Philadelphia Candlestand, ca. 1765
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GUEST:
My grandmother inherited it back in the early 1940s, and it's been around ever since.
APPRAISER:
I want to tell you a few things about the table.
GUEST:
I wish you would.
APPRAISER:
I've been holding them back, right? What you have is a circa-1765 Philadelphia folding table, which we call today a candlestand because the top folds, but it was used to hold small things. And it's a classic table from the 1765 period. It has a dish top, this edge. It has this birdcage mechanism that allows it to spin, which is kind of nice, and this column, which comes from the classical elements, this wonderful column, this slightly compressed ball with a flare above, coming down to these cabriole legs, with these really articulated claw-and-ball feet. Aren't they really naturalistic?
GUEST:
They really are.
APPRAISER:
You can feel the pulse of the animal-- wait a minute-- you know? It's got this tension in it. And if we tip this top up and look at the underside, Margaret, the underside and the base is really an archaeological site that's pretty much undisturbed. It's what we like to see as furniture appraisers. It has wonderful color, and there's a difference between the... See how light this is and how dark this section is? That's from the air, and it's darker here, where it's been exposed for 200 years.
GUEST:
That makes sense.
APPRAISER:
If you come down to this birdcage-- called a birdcage for the obvious reasons, right? And take out this little key-- it's the original key. And this holds this whole mechanism together, which I won't take apart, but the color is dark here and light here, where the air didn't get, and that's just... When I say "archaeological site," that's what we love to see because it's the original key and the original little ring that's in here. If you come down to this area, all this surface is absolutely intact. It really hasn't been abraded. Your family's taken good care of it, even probably 200 years ago, and if we look at the bottom, in the trade, we call it a spider. It's an iron spider to hold the legs stable, has these wonderful rosehead, hand-hammered nails. Come over to here, all the tool marks are on the feet, all the color's there. The scribe line, you see that little line right there? That's the original scribe line to mark out this foot, and the original circle is there, made with a compass. So this just records all the tool marks of the original maker in Philadelphia in the 1760s, and it's what makes all of us people that love antiques tick-- you know, things like this, in this condition, with this stance. Now, probably fewer than 12 or 15 American candlestands with this type of shaft have claw-and-ball feet versus pad. So you didn't know it was quite that rare, right?
GUEST:
No, I really didn't.
APPRAISER:
One more thing about the condition, and then I'm going to tell you a value. This top is absolutely original, as I said, but somebody brushed on something in the 19th century or the early 20th, like a linseed oil. You can see it coming over the edge, and they just thought... it must have looked nice at one time, but it's changed, so it's kind of changed and turned, and now it's alligatored. Has it bothered you enough to think about taking it off?
GUEST:
Take it off? No.
APPRAISER:
You'd leave it, right?
GUEST:
I would leave it.
APPRAISER:
That's what I would probably do with it. But some people might... some people might think otherwise and might try to remove it carefully. If I had this in my shop, because of its rarity, I would put it, um... I would have a price of about $150,000 on it.
GUEST:
You've got to be kidding. You have got to be kidding!
APPRAISER:
I am not kidding. You didn't expect me to say that.
GUEST:
Well, not that much!
(applause)
APPRAISER:
Should I come over and hold you up? I'm going to hold you up.
GUEST:
I can't believe it!
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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