Antiques Roadshow: Glastonbury chair valued at £100,000
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Antiques Roadshow visited the Bishop’s Palace, a site of special religious significance for over 800 years in the heart of Wells in Somerset. On a hot summer’s day, visitors came to the site with their most precious heirlooms valuing their special processions. However, a TV expert was left feeling frustrated after a guest brought in their Victorian bear statue that had been badly varnished, bringing its valuation down from £10,000.
Speaking on the programme, expert Lenox Cato began: “We see a number of carved things on the programme, but this one is so different and I’m so pleased that you’ve brought it along.”
The guest, who was joined by his brother, responded: “It’s always been in our lives since my grandmother.
“It’s been standing on a stair landing until my father left it down to me 15 years ago.
“Where does it stay now?’ the host asked.
‘It’s in [the] custody of my brother here,” the owner pointed out.
“But for how much longer will have to remain to be seen,” the guest continued. He chuckled:
“It depends on…depends on the outcome of today, perhaps.”
The guest’s brother weighed in exclaiming: “It’s going nowhere!”
The owner then reflected: “But I remember it as a child, a small child, and it used to frighten the living daylights out of us.”
“We had to walk past it to get downstairs,” he confessed. “So this would have been not necessary on the stairs.
“It would have been towards the front door of the house,”
Lenox wondered. He went on to add: “And your calling cards went on there.”
Looking closely at the figure, the specialist said: “If you look carefully, there’s like, a kind of varnish over it.”
He asked: “Do you know how that happened?” The guest confessed:
“No, I do vaguely remember it being varnished because it was all brand-new and shiny again, but that was 50 years ago.”
The TV presenter informed the brothers: “Well, it’s taken its toll ’cause what’s happened, the varnish now looks like skin.”
He asked: “Can you see it gradually flaking off?
“It shouldn’t have been varnished, it needs to be professionally restored.”
Picking up the statue’s faults, which had travelled from Germany down to Switzerland, the TV star explained: “The thing which is against it is these splits.
“At one stage, if it was near a radiator, that could have caused that splitting.”
“If it didn’t have splits, this is £10,000,” he told the hopeful siblings. Unfortunately, due to its faults, the statue had halved in price, with the specialist saying: “You’ve got to say, half that [now].”
Antiques Roadshow episodes are available to watch on BBC iPlayer.
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