Silver Toilette Set, ca. 1820
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GUEST:
It was given to my grandmother in 1940 when she got married by a friend of the family. She had been given it for her wedding some 50 or so years before. It had never been used and had been sitting in her vault all those years, so she gave it to my grandmother and told her that if she didn't like it, she could melt it down for the money.
APPRAISER:
Which would be something, because that's a lot of silver weight.
GUEST:
It's a lot of silver.
APPRAISER:
And it's certainly... I would call this a set fit for royalty. It's not something that everybody would be able to have.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
And all of the pieces on the bottom have the same mark, and that mark is for a New York maker named Alcock & Allen. So it's nice that it is actually a set, so always intended to be together, which when you look at the pieces in total is pretty extraordinary because not everybody's going to be doing their daily ablutions in silver. You have here a washbasin with a matching pitcher, and then you have two dresser boxes, like a soap box as well as what we think is probably a box for a razor of some sort, as well as a mug, and then the piëce de rèsistance, truly something fit for royalty, a silver chamber pot. I mean, that's unbelievable. Can you imagine?
GUEST:
I cannot imagine.
APPRAISER:
And it's all beautifully engraved with these beautiful cartouches and vines. And the maker's a New York maker, and what I think is sort of fun is these pieces have a little bit of a sort of Dutch look to them, which is appropriate for a New York maker. So any idea what it might be worth?
GUEST:
No idea. My grandmother liked it, so she obviously didn't melt it down, but she had it displayed always in her house and she actually would use the chamber pot as a punch bowl. When my mother and her siblings would have birthday parties or whatever, she would use it as a punch bowl.
APPRAISER:
And did people know what it was?
GUEST:
No, they passed it off, I guess, as a punch bowl.
APPRAISER:
Oh, that's funny. It's a good recycled use. Yes. I think, looking at the way it's decorated, the maker, the age, which is going to be circa 1820, when Alcock & Allen were really working, I think altogether at auction, you're probably looking at about $5,000 to $7,000.
GUEST:
Oh, wow!
APPRAISER:
Yeah, it's pretty spectacular. Not something you see every day, a silver chamber pot, that's for sure.
GUEST:
No, no.
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