Antiques Roadshow guest gobsmacked at value of tribal chair bought for £10
Antiques Roadshow expert John Foster was presented with an interesting item in a recent episode of the BBC programme.
Antiques Roadshow guest gobsmacked at value
The Antiques Roadshow team visited Clissold Park in Stoke Newington on the BBC programme this week.
During the episode, expert John Foster examined a “tribal chair” that was brought in by a guest.
When John asked the guest what it is that she loves about it, she explained: “When I bought it in 1965, I’d recently come in from South Africa and I was nostalgic for something that looked African. I saw it in a local antique shop and bought it.”
The guest also recalled that she’d paid £10 for the item at the time.
John admitted that she had gotten it for “a good price” and a “reasonable amount of money then.” But it wasn’t quite what either of them first thought when they initially looked at the tribal design.
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The expert outlined: “So, when I say it has that 'I love anything tribal and that' look, I’m kind of teasing you a bit because it’s nowhere near Africa in its origin. It’s from Italy, a designer called Carlo Bugatti.”
John went on to reveal: “So he really took the art world by storm at the 1902 Turin exhibition, where he showed this style of furniture with that sort of very African feel to it or tribal feel to it and no one else is really doing it. Certainly not in that same way.”
The chair was also made from a variety of different woods.
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“You’ve got pewter inlay. You’ve got copper. Everything you would expect to see in an African piece of furniture or African art,” John surmised.
When it came to the valuation, the expert estimated that it was worth in the region of £8,000, which was a shock to its owner.
“That’s a lot,” the guest replied.
Elsewhere in the episode, Jon Baddeley admired a collection of 1960s psychedelic rock music posters, while Hilary Kay was thrilled to see a racing helmet worn by Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton, as she heard about a guest’s memorable race day experience.
Host Fiona Bruce also paid a visit to the nearby Abney Park cemetery to find out more about some of the surprising pioneers who had been buried there, including Margaret Graham – the first British woman to make a solo balloon flight.
Antiques Roadshow airs Sundays from 8pm on BBC One.