On this week's Antiques Roadshow we've come to a powerhouse of
modernist, you might even call it brutalist construction,
Newcastle Civic Centre.
Home to the Lord Mayor and the city council,
and a building packed full of surprises.
The building was designed by Newcastle city architect
George Kenyon and construction started in 1960.
It was officially opened in 1968 but not by an English royal
but by King Olav V of Norway.
TV ARCHIVE: The new Civic Centre is a building of architectural beauty
and tasteful decoration.
An RAF fly-past heralded the moment when His Majesty would step forward
to accept the ornate key to the new building from the city architect.
This had been a day to remember in the north-east.
So why the King of Norway?
Well, Newcastle had long and strong established trade links
with Scandinavia and Norway in particular
and it looked for its future prosperity to the north, not south.
And the design of the building is unmistakably Nordic.
But there are references to the building's British heritage too.
In centuries past, the town crier would ring his bell,
tar barrels would be set ablaze to draw crowds to a public meeting
and these flambeaux are an echo of that
and they're still lit today for special occasions.
And the town crier's role has been enlarged
with this mighty bell tower containing 25 bells
weighing a staggering 22 tonnes.
And the bells aren't rung in the traditional way using ropes,
but these rods are attached to the clappers in the bells
which are in turn attached to this carillon,
a series of wooden levers and pedals.
Dr Ian Brunt, you're the only man in the area who's allowed to play this.
Would you like to play us something we might recognise? Certainly.
ANTIQUES ROADSHOW THEME MUSIC
Well, what an interesting version of the Antiques Roadshow theme!
With the Roadshow in town, it is indeed a special occasion
and we're hoping the bells will help draw a bumper crowd.
Well, now, there's she sits,
twinkling away in the bright lights here.
A flower brooch.
Something that you like or you don't like?
Me? Oh, I think it's beautiful. You think it's wonderful, why? Yeah.
Why? It just glistens, I've never seen nothing like it.
No, well, you don't, you don't.
It's not a design you'd see very much today
and it's not a design that's very, very old. I would say, what, 1960s?
1960, maybe 1965, something like that.
Now, does that work in with your own knowledge of the piece?
Probably, yes. What's the story behind it, then?
It was a silver wedding present for me mam off me dad.
When would that have been? Well, they were married in '63.
I don't know where he bought it,
me mam doesn't know neither where he got it from.
OK, OK. So...
Well, as I say, sitting there. Twinkling,
and you can't really see something too demonstrative about it,
but you and I know that there's something rather spectacular
that you can do with this... That's right. ..to completely transform it.
Now, the key to it, of course, is that it's a sunflower.
You can see that you've got all the intricately wrought petals
surrounding a cluster of stones in the middle,
but you know what this does, and it is spectacular.
If I pull down that leaf,
it literally is flexible.
Every petal is hinged so that when you pull that leaf down,
it reveals a clusters of stamens...
Mm-hm. ..individually on little flexible rods,
so they all move and twinkle and scintillate.
And this is the key because those white stones
are fabulous quality diamonds.
Oh, that's good.
This is a very beautiful piece of jewellery.
And I wonder whether your mother liked that design?
She did, she's only ever worn it once.
Well, you know, looking at it, because of the novelty feature,
the fact that you can literally move the petals back and forth,
puts a totally different dimension on to its potential, I think.
I've had a look at the mount.
If I turn it over, you can see how detailed the goldwork,
high-carat gold, of course.
It's French. Ah, right. Made in Paris in about 1960.
Now, unfortunately, I've had a look with my lens.
Something of this quality generally needs to be by a good house.
I mean, this is the sort of thing I would expect to be by
one of the big makers.
But I've scoured it with my lens,
I can't see anything to say who made it. Ah, right.
So it's French 1960, that I can guarantee.
Who made it? We don't know.
Value.
With the diamonds and the gold,
£4,000 to £5,000.
Wow. I think they'd be queueing up for it.
I think it's a great piece of post-war, Continental,
high-carat gold and diamond jewellery. Very good.
Mam will be pleased. I hope so. She will.
Because I'm delighted with it.
I was really hoping that someone would bring in a picture
by Norman Cornish, and you have.
He's probably the most famous
of all the artists who went to the so-called Pitmen's Academy.
He was down in the mines from about the mid-1930s up until the '60s.
Of all of those pitmen, his pictures, I think,
capture life at that time. It's now a bygone era.
Now, what do you know about Norman Cornish?
I know that he worked at the pit over in Ferryhill
and I believe my grandad worked there as well.
I believe that when Norman started doing the art,
he wanted to help support him, so they bought four.
I've also been told that Norman actually
made the frames for the gallery,
so not just the picture but the actual frames, Norman Cornish.
Amazing, I did not know that!
He taught himself at the Spennymoor Arts Club
and then went on to produce all these pit village life paintings
such as this one. You're absolutely right.
Cornish painted what he knew
and it's why pictures like this are so authentic.
We've got men from the pit lining up at the bar.
They've still got flat caps on
and they're pulling their pints and drinking them down
after a hard day's work in one of the coal mines.
It's done in a mixture of different materials.
He's used felt tip pen,
he's used pastel really beautifully to highlight all the flat caps,
all the glasses,
all the draught beer waiting to come out in its pints,
and then over here you can see he's signed it "Cornish".
For me, what's extra special about Cornish
is, after 30 years down in the pit, he took a huge leap of faith
and he became a professional artist. Yes.
