Van Briggle Vase, ca. 1904
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GUEST:
I've had it for about three years and I went to this sale. I went in about an hour after it had opened, and there this sat, and so I bought it, and my husband couldn't believe me when I came back out and told him how much I'd paid for it.
APPRAISER:
Which was how much?
GUEST:
Ten dollars. And so, then, Todd here collects Van Briggle and he's always wanted it.
APPRAISER:
You said your mom worked at the Van Briggle factory?
GUEST:
And my mother worked at Van Briggle. About 50 years. But we did not have one piece of Van Briggle.
APPRAISER:
You're a Van Briggle collector. Why did you bring this piece instead of some of the other pieces you have at home?
GUEST:
Because of the glaze, and the detail in the pattern I thought was interesting enough to bring.
APPRAISER:
Well, it really is interesting. Van Briggle is molded pottery. You tend to see the forms over and over again, and in spite of this being a molded pot I can't say I've seen this form ever in the last 30 years. What's also interesting is that while the design on the pot is molded, there's a fair amount of hand-tooling done to the piece. If you look at the ridges on the outsides of this triangle and the modeling within the flower, that's all done by hand after the mold, which is typical of a particularly early piece of Van Briggle. The hand modeling tapered off the later the pots got. You can see the mark on the bottom of the pot, but you can't really see the dating on it because it's covered with glaze, which happens fairly often on Van Briggle, but I can tell you that you're right. This is a rare glaze combination. I've had it three other times. I only know of... This is the fourth one I know to exist. If this was cleaned properly, because it's pretty dirty, I think that purple you see would have an iridescent or a nacreous luster to it. The other three are all dated 1904, so this is a particularly early piece made while Van Briggle was still alive. And aside from all that, I think it's absolutely beautiful. This is really one of the prettiest pieces of Van Briggle I've seen. The design is tight and crisp, the coloration is good, the form is good, and if I was selling this piece, believe it or not, I wouldn't take less than $15,000 for it.
GUEST:
What?
APPRAISER:
It's a really good piece of Van Briggle, yeah. And not much is worth that kind of money. So congratulations.
GUEST:
Well, thank you.
Appraisal Details
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