Kaipiainen Beaded Bird Sculpture, ca. 1960
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GUEST:
This is special to me, because when I grew up, I saw this bird in front of a shop in Texas and they would always decorating. He'd have ribbons or wreaths or hats and you name it, all throughout the year.
APPRAISER:
How long have you had it?
GUEST:
It was a gift. I worked for a design firm, and my boss knew that I liked this bird. So he arranged somehow to get it, and he bought it for me. And at a birthday, he gave me this ribbon and I followed it. And it went through woods and everything and finally ended up in a greenhouse, and there was my bird. I've had it was since I was 28, I'm now 68.
APPRAISER:
That's a long time to...
GUEST (chuckling): A long time. It's an old bird-- we're both old birds. It is signed, and we ran across an article in National Geographic that featured artists from Finland, and we looked him up, and he's won all kinds of prizes. And that's-- this is especially-- each bead is handmade, and it got so laborious and he became so popular, that they started making the beads for him in a factory. But he still hand-glazes each ceramic bead, and then he wires it in there.
APPRAISER:
This artist is, you can see his name right here.
GUEST:
Yeah.
APPRAISER:
And it's hard to pronounce.
GUEST:
Oh, I can't, I can't.
APPRAISER:
But it's like Kaipiainen.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
And he worked for a company in Finland, in Helsinki, that was the Arabia company. He was considered one of their top artists, so he was given a complete license to make any designs that he wanted. This is just a wonderful example of his work. He made things like plates, and vases, and other things.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
But this really shows modern design. It's all handmade, one bead at a time, and there's just hundreds of beads here. But it's all on this framework. If we were going to put a value on for auction, we would probably put an estimate of maybe $10,000 to $15,000. The problem is, these are the ones that sometimes blow through those record books.
GUEST:
Go, go through?
APPRAISER:
And, but according to where it's at right now, this market is right around the $10,000 to $15,000 range.
GUEST:
Okay. He's, he's become kind of a friend. It sounds funny, but I'm really attached to the bird.
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