And he was then able to support his family.
As an untaught, essentially an untaught artist,
because he was encouraged in one of these sketching clubs,
known as the Pitmen's Academy,
he then came to be a professional artist.
It's a really special thing.
Have you ever had it valued before?
Not really, not professionally.
We've actually got, there was four that my grandparents bought.
OK. Two were left to my mum and two to her sister,
and then they've just come down to myself and my sister.
And how did you choose this one?
I just like the bar scene.
Every time you look at it, you see something different,
whether it's the glass or a cap, it's just unusual.
So if I was to put this up at auction, I would say,
as a value, it would probably be worth in the region of about
£3,000 to £5,000. Right.
Yeah, sentimental value, though, so it'll be staying on my wall.
Two lovely objects relating to ships and the sea.
The one nearest me, beautifully carved,
feels great actually in your hand.
What attracted you to both these pieces?
Well, initially the fact that I was a sailor myself
and had an interest in maritime things.
Also, for my sins, I collect scrimshaw
and these are both loosely whaling collectables. Exactly.
And I think that what one has to remember is that
whaling was a big industry up in the north-east.
Let's talk about, first of all, the object.
It's a seam rubber.
What is a seam rubber?
Well, I don't know if you ever used one as a sailor, probably not.
No, I was an engineer. You were an engineer, OK!
But a seam rubber on board ships, if you were mending a sail,
you would mend it with stitches
and then you would press down that seam flat,
so that it didn't catch in the wind or on any of the rigging
and you would rub it with an object like this.
Now, this is beautifully decorated.
It's got the Turk's head knot at the top,
and it's, on this side, got a date of June 19th 1829,
lovely early date.
And on the other side, it says JJ.
Could it be a betrothal present? I'd like to think so.
The other object is just so incredibly beautiful, I think.
This is a papier-mache circular snuff box of a kind that is
often put down to a company called Stobwasser.
Whether this is or not is difficult to tell, but it's that style.
And this looks as if it's depicting two whalers here,
two whaling vessels.
What do you know about this?
Again, not a lot. I bought it close to Hull.
Ah. Which was a big whaling port.
There were no names whatever on it.
The style of the ship I would guess would be 1820s,
but beyond that, no.
It would be fantastic to think it was that early. I'm not convinced.
I think it could be a bit later.
OK, yeah. But these are two cracking objects.
So does this fit into a larger collection
or are these two one-offs?
I'm afraid my wife is standing behind me.
It's...a much bigger collection!
This is support and nodding wisely and rather suffering
over the years. So this is the tip of the iceberg, literally?
Yes.
Well, there is a huge amount of interest in maritime antiques.
The seam rubber I would put at around £300-£400, certainly.
And on a good day, perhaps a little more than that.
The box, I'm so excited about that box,
I think it's absolutely spectacular
and I'm going to stick my neck out and say £1,500-£2,000 on that.
It's stunning. You can't have it! Go on!
It's about 100 years old, it came from Balmoral Castle.
A friend of mine's mother-in-law's sister was in service.
OK. And we believe, with it being cracked,
it would have been thrown away, but... It wasn't like...
Oh, no. No, no, no. I'm sure - you have an honest face. Oh, yes.
It does have Balmoral on the back,
and Thomas Goode, who are still in business today,
have the Royal warrant to supply the Royal family with china,
so it is a plate from Balmoral.
So any old cracked plate, £5-£10.
A plate that may or may not have been stolen from Balmoral Castle, £100.
Fine. Have you ever wondered whether the Queen might want it back?
Not if it's cracked.
No! I don't...
I love my music and I have to say,
being confronted with a collection of material like this takes me
right back to the time when I was 17, 18, 19 years old,
because what we're dealing with here,
I think it is one of the most brilliant stories
in television pop culture.
It's a programme called The Tube and it's a real Newcastle story.
What's your connection with the material we've got here?
I came up to Newcastle 35 years ago
to be one of the producers on The Tube. Right.
Which was the flagship rock show for Channel 4.
Yes. The Tube was produced by Tyne Tees Television from a studio called
Studio 5, a huge studio on the banks of the Tyne,
and it ran from 1982-1987.
Upset a lot of people, entertained a lot of people,
extraordinarily controversial.
For me, not so much a programme, more a way of life.
I love the way you've encapsulated that because, for me, as a viewer,
you know, those were all the things that made it a must-watch programme.
The controversy that it created, the kind of, I don't know,
the sense of chaos that seemed to, to...
Was it really chaotic?
It was organised chaos.
It had this wonderful chemistry of irreverence,
a mixture of unsigned bands and then incredibly huge acts.
Well, it's funny, because you're hitting the nail on the head there.
Look at this poster, what part of the series was this?
This was programme one of series two, 1983.
OK. I booked all these acts for the show, the top five.
Yeah. And I actually waited on the airstrip at Newcastle.
Yes. And the entire bill walked off that plane.
All off of one plane? Tina Turner with her entourage,
and this programme is now hailed as her renaissance.
Paul Young, The Tube discovered as a support act.
Yes. We boosted his career. Yeah.
And this was the sort of incredible sort of chemistry that you got
every week, for one and a half hours. And I absolutely adored it.
It was an unmissable programme.
For me, I was very drawn in by the presenters as well.
They lovely Leslie Ash,
who I was absolutely madly in love with as a youngster.
Muriel Gray, who was fantastic, Jools Holland and, of course, Paula Yates.
