1845 Gothic Revival Games Table
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GUEST:
I inherited it two years ago, and it was my great-great- grandfather's originally.
APPRAISER:
Now, what are these papers you brought in?
GUEST:
Well, these are in my great-great-grandfather's handwriting.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
He went through each piece of marble and labeled which type of marble it was.
APPRAISER:
Amazing, I see here this marble top here has the bird-- here's the bird. We've got this bellflower and leaf, and then the flower. It's all depicted exactly... and these are listing the marbles here you say?
GUEST:
Right, he has numbers and it corresponds with what type of marble it is.
APPRAISER:
And do you know where the table was made?
GUEST:
Well the paper says, "Florentine mosaic," so I'm guessing Italy.
APPRAISER:
Okay, great, exactly. Well the top was made in Italy. It's a Florentine top. This table is Gothic, it's what we call Gothic Revival. And the Gothic style was popular in England and Europe, it's been for centuries and centuries. There was a Gothic Revival in the 18th century, looking back to the 12th and 13th centuries. We see these, lancet arches; we see these bundled colonnettes. All of these designs you see in early medieval architecture. We don't see a lot of Gothic furniture in America; it's extremely rare. England was the most popular place for Gothic. But in America, it was mostly architecture that got popular versus the furniture. So you don't know where this is made, the base?
GUEST:
No, I do not.
APPRAISER:
Okay. Well, stylistically, this is made in New York City.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
And we know that, because there's... there are pieces made by Alexander Roux-- which is R-O-U-X, it's spelled-- a Frenchman, émigré, who came over to America and worked. Also A.J. Davis worked and furnished a wonderful house on the Hudson, called Lyndhurst, in the Gothic style. Most of these tables are mahogany. This is actually rosewood, and you can see the dark, darkish stripes in it, typical of rosewood. There's a couple little chips here and there, which are fine. You can see the traces of where they were. But it's amazing it's got its original finish. We usually call these tables "specimen tables," because here we have all of these different types of marble, which are--which are specimens of these 80 types of Italian marble. I'm going to hand that to you. And, in fact, here, written on here, your great... great-great-grandfather wrote descriptions of the varieties of marble in the chess table. Most people thought these were just used for specimens of marble, and squares were the best format. Because it has a small size, original finish, it's rosewood... The documentation is incredible. We know it was made for your great-great-grandfather, on his birthday, 1845. If I were to put an insurance figure on this table, I would put about $175,000 on it.
GUEST:
You've got to be kidding me.
APPRAISER:
I'm not kidding you.
GUEST:
That's incredible, I was thinking like $2,000.
APPRAISER:
$2,000? That's what you thought?
GUEST:
That's what I thought.
APPRAISER:
You had... your family just… they ordered the best table they could possibly buy at the time and they had great taste.
GUEST:
Wow! Well, thank you very much. That's incredible.
APPRAISER:
You ever play chess on this?
GUEST:
No, but I used to climb all over it.
APPRAISER:
Used to climb on it?
GUEST:
Yeah, not anymore.
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