An Antiques Roadshow guest was brought to tears after learning the whopping value of a glass box she bought online for just £32.
The treasured item left expert Joanna Hardy shocked after she inspected it during a repeat episode filmed at Edinburgh’s Scottish Gallery of Modern Art.
The Scottish guest and the valuer were both shocked by the intricate and detailed box, with Joanna commenting: ‘The skill of a goldsmith and the skill of an enameller is the same when they are making jewellery.’
She then asked the guest for the story behind the intriguing piece and the woman explained she had stumbled up on it at an online auction in England and was so taken with the crystal that she snapped it up immediately.
She went on to confess that she loved to browse online auctions, before noting that the box is no longer in perfect condition, but was still beautiful.
She said: ‘I think they described it as being glass, a glass box, and I knew it had something unusual about it, with the designs on it and things like that.
An Antiques Roadshow guest was brought to tears after learning the true value of a glass box she bought online for just £32 during a repeat episode filmed at Edinburgh ‘s Scottish Gallery of Modern Art
The Scottish guest and the valuer were both shocked by the intricate and detailed box with Joanna commenting: ‘The skill of a goldsmith and the skill of an enameller, is the same whether they are making jewellery’
Joanna traced the piece’s history to the mid-19th-century Viennese goldsmiths who were famed for their beautiful enamelling work
‘I couldn’t really see much of the silver, I had a sneaky feeling it might be that, so we actually polished it all to reveal the beautiful enamel on the surface and the lovely colours’.
The guest then revealed she had originally bought the piece for just £32 and expert Joanna was left gobsmacked.
The BBC valuer then explained why she was so surprised, telling the guest and gathered crowd that it was a very special piece.
She said: ‘This is rock crystal, which is of the quartz family’, and commented on the stunning bubble-free surface which signified its authenticity.
She added: ‘And you can see the inclusions inside the stone, which are their natural inclusions; there are no bubbles; if you saw bubbles, then you would know it would be glass.’
Joanna then traced the piece’s history to the mid-19th-century Viennese goldsmiths, who were famed for their beautiful enamelling work.
She added: ‘Now, in about 1850 in Vienna in Austria, there were a group of goldsmiths who also did a lot of enamelling work sort of in the Renaissance style, and this is in the Neo-Renaissance style.’
the guest was left stunned, bursting in to tears and telling the auctioneer that she couldn’t believe her £32 investment could now be worth up to £6,000
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Joanna then concluded that the impressive item had been made between 1860 and 1870 and was made by an expert enameller.
She told the excited guest: ‘So this is dating this from about 1860 to 1870, but there was one person that was really the head of this, he was the leading enamelist in Vienna at the time and he did the neo-renaissance work.’
And it was then that the BBC expert revealed what the £32-crystal pot was really woth, revealing it could fetch up to £6,000.
She said: ‘If that was in the right auction I think you are going to be looking at between £4,000 and £6,000.’
And the guest was left stunned, bursting in to tears and telling the auctioneer that she couldn’t believe her £32 investment could now be worth so much.
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