Andy Kershaw once described the combination of Jools and Paula
as Mr Smug and Mrs Smutty. And it's perfect,
because Jools had this incredible credibility as a musician,
and Paula was the first tabloid spirit on television.
Yes. Great combination. You've obviously got a collection of memorabilia.
Do you have a lot more apart from... This is the tip of the iceberg.
Is it? Right, well, I can see you've got a sweatshirt there.
We've also got a gold disc here that was presented to the show.
Yes. This is from the Housemartins, in fact,
and it's presented to The Tube.
Yes. And I presume, probably, did you get presented with quite a few gold discs?
My pride of place is a platinum disc from Twisted Sister.
Right, OK. Because my booking of them led to them signing to Atlantic the next day.
Oh, really? They were signed on the spot.
So their entire kind of careers fly because they appeared on The Tube.
As soon as this programme finished transmitting,
every phone went in the office and it was A&R,
the talent scouts in London.
Yeah, yeah. I think what you've got here is probably,
given this gold disc and things,
probably £1,500-£2,000 worth of assorted memorabilia.
So I don't know what your entire collection's going to be worth,
but it's not just a monetary thing, it's an historic thing.
It was my life. It's been a great pleasure to talk to you about it.
And to you. Thank you for coming. My pleasure.
Well, a pot that's so full of character, he just makes you smile,
but how does he fit into your life?
Well, we don't like him really, he's a bit miserable, we think.
So where did he come from?
Well, I bought him at a farm sale 35 years ago
and he's stood in the cupboard ever since.
xWell, I have to say, I just think he's wonderful.
I think he really makes you smile.
You think he looks quite miserable, I suppose...
Yes, it is, but, I mean, I've had him so long, he's a friend now.
Well, when I look at him,
intuitively I've got a feeling for where he's from.
Yes. And he's got that feel of the low countries, Belgium,
the Netherlands. Yes.
Who at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century,
were actually making lots of ceramics like this,
lots of pottery like this.
Yes. But normally in a more sort of arts and crafts feel.
Very typical glazes, very typical colours.
Yes. But I've never seen one like this,
with this sort of face in caricature.
So the more I look at him, the more I consider him,
I think he may be a bit of possible propaganda
because we're looking at a date of around 1905 to 1910.
And, of course, that fits in really well with Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Of course, Kaiser Wilhelm II, you know, the great Emperor of Prussia,
the great King of Germany.
Yes. With his Pickelhaube helmet on and he's just got that look.
And actually, funnily enough, by 1918,
Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated from the throne and fled to the Netherlands,
where he lived out the rest of his life.
So are looking at something that's poking a little bit of humour
at this so-called great man? My theory.
I don't know whether anyone else out there thinks any different to me.
But he's really nicely modelled.
Yes, we all love him, really, but he is quite miserable.
Have you got a name for him?
Fred. Fred? Yes. Fred from the shed.
Fred from the shed!
Well, so... Came from a shed.
Fred from the shed or Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Do you remember what you paid for him?
No, because I bought quite a lot of things.
Well, think anyone else looking at him who would enjoy him
and make them smile, as he has me.
Yes? I think they'd probably give you £200-£250 for him.
Oh, very good, yes.
Yes, very good. Well, thank you very much. He's made me smile today.
Good. And he's a great thing. Lovely, thank you. Thank you.
Now one of the great shipping names linked to the time
is obviously the Mauretania.
I've always loved the Mauretania for and number of reasons.
I mean, this is an image,
a print from a well-known painting by Hemy
showing the Mauretania, totally built on the Tyne,
setting off, leaving that river to go into service.
It was a great moment in local history.
And what I love particularly about her
is when she was finally scrapped in the early '30s,
everything was taken apart and she was sold.
And so, if you wanted a teapot,
or the cabin in which you'd spent your honeymoon, you could buy it.
And people did.
And so the Mauretania is all over Britain,
in various ways, and I've often
thought, wouldn't it be great to bring it all together?
But what I'd need is a set of plans,
and I'm looking at them.
So, tell me about them.
OK, so my father, Norman Gilchrist,
worked at Swan Hunter's all his working life.
Started as an apprentice draughtsman,
ended as a project director for the building of Ark Royal.
These plans, as we're aware, were stored at Walker Naval Yard,
not at Swan Hunter's, which some time in the 1970s was closed down.
The whole contents of those drawing office were being thrown out,
just models, plans, everything.
Somebody at the time just said,
we're not going to build another Mauretania, so why do we need these?
It was seen as not important.
There was no sense of history? No.
And my father rescued these plans and when he died,
we found them and discovered what's in front of you.
What do ships mean to you?
Ships have been part of my life from as young as I can remember.
I, as a very young child, attended launches -
Illustrious, Ark Royal, HMS Newcastle. Naval ships?
Naval ships. Yeah.
He gave his whole life to Swan Hunter's,
was awarded an OBE when he retired, and it's just been very much part of
our family history and these are very special in that way.
I mean, what are these?
Well, obviously they're very detailed plans,
they're coloured in watercolour to give information about what the ship
would look like, so it's a practical design.
This is serious stuff, you know, in collecting terms.
It's an amazing thing to have rescued.
If this was the Titanic, I'd be talking, oh, unbelievable sums of money.
Yeah. It doesn't matter.
We're still looking at 10-15, possibly £20,000,
that he pulled out of the skip that day.
When we open that box and unrolled those plans,
that is just priceless, really.
