Antiques Roadshow guest fails to react when deceptive £10 chair valued for thousands

WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow. 

An Antiques Roadshow guest’s valuable chair, which she purchased for just £10, had a completely different origin to what she was expecting.

The hit BBC series travelled to Stoke Newington to film the latest episode at Clissold Park, the location where expert John Foster met with a pensioner and her African-styled chair.

He began: “So I love anything tribal and that look. What do you love about it?”

The guest explained: “When I bought it in 1965, I’d recently come from South Africa and I was nostalgic for something that looked African.

“I saw it in a little antique shop and bought it.”

When questioned on how much she paid for the chair at the time, the guest sheepishly replied £10.

Foster continued: “That’s a good price, that’s a reasonable amount of money then.

“So when I say I love anything that has that tribal look, I’m kind of teasing you a bit, because it’s nowhere near Africa in its origins.

“It’s from Italy, a designer called Carlo Bugatti. So he really took the art world by storm at the 1902 Turin exhibition where he showed this style of furniture with that very African feel to it, or tribal feel to it.”

“And no one else was really doing it, certainly not in that same way.

“You’ve got all sorts of woods in here, you’ve got pewter inlay, you’ve got copper, everything you’d expect to see in an African piece of furniture or African art.”

It was then time for Foster to give his appraisal: “So a chair like this, which you paid £10 for, I would see in the sort of region of £8,000.”

An audience member was clearly surprised by the valuation as she gasped and covered her mouth at the figure.

However, the same couldn’t be said for the chair’s owner as her expression remained blank, simply stating: “That’s a lot.”

Foster then added: “It’s so lovely to see, thank you.”

Antiques Roadshow is available to watch on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.