Antiques Roadshow

Special: Celebrating Asian-Pacific Heritage (2016)

Airs: 05/25/26Premiered: 11/07/16

RUNTIME: 53:02Antiques RoadshowSEASON 20

We shine a spotlight on items with Asian & Pacific Islands origins.

Transcript

MARK WALBERG: ANTIQUES ROADSHOW turns the spotlight on incredible objects with Asian and Pacific origins.

GUEST: What a treat!

GUEST: I've got gooseskins.

WALBERG: Stay tuned for ANTIQUES ROADSHOW: "Celebrating Asian-Pacific Heritage."

WALBERG: ANTIQUES ROADSHOW is celebrating the art and artifacts of the people of Asia, the Pacific Islands, and their American descendants. This hour is full of fascinating pieces, including some connected to notable figures, like Hawaiian royalty King Kalakaua, Japanese-American craftsman George Nakashima, and Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi. Take a look at this powerfully symbolic treasure, a gift said to be from Gandhi himself.

GUEST: I brought you a spinning wheel, which was presented to my mother by Mahatma Gandhi. My grandfather was a great proponent of Indian independence, trying to drum up support here in the United States for the cause of Indian independence. He dispatched my mother to London-- Gandhi was at the second Round Table Conference-- and with the idea that she should try to persuade him to make a tour of the United States. Now, my mother was seven years old at the time. This is a picture. This is my grandmother, her mom, and this is her sister.

APPRAISER: So that is your grandmother. That is your mother, seven years old?

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: And that's her little sister.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And, of course, there's Mahatma Gandhi.

GUEST: There's Mahatma.

APPRAISER: Did you grow up with stories of Mahatma Gandhi?

GUEST: Oh, yes, because my family was so involved in the whole independence movement. I mean, they also met Nehru, they met Indira Gandhi, even though she was a little girl at the time.

APPRAISER: And how did your mother actually receive the spinning wheel?

GUEST: When she went, she made her appeal. She had a petition signed by many important statesmen, including the mayors of five cities, which were the ones who were going to sponsor the tour. But Gandhi said that he didn't think that America was ready for him yet. She made a grand effort, and so he said he would give her a gift. And he asked, what did she want? And she said she wanted a spinning wheel. For the Indian independence movement, it represented economic freedom from colonial oppression. If you spun your own clothes and then wove them with cotton, then you boycotted British goods. The spinning wheel was a very strong symbol. And if you look at the Indian flag, it's on the Indian flag today.

APPRAISER: It was a very turbulent time in world affairs, you know.

GUEST: Oh, yes.

APPRAISER: The second Round Table Conference took place in London. I believe it started in September of 1931. Mahatma Gandhi was the only Indian national actually invited to go and talk about the cause of Indian nationalism. Gandhi's own goals at this conference was expansion of woman rights, ending the caste system, but most importantly, self rule of India. Because at the time, India was a colony of the British crown.

GUEST: That's right.

APPRAISER: And he had spent his entire adult life fighting for the cause of India.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And this was at a very pivotal moment. So it's just a tremendous moment in history, where he not only, you know, met your grandmother...

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: …met your mother, and presented her with this tremendous, tremendous symbol of the Indian people. This is a typical style of Indian portable spinning wheel.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Because of the scarcity of items related to Mahatma Gandhi, if this would come up to auction, we would give a reasonable auction estimate at $50,000 to $75,000.

GUEST: Wow. Wait till I tell my kids that. It might make them appreciate it a little bit more, right?

GUEST: All I know is that my grandparents bought it about 1959. I think they bought it maybe in New York City. They traveled a lot. It was a big deal. They paid a lot of money for it, supposedly. I don't know how much. They had a party to show it off to their friends. And then when they passed away, it went to my aunt. She had it appraised sometime, maybe ten, 15 years ago, and was either told that it was a fake or it wasn't worth anything. And so then my dad had it, and then he gave it to me.

APPRAISER: The painting is by the Vietnamese artist Le Pho. And we can see his signature and chop, lower right. What's interesting about him is that he was born in 1907 in Hanoi, but had a very cosmopolitan life and education. He first studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Hanoi, and then later at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he became friends with Matisse, which is interesting when you look at the painting.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: While he was cosmopolitan, he never gave up an Asian sensibility of flowers and delicate interiors and beautiful washes of color. So his style really was a combination of Asian stylings and Western... almost post-Impressionism. So it's a beautiful style. His subject matter is exactly what we have here, is beautiful, elegant women in an interior with the beautiful floral still lifes. What's interesting to me about the idea that it wasn't right is perhaps the medium of the piece, because a lot of Le Pho's later pieces were oil on canvas. His early ones, of which I believe this to be an example, were painted on silk.

GUEST: Oh, really?

APPRAISER: Yes, which is in itself a very Asian medium. So I think probably the confusion that arose from the piece was that it wasn't on the expected medium.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: Because to my eye and opinion, I believe the painting to be by the artist. The piece was acquired in 1959, and my sense is that it was probably painted circa that era.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: In terms of his market, in the '40s, '50s and '60s, there wasn't a great demand for his work. They were selling for a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars. With the Asian economy exploding as it has, his work has also become more popular.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: So it's a very interesting combination of Asian art, Western art, and a burgeoning market. Given that, I would be estimating the painting at between $25,000 and $30,000 at auction.

GUEST: Thanks, Dad.

APPRAISER: Thanks, Dad.