It's a great story and it's really done a credit
to this wonderful ship.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
It's that moment when we look at the changing fortunes
of antiques or collectables for the 40 years
that the Antiques Roadshow has been on air.
You're used to it by now!
So we've got three items here brought along by you, Adam.
One of these has skyrocketed in value in the last 40 years,
one has more or less kept pace with inflation
and one has actually lost value.
Now first of all, what are they?
I mean, this looks like the battleship Potemkin.
What is it?
It's a Victorian bed warmer.
It is made of copper and brass.
It's massive. It is massive, because it's to do with a country house.
They had big beds and it would take two people to lift that, Fiona.
I can believe it!
It says "fill it quite full" on the label on the front,
and it was dragged,
because of its sleek shape it would slip between the sheets.
Like a little torpedo. A little torpedo,
just taking the chill off the bed sheets before you turned into bed.
And this...? Tea urn.
Tea urn, hot water urn,
from the days before electricity,
when you wanted to keep a large quantity
of hot water hot by putting a preheated iron plug
into a slot inside.
And, of course, there's the tap,
so for an hour or two you could draw off hot water
straight into your teapot.
And it's a good sculptural one, dating to 1820, or thereabouts.
And then the pot, the three-legged pot there?
Yeah, the final piece, a different metal. This is made of bronze.
This is the great-grandfather of these two
because this was made in the mid-17th-century.
You'll notice that it's, basically, like a little witches cauldron
which has a handle and is a cooking pot.
The tall legs, with little hoof shaped feet,
are so you could put it straight into a fire
and the fire would heat the base for your stews.
So there's your three choice metal works.
So what should we be looking for, then?
In terms of assessing how the fortunes of these three things have fared
over the last 40 years, what pointers can you give us?
I think you've got to look at the changing fashion for collectables.
People who perhaps want this
would need a large piece of furniture to put it on.
This one is a bed warmer.
I mean, unless you do live in a massive house
with huge four poster beds,
you don't really need anything like that.
You know, something like this would probably appeal to collectors
of early oak, so they want pieces to go
with that olde worlde sort of 17th-century look.
Right, folks, so it's about changing fashions.
Anyone got any ideas?
Oh, hang on, hang on, good - like your style!
I think that's the most valuable.
Right. Because it's bronze, maybe. I love your confidence.
I think that one has stayed the same.
Right, OK. And that one has gone down.
You are a woman who knows her own mind. That's what I think.
Good for you. What does anyone else think?
The same, more or less? Yeah?
Well, who am I to disagree?
So we think that three-legged pot at the end has gone up the most.
I have to say, I completely agree.
This is such a wonderful, crazy object.
This has kept pace with inflation.
And this, it's a bit useless these days, isn't it?
So I agree with you, that this has gone down.
Today I suffer a terrible defeat.
You're absolutely right.
Good, and thanks to you, well done.
Well, talk us through it, then.
OK, the posnet, in 1977... A posnet? Yeah, posnet.
That's what it's called.
P-O-S-N-E-T, worth about £80 in 1977.
Because we know so much more about them and can differentiate them from
the skillets, these are very rare.
This is worth £1,800 today.
That's a huge increase for a very humble looking cooking pot.
One that's kept pace with inflation is the bed warmer.
The bed torpedo. Yeah, the bed torpedo.
It's sculptural, it's to do with a country house, you know,
it's got a lot of social history.
And I mean, who wouldn't want one?
That was again worth £80 in 1977.
Today about £300 would buy it.
So that's stayed about the same in real terms.
But the real sadness is the value of these.
Again, £80 back in '77,
but because these are associated with standing on big sideboards
and, generally, big dining room furniture,
all that is out of fashion.
These, which also need a lot of care and polishing,
worth about £80 today,
which almost seems criminal with the amount of work
that's gone into this piece. So well done, you.
Well done, you!
ALL: Hooray!
Shame on me!
You know, this is one of those moments
where there just isn't enough time.
I had a quick glance
and there's letters here from Churchill, Montgomery,
Anthony Eden. Who were they to and who is he?
They were all to my grandfather,
who was Sir William Strang at the time but became Lord Strang.
He was in the Foreign Office right through his career
and became permanent Undersecretary of State
in the Foreign Office and was very much involved
in the peace settlement at the end of the war.
Right. And negotiations with Stalin and so on.
So he would have met all, I mean just to have...
All of those people, indeed.
That, it's staggering to have that. And kept so badly!
This is just piles! I could literally spend hours,
and that's what you'd need to do.
With something like this, you need to spend hours going through it,
even to have a personalised photograph signed by Montgomery,
with an affectionate note. Yeah. I saw there's another one.
Yes. An affectionate note from Churchill just at the bottom.
They didn't have to do that,
so he was obviously not just high in position
but highly thought of, as well.
He was one of Montgomery's advisers,
personal advisers in the war.
Wow, wow. So quite close to him.
I love it, and this, it must mean a huge amount to your family?
Yes. Well, there is really,
largely, just me left and I have boxfuls of it at home.
This was just a small selection.
OK. Of the things that I thought were probably most interesting.
Sure. So what are you going to do with it?
Erm, I'm not entirely sure what I should do with it.
A lot of it I would like to spend more time reading
and getting to know.
Quite a lot of his papers have already been lodged with the University of Cambridge.
I think there are probably more things that should go there.
Sure. But it's knowing which things should and which things shouldn't.
