Dirk Van Erp Copper Vase, ca. 1930

Appraised on: August 26, 2006

Appraised in: Honolulu, Hawaii

Appraised by: Eric Silver

Category: Metalwork & Sculpture

Episode Info: Honolulu, Hour 1 (#1101)

Originally Aired: January 1, 2007

IMAGE: 1 of 1  

Appraisal Video: (2:27)

GUEST: My mom gave it to me.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: So she was nice enough to do that for me.

APPRAISER: And where did she get it?

GUEST: She actually got it at a silent auction about ten, 15 years ago.

APPRAISER: And how much did she have to pay for it?

GUEST: She paid about, I think it was about $100 for it.

APPRAISER: Not bad. And you know who it's by? You know who the maker is?

GUEST: I think it was Dirk Van Erp.

APPRAISER: Dirk Van Erp. Well, he's a really very interesting craftsman.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: He emigrated to the United States from Holland in 1886 and he started working in San Francisco at the naval shipyard. And he started making things out of brass shell casings. He would give them away to friends.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And he started selling them. And then he set up a shop in Oakland, and eventually moved to San Francisco in 1908. And he had a shop where he produced copper works. He had his two children work with him, and he had a number of other craftsmen. And they made vases, they made bookends, desk sets, and they made lamps, which they're very famous for.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: The piece you have, though, is not from this Arts and Crafts period. I feel that this piece is actually from the 1930s. And what's interesting is that this is a case where it's a very prominent maker. But really, all the emphasis on collecting his works is in the earlier period.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: And these later pieces are not of interest to collectors of Arts and Crafts. These are more collected by people interested in the modernist '30s and '40s. It's really quite a fascinating piece. The scale is great, it has this great patina on it. It's made out of a very heavy gauge copper. And it's very clearly marked. Now, it does have condition issues, and you'll see part of it, because we're going to take it off. And it's been detached from the base.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: And if we look on the bottom here, we can see his mark.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: And it's a windmill, in honor of his home country. And it says Dirk Van Erp. So it has some condition problems.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: A lot of things I've seen today, in Honolulu, are affected by the weather.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: I don't think this affects it that much. The fact that it's detached doesn't mean that much. It can be repaired.

GUEST: Really? Okay.

APPRAISER: Yes, because it was made in pieces. It's really wonderful. You said your mother paid 100 bucks?

GUEST: $100 for it, yeah.

APPRAISER: Well, it's a piece that, now, a collector interested in this would probably, at auction, pay something in the range of $6,000 to $8,000.

GUEST: Wow. That's something else.

APPRAISER: Isn't that cool?

GUEST: That is cool.