Folk Art Swordfish Bill Sword, ca. 1880
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GUEST:
Local antique dealers had both passed away, and these were estate sales, the last day of it. And I was kind of scavenging, so I'd pulled a pile together of a few rugs and some other textiles, and this item, which was hanging on the wall. And I thought it was odd that it was still there. And it had an older look to it, and I figured these guys were antique dealers, so for them to put it on the wall in their house, it must have been something of importance. But it was great looking, anyway.
APPRAISER:
And so what did you pay for the whole bunch?
GUEST:
I paid $225 for the pile of things I'd put together. It looked to me like the handle wasn't as old as the sword part in the painting, but I really couldn't tell.
APPRAISER:
It's made from a swordfish bill.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
We're not positive if it was a group of carvers or if it was one person, but probably in a port somewhere up in New England, these were done after the sailors came back. I doubt they would have had the tools or the paint with them to do the paint decoration. Whoever did these did them in varying degrees of complexity, but all of them have these wonderful patriotic motifs. That fish closest to you shows up... I found two of these that had sold, and they had the fish and the flag at the end of them, both of them. Of course, this one has a lighthouse, and I love the way the handle is carved and the way they integrated all those eagles in there. I think this was made during the time of the centennial, in the 1870s up until the turn of the century. I know your thought was that this handle might be a little bit later, but this is carved out of wood, absolutely original. If you compare the paint colors throughout, like the blue in this with the blue here... and the wear pattern is perfect. There's nothing that anybody has done to that to distress that surface. It's what I would call honest wear. And you notice when you put it on the table, I put it under a really strong light.
GUEST:
Right.
APPRAISER:
Now, one of the other things that I did was I looked inside of some of the cracks. In that crack right there, there's no paint. And that's a good sign that somebody didn't take something old and put paint over top of it. Sometimes when you have something old, they'll paint it, and then they'll put stain over it and they'll actually make it look worn. But this... I think this is a straight-ahead, honest thing. And it's a really great example. I would call it a swordfish bill sword.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And I would call it a folk art sword.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
I would say a retail value in today's world for this would be $2,000 or $3,000.
GUEST:
Oh, nice. Very good.
APPRAISER:
Man, you are a lucky duck.
Appraisal Details
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