GUEST: Thanks, Dad.

GUEST: This is a Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. And she's sitting on some lotus leaves. This came into the family when my parents bought a house in Hawaii. The house was fully furnished with antiques and furniture and whatever.

APPRAISER: One of the things that's interesting about this is the face-- the kind of pinched, narrow face, the downcast eyes, the aquiline nose, the pursed lips. The mouth is very small and tight, which is not typically characteristic of things you would find in the Ming Dynasty. The other element that I find interesting is the crown, and you notice that this is covered with small, little jeweled ornaments- pearls, basically. And that those are mimicked here at the necklace on the open chest. And that is a kind of tiered pearl necklace, and that's also something you do get in the Ming Dynasty, but you also get from a slightly earlier period. So with sculpture, we're looking at the way the robes fall, the very sharp lines of these robes as it falls over the body and it kind of cascades over the hands. You'll notice that there's an old repair here. This iron repair. And on the front, the upright leaves of the lotus are very sharp and crisp, and they're actually overlarge. Those are things that are kind of indicative, to me, that this was likely made in a more provincial area. If you look at the face, you see the discoloration, the darkness. That is from many, many, many years of incense swirling around the head.

GUEST: I see.

APPRAISER: Once this was brilliantly painted, bright colors, probably heightened with gold. And what we're looking at is that core surface. So we have very few pigments that are remaining, but we do see some. We see traces of red here. We see some green up here at the top, bits of ochre, and then the bare wood. Now, the wood is called nanmu, and it was chosen because it's a very durable, stable wood that doesn't change shape, and it's also resistant to decay. It's always nice to be able to pinpoint a date. Sometimes it's hard to do. So this is one of those cases. It displays characteristics, I think, of a period called the Liao Dynasty, which was 907 to 1125.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: Which precedes the Ming. The Ming is 1368 to 1644. And I'm inclined to believe that it could easily be from that period. But even if it isn't, it's displaying many of those characteristics. In terms of an insurance figure, I would feel pretty comfortable with about $20,000.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: It's Chinese, and it is white nephrite jade. When it's a pure white tone, it's highly prized by the Chinese. And at auction today, I think it would easily bring between $3,000 and $5,000.

GUEST: Wow, okay.

APPRAISER: This shield is from Mindanao in the Philippines. I think it's from the late 1800s, early 1900s, which makes it a fairly scarce item.

APPRAISER: It's typical of Vietnamese work, but one thing that's particularly unusual about it is the hilt is a fossilized mastodon tooth, probably 10,000 years old. At auction, I would expect this sword to sell for about $3,000.

GUEST: Wow! Wow, that's wonderful.

GUEST: I bought it in an auction about 27 years ago.

APPRAISER: And the next question is, how much did you pay for it?

GUEST: Believe it or not, it started at $300, the bidding, and I got it for $400.

APPRAISER: Well, we put your magazine out here to set the context for it because it just looks like a scribble on a piece of paper. But we do see that there's John Lennon and Yoko Ono signatures on it with his little face that he would draw with he and Yoko. But the more important thing about this piece is not just the signatures; it's the fact that we have this photo of it sitting at their Bed-in in 1969. They were protesting the Vietnam War and wanted peace. They were going to have the Bed-in in New York, but because of his cannabis conviction, he wasn't allowed back in the country, so they decided to go up to Montreal. And during these days there, they had a number of guests come. They had Timothy Leary, and Murray the K is one of the people that came to visit. So this is the sign hanging on the wall over here saying that Murray the K comes on Monday. The most important thing is that recently, a couple of pieces have sold from the same Bed-in room, and the most prominent one is the one that said "Hair Peace" that was on the window that we can just barely see on the corner, upper right corner there. And that one did very well. I would say at auction, conservatively, given the context on this, they would probably put anywhere between $50,000 and $75,000 on it.

GUEST: My God!

APPRAISER: The "Hair Peace" sign that was 22 inches by 28 inches that we see on the window was a bit more prominent-- it was on the wall right behind the bed-- that piece sold for $187,000. Yeah. So things have changed since you bought it back in 1982.

GUEST: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

APPRAISER: Anything that you can tie back to this particular event.

GUEST: Thank you, I'm in a state of shock. That's great news. Thank you so much.

APPRAISER: I saw your knees go out a little bit there for a second.

GUEST: They did, they did, Laura.

APPRAISER: I'm glad you held on.

GUEST: It was in a small bookstore on the mall in Lahore, and I loved it, and I didn't buy it the first time I saw it, and then I couldn't get it out of my mind and went back. We were teaching at the Lahore American School, and so we didn't have a lot of money, but I decided I was going to buy it anyway, and I did. And I've loved it ever since.

APPRAISER: What year was this?

GUEST: We went to Lahore in 1968 and left in 1970.

APPRAISER: And were you familiar with the artist at all before you saw the work?

GUEST: No, I had never heard of him. I learned later that he's fairly well known.

APPRAISER: Yes, Abdur Rahman Chughtai is one of Pakistan's most celebrated artists. He was born just before the turn of the 20th century and died in about 1975. He's known for these very dense lines here that are beautifully curly and densely packed. They sort of bring to mind the style of the art nouveau artists like Aubrey Beardsley, artists that maybe Westerners might be more familiar with, and that type of line was very popular at the turn of the century in India and Europe both.

GUEST: It is an etching, isn't it?

