Mahogany Architect's Table
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GUEST:
My mother owned it. She bought it about 25 or 30 years ago when she was in New York. We've always called it an architect's table, although she's always used it to prop up books.
APPRAISER:
Well, it's a Georgian or Chippendale mahogany architect's table, drafting table, and I think we'll demonstrate all its parts, and people will understand why. First we have one lifting surface for oversize books or drawing itself. This pulls out and also lifts up for another drawing surface or writing surface. We have a storage compartment underneath for your various supplies. On the sides, there's an inkwell, and also a candle slide, if you could pull that out over there. So there would have been candles over there. And then obviously it all collapsed back. It's a very nice table. It has a few condition problems. And not major restorations, and they were done very well, but I thought... they do impact the value, so I'll point them out. This brass is replaced, for example. The edge of this leaf has been spliced in. But overall it's a very nice table, and I think most of the restoration was done probably 50, 60 years ago. If it came up at auction, a fair market value would probably be in the $5,000 to $6,000 range.
GUEST:
Guess I ought to get it insured.
Appraisal Details
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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