Philip & Kelvin LaVerne Table, ca. 1970
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GUEST:
My husband was at a sale. A lady was downsizing and he bought a bunch of things and then he went back and purchased this. He loved it; me, not so much.
APPRAISER:
Okay, when was that?
GUEST:
A few months back.
APPRAISER:
Were you with him?
GUEST:
No.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
But I did go back and look at it and I went, "Uh-uh." We have French country, and this is definitely not French country.
APPRAISER:
Okay, and what was it priced?
GUEST:
He's got about $600 into it now.
APPRAISER:
And did you use it in your home?
GUEST:
I have it stuck in my son's office, hidden.
APPRAISER:
You got home and you hid it away.
GUEST:
Yes!
APPRAISER:
(laughing) Is he happy you're bringing it today to find out what it's worth?
GUEST:
Yes, it was his idea to bring it today.
APPRAISER:
Okay, and do you have a bet on that?
GUEST:
No bets.
APPRAISER:
No bet on who's right or wrong about whether it's good or not?
GUEST:
If he's right, it's going to be hard to ride home with him.
APPRAISER:
(laughing) It's signed "Philip and Kelvin LaVerne," right?
GUEST:
I didn't know that until a lady showed me earlier.
APPRAISER:
So you didn't know it was signed until today, just here?
GUEST:
I didn't notice it.
APPRAISER:
Philip and Kelvin LaVerne made some of the most expensive, high-end furniture out of bronze, pewter, brass and other metals and sold those pieces in New York to an international clientele. They considered it not just furniture, but functional art. They used an acid etch process to make this design, and this is typical in a sense that it has this wonderful bronze and this pewter-- see this color here, that is pewter-- and this patinated enamel, which has kind of faded a bit. The color's a little bit kind of washed on. This effect was gotten by actually burying the piece, and that's how they got this wonderful patination, this kind of interaction of the soil with the bronze. So what you have here is a table from the Chan series. It has a label on the bottom. This is the Festival Console. They didn't make a lot of these tables, and you especially do not see labels still attached to them, so it's amazing that yours still has that paper label. The great thing about this table is the perfect size, the fact that the decoration comes over the edge, and you have this openwork fretwork on each end. They did coffee tables of all shapes-- amoeba-shaped, round, oval, all those kind of shapes-- but this is a really successful table. It would have been an expensive table in its day, and they were just masters at what they did. This was made probably in the late '60s or around 1970.
GUEST:
Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
What do you think? He paid $600. What were you thinking when he bought it?
GUEST:
$1,000. Maybe a value of $1,000.
APPRAISER:
This table, we'd place an estimate at auction of $15,000 to $20,000 on it.
GUEST:
Oh... no.
APPRAISER:
Yes, $15,000 to $20,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my goodness! Oh, oh, oh, no. (laughing) Oh, this is looking better every minute.
APPRAISER:
It's getting better every minute.
GUEST:
Looking really good, oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER:
This festival console is one of the best pieces by the father-and-son team that I have ever seen.
GUEST:
Oh, thank you so much. It's going to make him very, very, very happy.
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