APPRAISER: Yes, it's a drypoint etching. The artist is really well known for celebrating the daily life of average, ordinary people as well as celebrating the beauty of the female form. He lived in Pakistan when it was still a British colonial area, and he saw, over the course of its lifetime, it change in politics and religion and a lot of his art speaks to that. So in the present work here, what we see, the Kashmiri woodcutter, a very common sight in Kashmir, as you probably know from when you were there.

GUEST: We saw that.

APPRAISER: You have this main figure in the foreground here, hunched over with his bag of sticks. He's wearing a typical robe dress of the period. He's hunched over due to the weight of his materials. Receding in the background, you've got at least two more figures who are retreating into the beautiful design of the imagery. It's quite lovely. The print was most likely made between the 1950s and the 1970s. I'm guessing by the style of the printing and the imagery, but it's clearly looking to that 1920s style. There are not too many auction records for something like this until quite recently. When India and Pakistan and those countries underwent major economic changes in the early '90s, a lot of artists from those areas suddenly found a booming market, because there was a lot more money in these countries, so the auction houses saw a huge surge in prices and demand for artists from India and Pakistan both. So you don't have any idea of the value of it now?

GUEST: None at all. I know how much I paid for it.

APPRAISER: Tell me how much you paid for it.

GUEST: I'm pretty sure it was 100 rupees at the time, which would have been around ten dollars, give or take.

APPRAISER: I think that was a pretty good investment. I would estimate an auction estimate right now between probably $7,000 and $10,000.

GUEST: Really? Oh... oh, my goodness! That's fun. Oh, that's exciting. What a treat! My husband is going to be so excited.

GUEST: I received it from my mom, who received it from her mother-in-law. My grandparents received it from their parents, who received it from their parents. So I know it goes back quite a few generations in our family. I believe that the origin of the bowl is Hawaii. This is what has been passed on through the family. My grandfather had grown up a little while in Hawaii.

APPRAISER: Well, you're absolutely right about thinking it's an Hawaiian bowl, and it's really a magnificent specimen. It's quite extraordinary and probably of royal status.

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: There's a history of these bowls going all the way back to the fifth century, and there are some in the Bernice Bishop Museum in Hawaii. And the large ones-- they were usually restricted for the royal family. And you can see by the inside here that it hasn't been turned, but it was scooped out. And generally, what they would do-- they would find a particularly wonderful piece of wood and they would do a rudimentary shaping of it, and then they sometimes would put it in a swamp or a very damp place for up to a year so that it would key and get stabilized. Then they would rudimentarily again carve out the center, sometimes with fire, to help scoop it all out, then shape the outside by hand.

GUEST: Wow!

APPRAISER: They were always held in very high regard, so much so that whenever there were any stress cracks or any breakages, they would do these wonderful repairs, these butterfly repairs on the bottom here-- anything to keep a wonderful bowl. You find a lot of them that are smaller. Have you any idea what this is worth?

GUEST: I thought because of the crack in the bottom, that would diminish its value greatly, you know, and I was thinking maybe around $4,000. But it's just a guess.

APPRAISER: Well, the cracks and the repairs actually enhance them, because they really stopped doing those sorts of repairs in the 1880s or so. These were still considered very important objects. I think the king in 1886 commissioned for his 50th birthday a large group of the bowls that were really large ones like this. This bowl, it's in wonderful condition. It's a great piece. Probably $18,000 to $20,000.

GUEST: Really? Amazing. Well, my estimate was a little off. (laughing) I've been wheeling this thing around on a luggage cart today.

APPRAISER: Oh, really? They're actually very durable. It's an extremely hard wood.

GUEST: Wow! My mother is going to flip.

GUEST: The first house that we owned was in Great Falls, Virginia, and it was owned by a couple that built the house around this furniture. And my husband and I loved it, and so we found out that the furniture was made by George Nakashima. We looked him up and set an appointment with him, which was extremely hard to do, had a wonderful time with him. He took us to his storeroom of big, black walnut pieces. I'm very proud to own it.

APPRAISER: First of all, this is a great piece of George Nakashima furniture. I've seen literally thousands of pieces of Nakashima, and this piece is almost a ten. It was built in one of his best periods, too. And what I like about it, the top is very architectural. It has great shape, it speaks to the time, the base is fantastic. I think it really speaks to the whole design mode that he was trying to produce. The '70s were a great time period for him. One, his daughter Mira joined him during the '70s. I think in a lot of ways, Mira helped loosen his designs up a little bit. It's made out of walnut. Walnut was what he used for most everything. This piece is also signed by George Nakashima, which adds to the value.

GUEST: We asked him if he would do that for us.

APPRAISER: He was often reluctant to sign furniture. Early stuff is never signed. I knew people that talked to George Nakashima about signing their pieces, and he said, "No." He wouldn't do it. He must have liked you.

GUEST: He was wonderful. I wish we could have stayed even longer and gotten to know him even better.

APPRAISER: Everyone I've ever known that got furniture from him loved him, and he had a real way with people, that's for sure.

GUEST: He said that furniture was meant to be loved and enjoyed and used, and that it wouldn't be very interesting at all if it were just perfect. And he wanted you to steel-wool it with a very fine steel wool and oil it with linseed oil. He wanted you to do that.

