1911 Sara Galner Saturday Evening Girls Bowl
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GUEST:
I know that it's a bulb pot. It was in my grandmother's house the whole time I was growing up, and it was something that I had asked her, and when she passed away, I, I took it. (laughs)
APPRAISER:
What do you do with it now?
GUEST:
I plant bulbs in it.
APPRAISER:
You put bulbs in it, okay.
GUEST:
(laughing) Yes.
APPRAISER:
Well, what we have here is actually a piece of pottery from the Boston area, and it is called a Saturday Evening Girl bowl. Saturday Evening Girl is a really interesting story. And it actually comes from a group of philanthropists in Boston just around the turn of the century, and they decided they wanted to give immigrant girls a wage, and they'd pay them on Saturday to come in and decorate pottery and porcelain. The way this is done here is, they carve the surface of the pottery and then they glaze around it. And we know that this is Saturday Evening Girls because, on the bottom, we have here...
GUEST:
It says "S.E.G."
APPRAISER:
It says "S.E.G."
GUEST:
I thought they were someone's initials.
APPRAISER:
They are-- Saturday Evening Girls. But this is actually someone's initials here. And that "S.G." stands for Sara Galner, who was one of the more important artists that Saturday Evening Girls employed. And below it is the date "9-11." So it's done in September of 1911. So not only do we know who made it, we know when it was made and where it was made. And the fact of the matter is...
GUEST:
Wow...
APPRAISER:
...you should be not using it as a bulb pot.
GUEST:
(laughs) Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
It's worth probably-- it has a little hairline here-- but it's worth probably around $2,000.
GUEST:
(breathlessly) Oh, my God. (laughing)
APPRAISER:
Those are some lucky paperwhite bulbs, I'm telling you. (laughing)
GUEST:
(laughing) Oh, I don't even want to think about what I've done with this pot.
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