Sure. I think that's exactly right.
These are important.
They're important to our history as a country, and your family.
They need looking after.
This isn't the best way to conserve them. No!
There is value here.
You've got a personal letter, signed by Churchill,
with that little note at the bottom.
Easily £1,000, if not £1,500.
I think this is fabulous, having a signed Montgomery photograph.
Everyone knows him and he's still as popular
and as collected as he ever was.
£2,000-£3,000.
Wow. On that. Wow.
Easily on this table here, £7,000-£10,000.
Wow.
So worth looking after!
It is. And it's a fabulous archive.
Thank you. I wish I had more time, thank you.
Thank you.
If I had to design anything ingenious and beautiful in my life,
it would be this chess set.
I went to art school and I loved trying to design things like this.
How did it come to be in your possession, this amazing object?
Well, this is a commemorative chess set from 1972.
The Fischer-Spassky World Championship.
Spassky was the world champion, Soviet Union.
Fischer was the challenger from the United States.
And Fisher beat him, didn't he?
That's correct, and it all happened in Iceland.
And these sets went on sale via the Sunday Times.
My parents bought this one.
Wow. And it's found its way to me.
Well, Cy Endfield, the designer of this ingenious thing was an American.
I just think they're extraordinary.
You know what they're made of, don't you?
I've got a feeling I know, but you tell me.
Well, silver and silver gilt.
OK. On perspex rods.
It was an ingenious way of creating a portable chess set
but the pieces were the right size.
I believe there were 650 of this one, actually,
and 300 were hallmarked and sold in England.
Yeah. It's just a masterpiece, in every way, I think.
It's beautiful to look at, it's futuristic, it's modern,
it's worthy of the designs of the best 20th-century designers.
It looks Scandinavian, actually.
You know, it could be Arne Jacobsen or somebody like that.
But it's this guy, who was a polymath, I believe.
He was a, I think was a film director, a magician, an inventor.
Anyway, he made this, what I think is a unique thing
and it's something I would so like to own.
I can't tell you! Yeah. It's right up my street.
Is it a thing you've ever had valued? I've never had it valued.
I think my parents paid £50 for it in 1972,
but no idea what it's worth now.
Today, I think it would easily make £2,000.
Wow. Fantastic.
Thank you very much.
It's not the most exciting thing I've ever seen on the Roadshow.
It seems to be a Kriegsmarine sailor's knife.
You've brought in so there must be something more to it?
Yes, it's the story that lies behind it, really.
This is my Uncle Bill
and he was a leading torpedo man on the Dorsetshire.
Well, that's not his knife. That is not his knife.
The knife actually belongs to a chap called Peter Muller
and that's Peter Muller there.
This is a photograph taken from a 1943 POW camp in Canada.
Right. And they came together, as it were,
on the 27th of May, 1941,
when the Dorsetshire was tasked with picking up the survivors
from the Bismarck after the sinking.
So, Herr Muller was on Bismarck?
He was, he was a mechanic on the Bismarck.
Herr Muller was a very lucky man,
because Bismarck had a crew of 2,200.
They got 111 off.
That's right, and the Dorsetshire picked up 86 of them.
When you consider the amount of effort...
..they used to get Bismarck, because Bismarck had just sunk Hood.
Indeed. The pride of the British Navy, they wanted Bismarck,
they wanted it really badly.
Yes, that's right.
They were also terrified.
It was an amazing ship, it was brand spanking new.
It was one of the most powerful ships going
and it was going to be one of the Channel Raiders,
it was going to cause absolute mayhem.
Yeah. You still haven't explained to me
how your uncle got Herr Muller's knife.
Well, I assume that having got the survivors on board the
Dorsetshire, that they had to be divested of anything that could do
anybody any harm, because officially by then, of course, they were POWs.
At some point,
my uncle Bill acquired the knife,
either directly or indirectly.
Trophy of war I think would be the nice...
A spoil for war. Yes, that's right.
It's not in the most brilliant of conditions.
Would you like to explain that to me, as well?
Ah, well, yes.
My uncle Bill used to use it to cut and lay lino.
Oh, good! But it's still nice.
I believe you're trying to find out...family?
Assuming that Peter Muller had a family, before or after the war,
there are, I guess, children and grandchildren around
who would not have been around at all
had it not been for what happened that day,
and that knife really represents what happened that day.
So what I'd like to be able to do
is to be able to repatriate the knife to the Muller family,
because at the moment the knife simply sits
in my bedside drawer. Yeah.
At home, and it would be of more significance
and more importance to them than it is to me.
That's a really nice gesture.
Had you, sort of, addressed values?
As a Kriegsmarine sailor's knife...
Yeah. There's an awful lot of them.
Probably £60-£80.
Right. OK.
This is a sailor's knife that we can categorically prove
came from Bismarck. Correct.
Because of that fact, I could see that making between £400-£600.
Wow, right. That's great, thank you.
Well, what two fantastic dolls you've brought for me today.
What can you tell me about them?
I've had them about three years.
They've been in a basket in my bedroom.
It was from a lady's house that we did a house clearance for her
and I bought some stuff off the estate.
So not really much more than that.
So don't know anything about them at all? Not really.
Well, this one, this little clown doll, it's actually...
The head is by a German company called Simon & Halbig.
Now what happened is you were able to buy the bisque heads and various
companies were making up bodies for all sorts of different dolls.
It was almost like a cottage industry.