APPRAISER: We've had some sun damage along the front and along the top. This is easy to fix. You can do just what George Nakashima told you to do and re-oil it with linseed oil and it'll come right back to life. It's not a big deal. You've not hurt this piece in any way, shape or form. It's not 18th-century furniture, so the finish can be redone and redone with no effect on the ultimate value at all.

GUEST: But this won't come back, will it?

APPRAISER: It will. It will all oil back. So what do you think this piece is worth?

GUEST: Well, we had furniture appraised in 2007. It was about $17,000 then. Paid $200 for it back in 1974.

APPRAISER: So you paid $200 for this? One sold last year for about $25,000, so I would estimate this piece at auction at $20,000 to $25,000.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness.

GUEST: I know it's silver, I know it's about 50 years old, and it's from India.

APPRAISER: And how did it make its way all the way here?

GUEST: I believe my mom got it from India.

APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: And it was in the family.

APPRAISER: Did she use it ever?

GUEST: I put flowers in there.

APPRAISER: You put flowers in it.

GUEST: But not... fake flowers, not real ones.

APPRAISER: Sometimes, these bowls are called rose bowls. They would be filled with water and roses would be decorated on the top and they would float in them and they'd be used for ceremonies and things like that. It's a very large silver bowl. It is made in India, probably in Lucknow.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So North India in Uttar Pradesh, near Nepal.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: The reason why we can attribute this to a Lucknow maker is because of the decorative scheme we see on it. And these are sometimes known as hunting bowls or hunting scene bowls or jungle scene bowls. And we have a great number of really wonderful, vibrant kind of images and actions that are going on, so we've got hunters and elephants and lots of tigers and leopards. It is beautifully worked all the way around. It is completely hand-made. It would have been a single sheet of silver which would have been hammered and then rolled up and then repoussèd and chased like this. So it's pushed out from the inside, and then it's chased and sort of pushed back in. And the quality of work is really, really stunning, I think. So it dates to around 1900, so I think it's a little bit older than you suggested. I mean, you said maybe it's 50 years old, but this sort of bowl was being made around 1880 to 1910 in Lucknow in India. The wonderful leaves on the underside of this bowl are quite reminiscent of kind of acanthus leaves that you might find on an English bowl. And so there were, obviously, during the Raj period, the sort of mid-19th to the mid-20th century, a number of silversmiths from England working in India, and they would have influenced Indian silver-makers and sort of they would have shared knowledge and things like that. It doesn't have a signature underneath.

GUEST: Yeah, it doesn't, I didn't see anything.

APPRAISER: Some makers marked their wares, others didn't. I don't think the fact that it has no mark is going to be an issue, because there was no real rigid hallmarking system in India.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So how much do you think this is worth?

GUEST: At least $1,000?

APPRAISER: And what's that sort of based on, your $1,000?

GUEST: The silver value.

APPRAISER: My feeling is that this would be fairly high silver content, so it'd probably be at least sterling, it could even be higher than sterling silver, so... If you were to sort of melt this down, which I think would be quite tragic in a way, it would be worth maybe a bit more than $1,000, maybe something like $1,500 to $2,000.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: Is it something that you would ever sell, or would you keep it in the family?

GUEST: I would like to keep it in the family.

APPRAISER: Okay, I think in that case, for insurance...

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: …have to put a figure of around $10,000 on it.

GUEST: $10,000?

APPRAISER: Yes.

GUEST: Thank you.

APPRAISER: If this bowl was to come up for auction, I think it would sell for between $4,000 and $6,000.

GUEST: Okay. My mom will be very happy to know.

APPRAISER: This comes from a period called the Genroku period in Japanese history. I think a fair auction estimate could be $2,000 to $4,000.

GUEST: Oh, great!

APPRAISER: It's from a group of islands, Fiji, and when this was made, these people were cannibals. They call these pineapple clubs because of all these spikes. This spike is made to penetrate a person's skull to kill them. In this condition, $4,000 to $6,000.

GUEST: Okay.

GUEST: They told my parents that this was Korean, but I suspect it's Chinese.

APPRAISER: Well, it is Korean, and it's a hunting screen, which makes it extremely desirable. It's worth about $10,000 to $15,000.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: Wing, I understand you used to sleep on this settee as a child, right?

GUEST: Yes, I sleep on that for three or four years when I was small, and I was five years old. I jump on top of it, bouncing back and forth.

APPRAISER: Your parents didn't mind that?

GUEST: No, no, no. We bought this in 1955 for about 100 U.S. dollars.

APPRAISER: Do you know how old it is now?

GUEST: I was told it's somewhere in the Qing Dynasty. Exactly how old, I have no idea.

APPRAISER: You're absolutely right. It's Qing Dynasty; it's about 1890. What I love about this is it's really like a garden trellis, with vines, scrolling vines, leaves, these birds, which are symbols of prosperity and good health and good fortune. This trelliswork with these bamboo shoots. What I really love are these two circular panels, which are marble, and this is from the Yunan Province, the Yunan area, southern China.

GUEST: Solid marble.

APPRAISER: Yes. And do you know what these depict, these, uh...

GUEST: Mountains and...

APPRAISER: Exactly. You've kept it in great condition. It's probably worth today somewhere in the area of around $4,000.

GUEST: Okay. It's nice to know.

GUEST: This jewelry-- the pins and the hairpins-- came from my mother, and she received them from my grandfather, her father-in-law, when I was born. And this was in Malaysia about 40 years ago. This photo is from 1923, and it shows my grandfather and my grandmother, who died before my mother married my father. So I never saw her and my mother, of course, never met her either, but this is her jewelry-- she's wearing it in this picture.

