Early 20th-Century Duffner & Kimberly Shade
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GUEST:
My dad was a general building contractor in San Francisco, and he was remodeling a home right after World War II. And this was headed for the dump. And he just couldn't see anything this beautiful going that direction, so he brought it home, and it hung in his corporation shed for, oh, probably 12, 15 years, and when he passed away, it was my job to clean it out.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
And I found this and didn't know anything about it and took it to San Francisco to dealers to try and find out what it was worth, and everybody said, "Well, what do you want for it?" So I figured it had value, brought it home, put it in a box. When we built our home in Lake Tahoe in 1972, my wife finally got to see what was in the box, and it's hung over our dining room table ever since.
APPRAISER:
This is a Duffner and Kimberly shade. Duffner and Kimberly was an American firm, early 20th century, based in New York. They made these wonderful art glass, leaded shades. Now, they were very heavily influenced by the Tiffany shades. The leading on this is exceptional, and the quality of the glass is exceptional. Also, this is a nice, typical Duffner and Kimberly form with the turned-in edges and this pattern of floral arrangement. There are supports here, supports that you normally don't see on a leaded shade, because it hangs down. We've not seen one of these on the ROADSHOW. I would easily put an estimate of $8,000 to $12,000 on it for auction.
GUEST:
Really? Fantastic.
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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Context is key: Listen carefully. Most of our experts will give appraisal values in context. For example, you'll often hear them say what an item is worth "at auction," or "retail," or "for insurance purposes" (replacement value). Retail prices are different from wholesale prices. Often an auctioneer will talk about what she knows best: the auction market. A shop owner will usually talk about what he knows best: the retail price he'd place on the object in his shop. And though there are no hard and fast rules, an object's auction price can often be half its retail value; yet for other objects, an auction price could be higher than retail. As a rule, however, retail and insurance/replacement values are about the same.
Verbal approximations: The values given by the experts on ANTIQUES ROADSHOW are considered "verbal approximations of value." Technically, an "appraisal" is a legal document, generally for insurance purposes, written by a qualified expert and paid for by the owner of the item. An appraisal usually involves an extensive amount of research to establish authenticity, provenance, composition, method of construction, and other important attributes of a particular object.
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