Victorian Carved Oak Bed
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GUEST:
A friend of mine was in need of some money, so I took a mortgage out against it and that's how I wound up with the bed.
APPRAISER:
Well, you brought in here today to the ROADSHOW a Renaissance revival oak bedstead. This was probably made in France and imported here to Canada probably around the 1880s. And during the Victorian period, we had the Renaissance revival, which revived motifs from the Renaissance period in the 15th, 16th century from Europe. And this bed is actually devoted to sleep and to dreaming. I mean, all these motifs we're seeing. Starting with this headboard, you have the wise owl here, which is a creature of the nighttime, overlooking the person lying in the bed as he sleeps. And here you have, in this medallion, Morpheus, Icelus, and on the bottom Phantasus, who are the three sons of Hypnos, the god of sleep. And here they are with the rays of sun coming up in the morning dawn. On the right-hand side here is Phantasus, and here he is with his elbow perched on a skull, and he's actually thinking about the next nightmare that he's going to dream up. And on the front post here, you have another god who's sculpting out the dream. It's just the most elaborate bed I've ever seen, as far as carving. And this bed is worth about $8,000 to about $10,000 or $11,000, as an auction estimate.
GUEST:
Interesting, interesting.
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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