By Joanne Steventon
Tucked inside a green plastic bag, a small rustic portrait of a poor-looking young boy is swaddled in bubble wrap and family myth.
“We think it came from my wife’s father’s aunt, but did it really?” asks Carleton University student Eric Brown, whose wife Felicity inherited the painting from her aunt.
“Family mythology becomes family fact after a while, so it’s nice to know (where) fact and mythology fit together.”
Professional antiques appraisers David Freeman and Marshall Gummer have set out on a cross-Canada tour called Artiques Roadshow to answer questions like these.
They made their first pit-stop of 2004 at Lincoln Heights Galleria in January.
The Browns and 500 other Ottawa residents paid $10 to have value breathed into their mysterious possessions by one of the appraisers.
“People want to know what they’ve got,” says Freeman, who has a degree in art history. “And it’s not just value. They want to know where it came from, how things were made and all the techniques of things.”
The traveling antiques show phenomenon became very popular in Britain 25 years ago with the Antiques Roadshow. A group of appraisers would go to small towns, encouraging people to wipe the dust off their old antiques and have them valued on national television.
After turning cluttered basements and storage sheds into treasure troves for a quarter of a century, the concept caught on, and an American PBS version of the show began eight years ago.
Freeman and his wife Jackie are here from Britain on a one year work permit. They, along with Gummer, are attempting to bring the concept north, with a Canadian show titled, Treasures that Talk.
“That fad’s kind of over in England, which is why we find so much work here now,” says Mrs. Freeman. “The interest here is huge. The education, I think, is needed.”
Gummer had one of the larger finds of the weekend when an older gentleman presented him with the biggest collection of Moorcroft pottery that both he and Freeman had every seen. A single piece of this 1920s and 30s British pottery can be worth between $15,000 and $20,000. The gentleman had about 20 pieces.
“You can imagine Marshall’s face when he thought there was a quarter of a million dollars sitting on the table,” says Freeman.
Even if clients are mildly let down by Freeman’s verdict on the value of their items, he always tries to give them bang for their buck with a good story.
“If you’re looking at it in the monetary value, sometimes the historical value is more important” says Freeman.
As for the Browns, Freeman managed to conclude that their portrait is from Ireland, and was painted between 1845 and 1900. Even without attributing it to an actual artist, he valued the painting at around $3000.
“It’s a jolly good $10 worth,” says a grinning Mrs. Brown.
She and her husband have already booked their appointment for this August when the appraiser will return to Ottawa.