Now, I think judging by the costume on it,
it was probably made up in France.
So even though we've got a German head,
I think the doll itself is probably French.
And obviously it's a little jester, and I love this little jester's hat
with the little bell on the end.
It's a gorgeous thing, dating from about 1905.
Now this one, with a similar sort of date.
The head's not marked on it but it's certainly a German manufacturer.
Right. Again, a bisque head,
lovely little glass eyes, and it's what's known as a marotte doll.
Right. Basically, a marotte is like a jester stick, basically.
So it's a little jester doll.
Now, it would have had bells on the ends and it also would have had
a little, originally had a little hat which sadly's gone missing.
But they're lovely things.
Shall I demonstrate it? Please.
There you go.
So it's got a music box.
Fantastic. This one, again, has a very interesting action.
If you want to show it to me.
What I particularly like about that is the way the eyes close
and the head moves at the same time.
But they're fabulous things.
This one obviously a little bit more play worn because the condition
is not so marvellous on it,
but the music box does actually still work on it,
which is brilliant.
This one's in much better condition,
doesn't look like it's ever really been played with very much.
Quite collectable.
A little doll like that would be around £150-£200,
maybe £200-£300 on this one.
Thank you. That's really surprising.
Led Zeppelin. Yeah. Four albums, who were the names on this?
John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones.
That's the Rolling Stones in the green room, yeah.
So, wow, what a fantastic collection.
How did you come about them?
Well, I used to work at the City Hall in Newcastle
as a steward from 1970 for about 20 years
and I used to be able to get backstage.
Let's look a little bit at prices.
Rolling Stones, £500-£600.
£500 an album - you've got £3,000 on the table here.
Used to get 17 and six a night.
17 and six a night, it's paid off in the long-run.
It certainly has, yeah.
I've been doing the Roadshow about 12 years now
and this is the first time this form of glass decoration has come in.
So, first off, thanks for bringing them in
because it gives me a chance to develop this and examine it.
But before I launch off, tell them about us in your life.
I know my mum's had them for over 50 years
and they were passed to her by her great aunt Edith.
She told my mum to take real good care of them,
and they've been in a box ever since in the back of a cupboard.
And only when I got the bottles out again
out of the cupboard and I looked at the names,
I saw the names matched on the chart of the family history.
So these two people are my mother's great-great-grandparents.
James Bowness, who was born in 1819,
and Mary Bowness, his wife,
she was previously called Fletcher,
who was born in Robin Hood's Bay in 1822.
And when were they married-ish?
I've no idea, I haven't got that far.
Because I think these are to commemorate their wedding.
A wedding. So what's interesting about them is it's called chip work.
So what you start with here are two German hock bottles,
German white wine.
You drink the hooch that's in them and then you chuck 'em,
because they're empty wine bottles, how much are they worth?
Well, if you're poor, then they could be worth quite a lot,
because of the added work done to them.
So what you're going to do is turn something of no value
into something special by...
..holding it between your knees and getting a hammer and a nail,
and you hold the nail in where you want to fracture the surface of the
glass and you hit it with a hammer.
And you hit it again, and then you hit it again, and you hit it again,
and you hit again, and you hit it again,
and you hit it 87 million times...
Wow. ..to build up pictures like that.
And here is a church that you know, what is it?
It's Grasmere Church.
And here we have?
That is the old Sunderland bridge, before the current one.
So what we have here are two valueless objects
that started life just as wine bottles,
that someone who's spent dozens of hours bashing
with a hammer and nail, which is almost sort of beyond imagination,
to create two little gems of folk art.
So two bits of junk turned into treasures.
Four, six...
£600-£800 the pair.
And I hope you're surprised by that!
Yeah, I am actually, yeah.
If there's one thing I would like to have seen today in Newcastle,
is a very fine marine by John Wilson Carmichael
and you certainly come in with one today. It's absolutely fantastic.
So how long have you had this?
Well, my husband bought it.
He bought it at auction a few years ago.
He didn't go there to buy the painting,
but my husband's a Carmichael
and, of course, we knew that he was a local painter, but beyond that,
we didn't really know anything at all about him or his history.
Well, in my world of marine painters, he's one of the best,
and in the North East he's so well-known.
He went to sea and he has a great understanding of the sea.
When you look at this picture,
you almost need your seasick pills to look at it!
Yeah, you do. But, I mean, the detail on here, it's fantastic,
with the fishermen there.
And then you got the name, Philly No.1.
John Wilson Carmichael painted both in oils and watercolours
and this is painted in oil.
When you look at this,
you see the technique of the rough sea and the foam here.
You've got everything going on.
I see it's signed down here, JW Carmichael, 1857.
Now, he dies in 1868, so this was towards the end of his life,
but it's got everything I'd want in one of his pictures, it's fantastic.
Even the original frame.
These aren't as popular as they were perhaps in the 1980s or early '90s,
but I think this is a very, very good example.
I suppose if it came up for sale,
I'm going to say it's certainly worth £4,000-£6,000.
Wow, that's amazing.
Fantastic. Because it's a very good example.
I love it even more now!
So what I find slightly creepy about this clock is one the thing
that everyone, of course, would look at.
Yes. Which are these extraordinary eyes that go backwards and forwards
and backwards and forwards.
Was this a clock that you had when you were younger?
Yes, it's been in the family for as long as I can remember.
Did you find it slightly creepy?