APPRAISER: Yes, so if we look here, we see this pendant. And she's wearing it around her neck here. The center is empty. This piece in here is in the form of a cicada bug. We think she's wearing it here. Now, this jewelry is in high karat gold. You know, normally something's made in 14-karat or 18-karat. This is fine gold, 22-karat. And this jewelry also tend to be handed down in the family. It wasn't meant to be worn and then somebody sells it. It's passed down generation to generation. The diamonds in here are rose-cut diamonds. They have a flat bottom, they're very crudely cut. The technology just wasn't there to cut them like we do today.

GUEST: And this would have been made in Malaysia, probably? Not in China, right?

APPRAISER: They were probably cut in India, the diamonds.

GUEST: Oh, really? Okay.

APPRAISER: But the gold work's Malaysia. They didn't do work like this in China.

GUEST: Yeah, I see.

APPRAISER: Now, if we look at these hairpins, they're holding some type of ornamentation she has in her hair. All totaled, we probably have about 20 karats of rose-cut diamonds.

GUEST: Wow, oh my goodness.

APPRAISER: So, 20 karats total weight with the high karat gold, we'd put a value on this somewhere around $15,000 to $20,000.

GUEST: Wow, oh my goodness. Yeah, that's amazing.

APPRAISER: Yeah, it's very nice, but what's nice to see is that the jewelry was handed down in the family. The picture's dated 1923, but this jewelry probably dates to about 1865.

GUEST: You're kidding?!

APPRAISER: No.

GUEST: Really? Wow, I had no idea.

GUEST: This is my wife's book. She had gotten it from a local library when they had a sale, and she bought it for 15 cents. It's a 1919 book that was used as a library book in Whittier, and entered their library in 1924, and then by 1942, it appears that it was used at the Santa Anita relocation camp, the Japanese internment camp. And it seems to have been a teacher's book who, I believe, taught the fourth grade, and I think it was all teachers wrote things to her saying, "Goodbye, hope we see you again at the next camp," and it talks about going to different camps, perhaps in Arkansas or Wyoming.

APPRAISER: The book itself has almost no interest. This is really just a fourth-grade textbook. Your wife paid 15 cents, and that's actually a fair price just for the book itself. But as you say, this particular volume belonged to a woman whose first name we know, but we don't know her last name, but her name was Nagiko, and she was a Japanese-American who was sent to the Santa Anita Assembly Center. As we know, after Pearl Harbor, a few months later, Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order to order the internment of almost 120,000 Japanese in America, two-thirds of which were American citizens. And so this woman was one of those people sent to Santa Anita. She was a fourth-grade schoolteacher, so while she was there, she taught the fourth grade, and then was later sent, apparently, to one of the camps in Arkansas. So when you brought this book out, it just didn't look like very much at all, but when we opened it up and paged through, I was just really touched by what is inside, because there are inscriptions from her friends, from her colleagues, I think from her students as well. You can see on this first page, we've got a date that places it September 7, 1942. And this is an inscription from a colleague. And then we've got another inscription here. This says September 10, 1942, and it's very difficult to see, but this one actually places it at the Santa Anita Assembly Center. And this is a really touching letter where the woman says, "Although we may not go to the same camp, we'll see each other again, and I'm hoping that we'll arrive at the same camp so that we can continue on with our friendship." And there are lots and lots of inscriptions in here. This is something that collectors would really be excited about. The book itself, again, 15 cents, a fair price, but with these inscriptions, I would place this at auction between $700 to $900.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: So not bad for 15 cents, I have to say.

GUEST: That's incredible.

GUEST: I bought it from a shop in Evanston, North Carolina, which was ran by Northwestern University. And apparently, one of their curators had brought it back from New Guinea in the '50s. And a friend of mine sold stones to them, and she told me it was there, went to look at it, couldn't afford it. About a year later...

APPRAISER: What were they asking for it?

GUEST: They were asking $6,000.

APPRAISER: Okay.

GUEST: And a year later they were closing the shop, and they marked everything half price. It was my birthday, $3,000, I bought it.

APPRAISER: Do you have any other background on the piece?

GUEST: Basically, it's from the Sepik River in New Guinea.

APPRAISER: And what year did you buy it?

GUEST: I bought it in, like, '76, I think.

APPRAISER: Okay. It absolutely is Sepik River. It's from the western Sepik, in the Ramu River area. And this right here, the way that this head is carved, that's diagnostic for Ramu River. Now, historically, the Dutch were in New Guinea in 1820s, the Russians were in New Guinea by the 1870s, and the Germans were in there by the 1880s. So there's been a lot of Western influence, and that's something that we have to keep in mind. On pieces that are real early, they're going to either be stone or shell cut. Now, if you look over here carefully at these very sharp edges, this is clearly metal cut. So this is probably a mid-20th century piece. Now, it absolutely is authentic, and if you look at the surface in through here, you can see it's been rubbed and beaten.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And you'll also see traces of red, which is also a color that's very typical of the Ramu River that they use to sort of enhance their objects. So it's absolutely right, but it's a little bit later. So that's something that we have to take into consideration on value. Now, the other thing, you'll see that it's got some condition problems. We've got a fairly large gap here. There's a big crack in the back.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: That also impacts it. The other thing is we've got a pretty significant downturn in the economy right now. In most cases, it's going to be an institutional client that will buy these. So what we have is we have a fairly late piece, we have a very limited market, but the piece is authentic. So this thing now is probably worth $3,000 to $5,000. If you had one that was, say, into the 19th century and it was done with shell or stone, it could be $50,000, $60,000, $70,000, $80,000.

