity and grace that I had never seen before in an object. The depth and richness of its aged reddish brown mahogany (which shone through the darkened surface in the areas of highest wear) was utterly alluring and the wonderful golden halos that had formed in the wood surrounding the original brass handles served as eloquent testimony to its use over time. It was clearly an object that had stood in silent witness to a great deal since its creation in the mid-1780s.

  Leslie's “screen test” for the Antiques Roadshow entailed describing the most important attributes of this Edmund Townsend desk in under two minutes.

  So within my allotted two minutes, I tried to touch upon the most obvious high points of the piece. When I was through, Aida quizzed me on a second item in the Meyer sale—a stately walnut secretary-bookcase that had been made in Boston, probably in the early 1740s. The secretary featured a wonderful pair of original arch-shaped mirrored and beveled glass doors in the upper case that were flanked by a set of engaged pilasters. Each featured a foliate-carved Corinthian capital sculpted of gesso and gilt that was so lushly rendered, it seemed to blossom out of the wood itself. For a number of years, the Meyers had lent the secretary to the Diplomatic Reception Rooms of the United States Department of State, where it no doubt impressed countless foreign dignitaries as to the greatness of early American craftsmanship and design.

  By the time Aida and I parted ways, I was very excited about the concept of the Roadshow. (She was sufficiently impressed with my passion for furniture that an hour or so later, when I happened to run into her in the elevator, she snapped at me playfully, “Why are you following me around? You've already got the job!”) Primarily, I thought the program could do a lot toward deflating the notion that the antiques world was a place only for the elite. I am well aware of the fact that auctions intimidate many people, so anything that could demystify the language of antiques by bringing it into America's homes was bound to be a good thing. What could be better than educating people about the furniture I so love and helping to identify some previously undiscovered American treasures in the process? When Aida and her team approached Leigh for the show, he, too, had been instantly swayed by its potential. As he said to me at the time, just about everyone we meet has an antique at home that he or she would love to have examined by an expert.

  My brother and I have just finished taping our fifth season with the show. By now, we are used to the hectic shooting schedule, which takes up nearly every weekend of the summer (taking us away from our respective families, unfortunately). Regardless of the city, the format is always the same: Local residents are invited to bring in no more than two antiques or collectibles for a free verbal evaluation, usually at a local convention center. Since we often stay in hotels that are adjacent to the taping site, it's not unusual to awaken to the sight of a long line of antique hopefuls stretching around the block. There's been many an early morning when I've worked my way through a quick room-service breakfast while peering out the window and fantasizing about the treasures that might be brought to the table that day. And invariably, I find that if I run into Leigh in the lobby en route to the show, he, too, will confess to having spent the morning in a similar fashion.

  Once the doors to the week's designated site are officially opened and the property owners begin to remove their assorted heirlooms and flea market finds from paper bags, laundry baskets, and even old toaster boxes, spirits really begin to soar. What will the next carton reveal? For us, the setup presents a rare opportunity to work as a team with people whom we might ordinarily view as competitors. For example, I can't think of another situation in which I might find myself standing shoulder-to-shoulder with John Hays of Christie's analyzing furniture. (To protect the program's integrity, the Roadshow maintains a strict policy against soliciting business from visitors, though we are allowed to leave our business cards at a table by the exit.)

  Judging from the feedback we've received from the property owners, the wait on the appraisal line has become a key component of the Roadshow experience. Since nearly everyone in the room holds a significant conversation piece in their arms, the snaking line quickly evolves into an animated talkfest of exchanged history, fable, and family lore. Last season, when the Roadshow made a stop in Tampa, Leigh and I left some tickets at the front desk for a pair of top-level Americana collectors who were curious to see a taping in progress. But when the couple arrived at the Tampa Convention Center, they somehow missed the VIP table and ended up joining the end of the query line. Five hours into the event, long after Leigh and I had given them up as no-shows, the two materialized before us with huge smiles on their faces.

  “But you could have bypassed the line,” I told the two, aghast that they had waited so long to meet us.

  “We wouldn't have missed it for the world,” said the wife, brushing aside my concern. “In the past few hours, we've heard so many great stories—and learned so much about the collecting history of Florida. It's been fascinating!”

  Roughly six thousand people are admitted to a single Roadshow event, which means each expert may view upward of two hundred items per taping. The sheer volume alone prevents most objects from being videotaped. Instead, a piece comes to television if and when an appraiser senses that it was acquired for too much or too little, if its history makes a good story, if it stands as a great educational tool, or if it provides a strong combination of the above. I'd say about 80 percent of what is brought to Roadshow events is exactly what it appears to be. In other words, if an owner paid fifty dollars for a painting, it's generally worth fifty dollars. The program's drama lies in that remaining 20 percent.

  I also think viewers respond to the way the show gives art and antiques a homespun, human face. For example, at a stop in Albuquerque during the first season, I evaluated a bassinet made from the shell of an armadillo. The animal's scaled tail had been looped above the body of the piece to form a handle, while its prehistoric-looking claws jutted out over the rim (in full view of the baby).

  A tattered pink fabric lining the interior of the shell was the only indication of its intended and thoroughly unusual use. The owner of the piece, a slender dark-haired woman wearing a lot of silver jewelry, explained that her grandmother, whom she described as “a strange character,” had slept in the shell as an infant. I looked at the woman in amazement and said only half in jest, “No wonder, this looks like something out of Rosemary's Baby!”

  Luckily, the woman had a good sense of humor and we both laughed. I ended up appraising the piece at between seventy-five and one hundred dollars, mainly for its novel conversational valu
e.

  Less novel are the seemingly endless examples of elaborate late-nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Renaissance Revival furniture, inspired by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European pieces. Because these pieces are grandly proportioned and highly carved (elaborate leafage, chubby-faced putti, and gargoyle masks are all common motifs), owners think they are in possession of something quite rare. In fact, many of these pieces are partially machine-made and not all that valuable (other than in a sentimental way). I am also amazed at the number of primitive high chairs that continue to surface on the show, probably because no one wants to throw away a chair from a child's youth. We must see about five or ten per city. (With these again, sentiment weighs in far heavier than dollar value.)

  But—chalk it up to the law of averages—great treasures are always uncovered in every city, and I feel blessed that I can still get as excited about a new object now as I did when I was fourteen. There was, for instance, a rare Federal. sewing table, probably made between 1805 and 1815 by the New York cabinetmaker Duncan Phyfe, that surfaced during a stop in Southfield, Michigan. Initially, the owner, a fragile white-haired woman, probably in her seventies, had simply approached me at the evaluations table with a description of the piece. She said she owned a small mahogany table with a lift top that opened to a retractable writing surface (complete with silver-capped inkwells and blotter compartments). Below the writing compartment was a narrow drawer outfitted with a trapezoidal case for holding sewing materials.