I did. I remember it sitting in my grandmother's front parlour,
the really weren't allowed to go into, except on special occasions.
That makes it worse! But when you did and saw the clock and the eyes
following you, it was fascinating but slightly uneasy as well.
Do you know much about it?
No, nothing at all, except I know it was purchased in Plymouth,
but it's not a local clock even a British clock, as far as I know.
OK. One interesting thing I did discover is that there's
a clock seller's name on the back of Ruerer,
and the family apparently had jewellers and clocksmith shops
in Plymouth from the 1870s onwards,
but I believe they were all destroyed in the Blitz
in the Second World War.
Right. So I imagine it came into the family sometime before
the Second World War. Yes.
And has been with as ever since. OK.
Right, well there is lots to say about it,
that's the great thing about it.
That's why we're here now.
It's German, South German.
Ah, right. The case is made of walnut, OK,
and the dial has this wonderful feature of this,
let's say she's Ottoman, let's say.
So her eyes are attached to the pendulum,
which is why as the pendulum swings, her eyes move,
but it also has the added feature of the cuckoo in here,
which is great fun. It's not working terribly well,
but shall we turn it round
and then we can hopefully see a little bit more?
Because, in actual fact,
I think the back is almost more interesting than the front.
So we've got the pendulum ticking backwards and forwards,
and this rather macabre sight of these two orbs at the top here,
which make the orbs turn backwards and forwards.
Then the other feature to point out are the bellows.
So the bellows here are attached to the pipes
and when we lift the bellows, they make a note and it's cuck-oo.
You can just hear it. Cuck-oo.
That's regulated by the hour strike.
Yes. And if we let this off...
CLOCKWORK WHIRS AND CUCKOOS
So there it is, and that's what happens.
But, actually, it's not bad.
Very often these bellows are in a much worse condition than that.
Well I'm really pleased to hear that sound,
because I haven't heard the cuckoo for 30 years.
They've come down a little bit in value,
as have a lot of bits of furniture,
but today, at auction, I would have thought that it would sell
for between £1,500-£2,000.
Well, that's really interesting to know.
The value is of no concern to us because it's a family heirloom,
but it's certainly worth looking after, which we will.
You three ladies are just the women I need to tell me about a man
of mystery, who is this man here, George Kenyon, your grandfather.
Yes. Your father, the architect of this extraordinary building.
But when I was doing some research to try and find out more about it,
I could find out almost nothing about him.
No, he's very, very little-known, which is why I contacted the show.
I saw the Civic Centre come up on the list of places
and I thought it was an amazing opportunity to come
and tell everybody about him,
because not many people could answer the question,
even here in Newcastle, who was the architect?
So there was a competition to see who would...
Which architect would get the prize
of building this new modernist Civic Centre in the heart of Newcastle.
Your father won that competition, so what can you tell me about him?
As a young man, he did some work on the Empire State Building.
You could see him drawing away, he would say, "What do you think?"
It's a gift, I suppose,
and he picked up things through his life and career.
He had a set idea in his head and this was the result.
Were you aware of how important and how different it was?
I always admired him because he was my father,
but you don't realise when you're young
exactly what's happening around you, really.
But it's nice to have this building now that he's not here.
In the family we call it grandpop's office.
The whole building,
he designed everything from the chandeliers to the carpets.
Then what happened in his life?
Did he then carry on and do other buildings?
Really, there's so little known about him.
I'm afraid not, because ill-health overtook him,
unfortunately, and he had to retire early.
So this is taken on the opening day of the building?
Yes. So a big smile of relief, I should think, as well as pride.
Yes. So here you are reunited, back again in grandpop's office.
Grandpop's office, yeah.
How does it feel to be back here?
Oh, I love it. It's very special, I think, very special,
because it our connection to him,
and it's lovely to have something like that.
We're very lucky.
A humble HB pencil. I mean, you wouldn't think
this would be worth two seconds of camera time, would you?
But this pencil is a pencil that would have been given
to RAF pilots during the war.
It came into my family through a friend of my mum's.
I understand they were made during the World War II,
during the night-time when the factory was closed,
as a top-secret instruction from the government.
This is a cracking little object,
because concealed inside this pencil is a map like this,
and here we have a little tissue paper map
and this one is a map of part of Germany, and also, not only that,
there is also a compass concealed inside the end of it.
I have no doubt that a collector would probably pay
£300-£400 for this pencil, because it's such a rare survivor.
It's very interesting little thing.
Thank you for bringing it along.
Thank you.
I've been doing the Roadshow for 32 years, I think,
and I can honestly say
I have never seen as fine a crossbow as this in all that time.
We don't see very many crossbows,
we certainly don't see ones that are as nice as this.
Really?
Where did you get it from? It's from my wife's side of the family.
It belonged originally to her great uncle, who gave it to her father.
Her father loved the crossbow but her mother hated it.
One day he came back from work
to find it next to the dustbin ready for collection,
along with another few odds and ends.
So he rescued it, yeah, and said to me,
"Look, if you put it up in the house and display it, you can have it,"
and it's been in my house for 45 years.
I think the story of that being thrown out is quite one of the most
appalling tales I've ever heard!
How old do you think it is?
Well, I think Johnny had it for about 20 years,
John had it maybe 20 years, I've had it 45 years,
so...maybe 85-100?
I think you need to add quite a good bit onto that, at least until 1720.
Wow. But it is very,
very certainly very early 18th-century
and it is truly, truly lovely.