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: I don't know whether that's good enough to make you beat the drum, but can you do it?

GUEST: Oh, sure. Anything. (drum banging)

APPRAISER: All right.

GUEST: This is a painting that I picked up from a garage sale. And we bought a new place and were driving around for a while, and I noticed this kind of a dirt-covered painting on the garage sale, so I stopped my wife and said, "Hey, honey, let's go look at the painting." And she thought that this is one of the not-so-beautiful looking paintings. And as I was kind of walking toward it, the wind blew it over, and you can see some of the damages that, you know, wind made as it dropped over. And I asked the lady, "How much is it?" And she said, "It's a dollar." And so I picked it up, and I came home, and I didn't really know about this painter. So I looked up his name on the Internet. And apparently he's some national painter in the Philippines, and there are some records of his painting in the Internet, but that's all I know about it.

APPRAISER: The painting is signed and dated. It's H.R. Ocampo in '77. And it is by Hernando Ocampo. He died in 1978, so this is quite late for his work.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: I think this is a really interesting artist, because most painters, their values are... there's a high point in their career, and often it's early in their career. People say, "Well, it's an early work or it's a late work or it's a mature work." He started really as a serious painter in 1938 as a group of painters called the 13 Modernists. All Filipino, modern painters. And his work completely transformed over the course of his life. You've probably heard of Amorsolo, who's the most famous of the Filipino painters. And his work really evolved from that. That was the taking-off point. Learned from the master, Amorsolo. And then by 1968, he's into this kind of format, which is abstracted, but it's inspired by the Philippine flora and fauna, this sort of tonally unified approach. The painting is executed in oil on canvas. And this is fairly typical for the size that he did with his late work. What's interesting about this work is that locally, at auction, I think right now in 2013, you'd be looking at an estimate of $4,000 to $6,000. But interestingly enough, and this wouldn't be too much trouble, if you get it to Hong Kong, which is where the market really is, you'd be looking at a value of $7,000 to $10,000.

GUEST: Wow, fantastic.

APPRAISER: All of the value is in the white jade. An auction or fair market value would be $2,000 to $3,000.

GUEST: What?! Wow!

APPRAISER: These are two classic ukes. Both of these date from the late '20s. The uke with the pineapple would be around $1,200.

GUEST: Oh, okay.

APPRAISER: And the Nunes, probably around $1,000.

GUEST: Oh, good!

APPRAISER: This was done by master craftsmen, probably in the 1930s. I would say that you want to have at least a $25,000 retail replacement value on it.

GUEST: Wow.

GUEST: My parents moved to California to Pasadena in 1941, and that summer, they liked to go to estate sales. And so at one of the estate sales, they purchased this. They always said it was a ginger jar.

APPRAISER: A ginger jar, yes. Do you know where it comes from?

GUEST: No, I don't know whether it's China or Japan.

APPRAISER: It's actually Japanese.

GUEST: All right.

APPRAISER: And it's from late 19th century. It's a very rare piece and a fantastic color, and it has a wisteria, and it has a name of the maker. It's clearly written in two places. The signature is here. It says "Makuzu Kozan zhi"-- made by Makuzu Kozan. And here, too. There are many collectors of this in America, so if we talk about the price, at auction, it could make $8,000 to $10,000.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness!

GUEST: I got this from an auction in Kansas.

APPRAISER: How long ago was that?

GUEST: About ten years ago.

APPRASIER: Ten years ago. Well, it's called Radio Nurse. It was produced by Zenith, and it dates from around 1937. It is actually kind of an early baby monitor. It sprang up out of the fear that was generated after the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. You've got two parts to it. You've got the Guardian Ear, which actually would sit in your baby's room, and then the speaker, which would go wherever you would want it in order to monitor it. What's significant about this piece is the design. It's an excellent example of modern design by a very famous Japanese-American designer called Isamu Noguchi. Noguchi was born in Los Angeles but spent much of his life in Japan. Noguchi went on to design furniture, and he was influential to current American designers and architects all over the world. And this is very typical of his design-- his combining machine elements with the human form. I mean, it's called Radio Nurse, and this looks like a nurse's head. You can see the face, and then you can see her kind of hat draped around the back and the side. And the reason it's so scarce today is because during the war, a lot of these were trashed because of the Japanese association with them. And Noguchi, as a Japanese-American designer, his stock continues to rise, and this has become, like, a classic icon of his work, and you see it in all the modern design collections in museums throughout the country. And you often just see this speaker. It's not as interesting, this part, because it's not interestingly designed. It often gets thrown away. And it's the original finish on it. So it's pretty significant to have it. This case is okay. It could be buffed up a little, but they're easily cracked, because it is Bakelite. Do you remember how much you paid for it originally?

GUEST: I believe it was $25, $35.

APPRAISER: A piece like this in the current market is easily in the $2,000 to $2,500 range. And I'm really excited that you brought it on, and thanks for bringing it in.

GUEST: That's amazing.

GUEST: My grandparents were missionaries in Korea from 1890 to 1908.

APPRAISER: Wow.

GUEST: And this is something that my grandfather purchased ostensibly from a Korean tiger hunter.

