Lenox Tea Service with Silver Overlay, ca. 1906
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GUEST:
This was a tea set that I picked up with my father when I was six years old at an old barn in the Poconos. And my father and mom used to take me antiquing when I was very young. I know that it's Lenox from the stamp on the bottom. I loved the coloring as a little girl; everything was always pink and flowery...
APPRAISER:
Mm-hmm.
GUEST:
...and so I really liked it.
APPRAISER:
How much did you pay for it back then?
GUEST:
$25.
APPRAISER:
Lenox china was made in Trenton, New Jersey, maybe two miles from where we're standing.
GUEST:
Wow, mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Trenton was the art porcelain capital of America for perhaps 20 or 30 years.
GUEST:
Oh, I didn't know that.
APPRAISER:
The last ice age, as the glaciers pushed south, they pushed the terminal moraine south with them. And in that terminal moraine, if you see that line across Jersey and Pennsylvania and Ohio, there are kaolin deposits and clay deposits...
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
...that were used in the manufacture of pottery and porcelain. It's one of the reasons why that area in general is known for their ceramics. Trenton clay deposits were very rich, and you had a dozen, two dozen companies making art porcelain in the 19th century?
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
Walter Scott Lenox started the Ceramic Art Company in 1889 in Trenton.
GUEST:
Mm.
APPRAISER:
And it was an art company; they weren't making dinner sets, they were making decorative artware in the art pottery tradition. And what's interesting about the mark on your pieces here... You have many marks on your pieces, which tell us quite a bit. Number one, in the middle of the wreath is C.A.C., for Ceramic Art Company. The wreath-- anybody familiar with the Lenox mark knows the, the wreath, because that's, uh, something they continued, with an L in the middle of it. But this dates to about 1906. You know that because of the cojoined mark of the Ceramic Art Company and Lenox, which is what Walter Scott Lenox turned the company into in about 1906. Also, you've got a unicorn.
GUEST:
That's what fascinated me.
APPRAISER:
That's the Mauser mark; that's a silver maker. They're quite rare. Condition of your set is beautiful. I would say a set like this is, at auction, between $500 and $1,000.
GUEST:
Okay. It's staying with me, because it's the start for me of a love of all things antique.
Appraisal Details
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