Where do you think it comes from?
I don't know where it comes from but I've seen something similar.
I was in eastern Germany just after the Wall came down
and at a museum in Gustrau, in eastern Germany,
there was a crossbow on display
and the top end of it was virtually identical.
You're right on the money.
I think it's Saxon,
and that is, Saxony is well in the east of Germany.
Right. It's a real hunting crossbow.
Right. And it was intended for use on large deer,
but especially on the wild boar, because it is very, very powerful.
Yeah. The iron bow part, or the prod, as it's known as,
you would need mechanical means to span that, to actually bend it back.
Yeah. And then you would pull it back,
so that the string dropped into that notch there.
Yeah. What do you think it's worth?
Well, Simon and I had a discussion about that and I said about,
I don't know, about 250.
You see very few of them.
If you put this into a major auction house,
it would go in that catalogue and continental buyers
would flock to have a go at it.
I think on a very good day, it would make £5,000.
Wow. Just wonderful.
That's lovely.
This is a pencil sketch.
It's of a man walking his dogs and it's signed LS Lowry.
But I see here that he's dedicated it to Bob and Edith.
Now, who were Bob and Edith?
Bob was my father and Edith's obviously my mother.
My father was a bus driver.
Parked the bus at the terminus and there was a gentleman sitting
on the bench next to the bus stops.
As the conversation went on with the old chap, he said to him,
"I think I know who you are".
And he said, "So who do you think I am?"
He said, "I think you're Mr Lowry, the painter, you know".
He said, "You're correct."
So they had a nice conversation.
He said, "My wife's never going to believe this."
He said, "Well, we'll have to do something about that."
He said, "Have you got any paper on you?"
My dad said, "Well, I've got another work docket, that's a spare one".
He said, "Would you like a little sketch?"
My dad said, "Yeah, that would be really nice, thanks."
So he just did that little quick sketch.
Do you mind if we unframe the picture to have a look at that?
No, not at all, that would be fine.
Now, what do we have? Tyneside Passenger Transport Executive,
Sunderland Corporation.
That's brilliant!
Gosh. So do you remember what your mother said?
He was right, she didn't believe him!
And how old's Edith today?
My mum's 95.
She's 95? Yeah, she's 95 now and doing very well, you know.
So what do you think she's going to say when you go home today
and you tell her that this little drawing
on your dad's old docket is probably worth about £4,000-£6,000?
Gosh! Gosh, I'm absolutely amazed.
She'll be amazed, she really will be.
Mr Hawthornthwaite's Adventures Among the Mormons,
published in Manchester in 1857.
My question is, who is Mr Hawthornthwaite,
who was he on what was he doing among the Mormons?
He was Mr Samuel Hawthornthwaite.
He was my great-great-grandfather.
He was British, he came from Manchester.
He actually ended up in Newcastle.
He was an elder in the Mormons for eight years.
As I understand it, the Mormons, although
the church was founded in the United States,
they sent missionaries back to Britain
to recruit new members for Salt Lake City? Yes.
So do you know how Mr Hawthornthwaite
became involved with the Mormons in the first place?
I think he was just recruited into the Mormons himself
and then started recruiting other people into it.
I mean, the Mormons are an interesting group of people,
radical Christian sect.
Yes. But the key thing is that they set up a church in Salt Lake City.
Yes. So this larger book, it's very clear what it is,
it's the route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley.
So in a way, it's a travel account,
perhaps a guide for how to get to Salt Lake City,
which is no mean thing in 1855.
I imagine he would have been looking at it very closely
when he was planning his journey.
Oh, yes, I should think so.
Let's look at the map in the back.
Really quite an early map of parts of the United States
which were not very clearly mapped before this.
But here we've got a very clear route across the States, Utah,
into.. Where is Salt Lake City?
We're here. A massive journey,
an unbelievable journey to have undertaken.
Do you think he was glad he made the journey?
He went all the way to Salt Lake City to join,
or to be with the church that he'd chosen, and then came back?
He came back and recruited people to go to Salt Lake City
and there seemed to be some Americans came over and stayed
and, unfortunately,
he committed adultery within my great-great-grandfather's house
and he was absolutely furious.
So he decided to resign from the Mormons
and he actually wrote this and printed this little book
after he'd made a speech at the Mechanics Hall
in Manchester, against the Mormons.
He was also, I think, upset about what was happening
over in Salt Lake City and he wanted to warn people
about going to Salt Lake City.
So, by 1857, he very firmly was not a Mormon?
Yes. Well, let's think a little bit about value.
These are nice books, they're not particularly grand books,
not particularly good-looking books, if I'm completely honest,
but books related to the Mormons are very collectable.
Oh. There will be buyers in America who would be extremely interested to
get these back to the United States.
This is a very important map of parts of the States of America.
Right. To me looks like a very simple straightforward map,
but as a collector of Americana,
I think I would be very excited to find that.
Oh, right. I would be very happy to put a figure of £8,000-£10,000
on these two books. Wow!
Wow!
Gosh. Whoo!
And I brought them in on the Metro, as well!
Remember we showed you this knife earlier in the programme,
taken from a German sailor in the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941?
As you heard, the owner would like to return it
to the family of the man to whom this originally belonged,
Peter Muller.
So if you know how to get in touch with him
and return this knife to where it came from,
we'd love to help in that.
So get in touch with us at the Antiques Roadshow.
Who knows where the story will take us...
Until next time, bye-bye.