APPRAISER: This is just before the fall of the dynasty, around 1911...

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: ...when the Japanese occupied the country, which was a very, very sensitive time for the Korean people because they were under enormous pressure from the Japanese. And things like this were coming up on the market at the time, but it's an exceptional rarity. I've only seen guns like this in books.

GUEST: Really?

APPRAISER: I've never actually seen one in person.

GUEST: Interesting.

APPRAISER: And it is a matchlock.

GUEST: Is it?

APPRAISER: Yeah. And it used to have, up here, a cord that would have been soaked in saltpeter and then lit on fire. Hardwood stock, handmade barrel, very, very early form of gun. The Koreans just kept this model basically because it worked. And in terms of it coming from a tiger hunter, highly probable.

GUEST: Is that right?

APPRAISER: Highly probable. You're not going to be picking off sparrows with something like this. This gun is probably 19th century, even 18th century.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: I would say conservatively, at auction, the estimate would be, like, $3,000 to $5,000 on this gun.

GUEST: Is that right?

APPRAISER: The Korean market has a tendency to fluctuate wildly. This is the kind of thing, in the end, I wouldn't be surprised if retail on a gun like this was $10,000 or $15,000.

GUEST: Really? Well, thank you. I've wondered for years what kind of gun it was, and when it might have been made.

GUEST: Oh, I bought it at a local thrift store for about two dollars.

APPRAISER: Thrift store for two dollars. That's great. Well, we think it's a 19th-century... very late 19th century necklace. It is very, very beautiful, and it is, we think, from western Tibet, and this centerpiece here is actually a woman's earring. It's fairly typical for Tibetans to reuse beads in jewelry and then in clothing, so as far as dating this item, it's a little bit difficult-- some of the beads may be older and some of them may be newer. It was probably a wedding necklace.

GUEST: Would it be a man's or a woman's?

APPRAISER: It would be a woman's.

GUEST: It's awful heavy, you know.

APPRAISER: Yeah, the robes are quite heavy, and then they'd have a headdress as well, so it was, all in all, very elaborate. The top part here, the clasp, is actually a bronze Chinese zodiac coin. We can see the 12 animals of the zodiac. It's a wonderful piece, and it's actually backed onto sort of a coarse cotton and woven in here and supported by that. And we have pearls here, and we have coral beads, and we have a greenish turquoise, and then also this very, very bright blue turquoise that's used in the actual earring. And it's such a beautiful, striking, gorgeous necklace. It's very rare in that Tibetan pieces are seldom seen on the market today, and if you do find them, they tend to be in rather poor condition. But this is in very good condition and it's a nice piece, and we think that at auction, it would probably bring between $3,000 and $4,000.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: So good investment.

GUEST: Oh, yeah. It's nice, thank you.

APPRAISER: Thanks for bringing it in.

GUEST: The painting is by Joseph Nawahi, and it's an 1888 painting.

APPRAISER: Right. It's signed down here "J. Nawahi, 1888." Now, Joseph Nawahi, he wasn't primarily a painter, was he?

GUEST: No, that's probably the least of his known attributes. He was a lawyer, he was a legislator, he was an educator, and he was a publisher of a newspaper.

APPRAISER: He was in the legislature for 20 years, he produced a newspaper critical of the rebellion and the overthrow of the government, and actually landed in jail from around 1893, '95, and subsequently caught tuberculosis and died in '96.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: But he was a native-born Hawaiian, and he went to some of the missionary schools there, and at the Hilo Boarding School. Clearly, we see these two snow-capped peaks here, and those are...?

GUEST: They're the two mountains on the Big Island. They're Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa.

APPRAISER: Right, the two volcanoes there.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And then this bay here is probably where?

GUEST: It's the Hilo Bay. On the Big Island.

APPRAISER: And then this island there?

GUEST: It's called Coconut Island.

APPRAISER: He was an amateur painter, and if you look at the figures here, that's one of the things you look at. Sometimes, the anatomy and the perspective isn't always right. And the figures, they're a little bit stiff. You can see he's a good artist, but not a great artist. He has a good sense of the landscape, but he's not an academically trained artist. He had some training, but not much. But it's important because he's the first Hawaiian-born to paint in this Western style. He was known for doing volcanoes much like Jules Tavernier and others who came here. There aren't many paintings by him. I think he... how many are there?

GUEST: We only know of five.

APPRAISER: About five, yeah.

GUEST: And from what we understand, this is either the largest or one of the two largest ones.

APPRAISER: Where'd you get it?

GUEST: Well, we were on our way from our property up in Volcano down to Hilo Town to go to a museum. And we stopped on the way at our favorite antiques gallery and saw this in the little display area. Couldn't quite make out the artist's name, but got a fix on it. And we had to rush off, so we went down to the museum, and we saw his name there. My husband and I, we looked at each other and we said, "The painting!" And we got on the telephone, called the antique shop, and asked them to hold it, and we zoomed back up there and we got the painting.

APPRAISER: How much did you pay for it?

GUEST: I'm not positive, but I think we paid about $400 for it.

APPRAISER: About $400.

GUEST: That was in the '70s.

APPRAISER: Okay, was it in this condition when you got it?

GUEST: No, it was very dark, and it was grazed. The old painting had cracked and everything. And so a friend of ours, he sent it to his restorer in San Francisco, I think it was-- somewhere in California. And so we did have him do that.

APPRAISER: That has an effect on value on anything. But when you're talking about five or six pieces that are known, we sort of forgive some of the condition issues.

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: Because they're so rare. Do you remember what you paid for the restoration?

GUEST: Probably between $600 and $900.

APPRAISER: I consulted with one of my colleagues here who's from the islands, and because you have the Hilo Bay, you have Mauna Loa, Mauna Kea, he called it "Hawaiian Gold" in the art market. Recently, works by him have sold as much as $70,000. I think if this were to be up at auction today, I would probably put an estimate of $100,000 to $150,000 for it.

GUEST: Are you kidding?

APPRAISER: No, it's a great thing.

GUEST: (laughing) Wow.

APPRAISER: It's really important. This is a national treasure. It's an amazing thing to have here.

GUEST: Well, I'm native Hawaiian, so it's one of the reasons we bought it.

APPRAISER: No, it's great.

GUEST: Oh, gosh. (laughing) I've got gooseskins.

APPRAISER: Well, take good care of it, and put it in a very safe place, and keep it under lock and key.

GUEST: We're very proud to have this picture. Thank you so much.

APPRAISER: All right. Well, thanks for bringing it in. Made my day.

GUEST: Thank you.

WALBERG: We've got another treasure to share before we say aloha.

APPRAISER: Well, I love these toys, and it looks like we have a real space extravaganza here.

WALBERG: Check out these stellar Japanese space toys, coming up right after this.

GUEST: I found these toys at an aunt's house, put it away in storage for about 30 years not really thinking it being important until I watched you. I've been watching ROADSHOW for quite some time and I know you're the expert on toys, the best in the world, I think, so... (laughs)

APPRAISER: I thank you very much. Well, I love these toys, and it looks like we have a real space extravaganza here.

GUEST: Yeah, I hope so.

APPRAISER: Well, space toys started coming in popularity in the late '50s, early '60s. The best ones were made in Japan. Now, of course, all these toys were made in Japan. These were made by a company called "TN" and this was made by a company called "Showa." Two basic categories: space astronauts and space robots. And you have two of each. That's pretty nice.

GUEST: How about that?

APPRAISER: So you found these in your aunt's house. And other people were there first, right?

GUEST: Basically, they took what they wanted as important.

APPRAISER: And left you this junk.

GUEST: Well, this was under a bunch of junk and I uncovered it, kind of, you know.

APPRAISER: Of course, I'm sure if you watch the ROADSHOW, you know that we love them in the boxes.

GUEST: Okay, mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And we love them in the boxes when the boxes are really crisp and clean, and we love them when they haven't been played with. So, we got a lot of love here. What you have here is this Space Man. They're very desirable and very collectible, especially when they're in this kind of condition. And then the other major category are the robots. This robot, we call him Robby the Robot because he was based on the character in Forbidden Planet. But he's never called that on the box because maybe they'd have to pay a licensing fee. But he's definitely the classic Robby. By the way, one thing that makes these very valuable is, these little rubber hands are easily broken and lost. This one, as you know, has a problem. It's missing its face plate here. The switch on there, right. Now, because these are so valuable, there are people who make the replacement parts, so that would be available.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRASIER: So, generally speaking, when you find these in the box, they've been selling at auction for $2,000 to $3,000 apiece, each one of these.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: But few of them that have sold for that are in these kinds of conditions. So, I think that's a very conservative estimate for the values of these at auction. This one would probably be $1,000 to $2,000 because somebody could repair that. So you have some...

GUEST: I have dinner.

APPRAISER: You have dinner. You can go-- I think you can have a few dinners.

GUEST: Okay.

WALBERG: I'm Mark Walberg, thanks for watching. See you next time on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.

GUEST: The painting has been in our family since 1960. My parents purchased it directly from Mr. Roy when his studio was in Bombay.

APPRAISER: Jamini Roy combines classical Indian training as well as folk traditions. And, of course, the subject matter is the beautiful, universally beloved eternal female. It's a great image. It's gouache on paper board. The simple contemporary quality of it really speaking to the time that it was done in the 1960s is tremendous, and which is very popular right now. Do you remember what your family paid for it?

GUEST: Probably $75 to $80 for this piece.

APPRAISER: Oh, my goodness! At auction, because of the popularity of the artist and of the rising importance of Indian artwork, I would be estimating it between $7,000 and $9,000 at auction.

GUEST: That's very much of a surprise, but nice to hear!

APPRAISER: It's actually from the Rennell Islands in the Solomon Micronesian complex there. It's a war club, and they actually throw them. The Rennell Islands have these very interesting ones where they have this extraordinarily fine sennit binding. This comes from the 1870s, 1880s, and probably more for ceremonial use. I'd be comfortable putting a value of about $3,000 on it.

GUEST: Wow, that's amazing. Thank you.

APPRAISER: The print is by a well-known Japanese artist, Hiroshi Yoshida. This piece was done in the '20s, and it's one of his best-known pieces of the wisteria bridge. He didn't sign it in English because it was made for the Japanese market, but it is signed here in Japanese brush signature of his name. A print in this condition is about $1,400.

GUEST: Wow!

Travel with ROADSHOW as we turn the spotlight on incredible items with Asian and Pacific Islands origins, including a Hawaiian Kou bowl, a Gandhi presentation spinning wheel, and an 1888 Joseph Nawahi painting. Which is valued at $250,000-$300,000?

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