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Mother and daughter team Kimberly and Kalli Boone are pleased with what they've learned about the collection of African tribal art they salvaged from an abandoned storage locker, a' la Storage Wars.
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Attendees await their turn to have treasures appraised by Miller Gaffney, who's assisted by her mother, Ranetta.
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A neat closeup of the handle of the walking cane owned by Mary Briggs of Sumter of her ancestor, John Peter Richardson, governor of South Carolina from 1886 to 1890.
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Jerry Sanders and his wife traveled the country to acquire signatures of country music legends that are now proudly displayed in a 56-panel quilt his wife made.
“Every person who comes here has a story,” Dawn Corley explains to me from behind a blue-skirted table in the S.C. State Museum’s Lipscomb Gallery.
A sign next to her announces her title—The Charleston Silver Lady—and her appraisal expertise—silver and estate jewelry. She is waiting for her first appointment of the day and thinking for a moment about the possibility of an exciting find here at the Museum Road Show, a local take-off on the popular PBS television program, Antiques Roadshow.
“In all honesty, every fabulous thing that has been brought to me has been brought in a BI-LO or Piggly Wiggly grocery bag,” she says.
As if on cue, I hold up my brown Piggly Wiggly paper grocery bag, which contains my great-grandfather’s 1893 World’s Fair souvenir cup. The small red tumbler is my only significant family heirloom, but I doubt it is worth much money—$20 or $30, maybe—about as much as the cost of the appraisal ticket.
Still, here I am on a rainy Saturday afternoon in January, standing in line with people from all over the state, each of us clutching our prized items. There are older couples carrying plates and books, mothers and daughters wheeling in bubble-wrapped paintings on handcarts, and serious minded collectors bearing antique swords, vases, pottery and jewelry. Like many of them, I have some idea of my item’s value, but I am driven by one optimistic thought—that I might, truly, have a priceless treasure on my hands.
Indeed, we all seem to have the same nervous look of people whose fortunes could go either way. And we all seem to arrive with some knowledge about how the event should proceed, having seen not only Antiques Roadshow, but also the newly popular explosion of similar television programs—Storage Wars, American Pickers, Auction Hunters, Pawn Stars, and, yes, even Hoarders.
Take, for instance, Kimberly and Kalli Boone, a mother and daughter from Lexington, who have salvaged two large plastic containers of African tribal art from an unclaimed storage unit, just like they do in Storage Wars. The first piece they show me is a hand-sewn doll that Kimberly believes was made by an African mother for her son.
“I think the mother’s son graduated into his manhood, and it’s like she’s lost her son,” Kimberly says, referring to the long black thread of tears that hang down from the doll.
We are seated in the waiting area at the Fine and Decorative Arts table, where Miller Gaffney—a striking, well-dressed blonde who looks like she has stepped right off the plane from Sotheby’s in New York—carefully inspects each piece brought to her, turning occasionally to her laptop before offering estimated values. I learn later that Gaffney is, indeed, a graduate of Sotheby’s Institute of Art and a licensed appraiser, who founded Miller Gaffney Art Advisory in 2006. Hers is the most popular table at the event, with people bringing in everything from rocking chairs and Daum Nancy vases to Chinese ivory figurines, champagne glasses and beautiful plates made out of “poor man’s Tiffany.”
When it’s their turn with Gaffney, the Boones hit the jackpot. The smallest mask alone is estimated to be worth more than $1,000, and the entire collection is worth upwards of $2,500, much more than the price of the storage unit. But before they can be sure, Gaffney recommends them to a specialist. If they can identify the actual tribe, the value will likely go up.
“So we’re just hanging onto it all until then,” Kimberly Boone says, putting away a fertility statue and a ceremonial straw mask.
With time to kill before my appointment with Gaffney, I wander the floor, drawn to tables whenever the hushed museum-speak suddenly grows a little louder, a sure sign of an interesting find.
At Dawn Corley’s table, Mary Boone (no relation to Kimberly and Kalli), a resident of Manning and a member of Black River Electric Cooperative, has created a stir with her tarnished Spelter water pitcher that a distant relative unearthed near the family home in Rowesville. It’s been passed down through the generations, and Boone received it when she was a child.
Until recently, she thought it was just an old coffee pot, and so for the last 14 years has kept it on a grate in the fireplace. It certainly wasn’t the reason she and her husband bought their appraisal tickets—they had a lithograph, a piece of pottery, and a goblet to be examined—but they needed a fourth item, and she grabbed the pitcher on a whim as they headed out the door. It could use a good polish—Corley explains that the base metal intermingled with the soil—but the water pitcher is a relic from before the Civil War and worth about $1,200.
Mary Boone is pleasantly shocked by the appraisal, but she already knows that she isn’t going to sell the pitcher. It’s been in her family far too long, and she has a new appreciation for what it must have meant to her ancestors. “I think how proud they must have been to own it,” she says.
In fact, that seems to be one of the unifying narratives at the Road Show. Most people are here out of sheer curiosity—not to sell their pieces, but to be able to tell the next generation how much their inheritance is worth.
One of the most delightful finds, for instance, comes from Betsy Hobgood Winkler, of Winnsboro, whose intact and well-fused buttermilk pitcher is such an outstanding example of Edgefield pottery that expert Steve Ferrell is nearly giddy. He estimates it was made in 1872 and pronounces it one of the best examples he has seen in a long time—worth anywhere from $8,000 to $12,000. Five or more years ago, he quickly adds, it might have fetched around $25,000. The value of antiques, after all, is entirely dependent on the markets.
But, like so many others at the event, Betsy Winkler doesn’t intend to sell her buttermilk pitcher at any price. “I knew it had some value,” she says. “But the value of it is not as important as the validity of it.”
Just before the lunch break, I take a seat on a numbered, red-cushioned chair and wait for my turn with Miller Gaffney. The lady ahead of me, Mary Briggs of Sumter, is a hard act to follow. She has brought along cane—a family heirloom from her ancestor John Peter Richardson, the governor of South Carolina from 1886 to 1890.
“It should be in a museum. It’s a treasure,” says Ranetta Gaffney, who is working alongside her daughter.
When it’s time for me to unveil my World’s Fair cup, I’m feeling more than a little nervous. I take it out from the Piggly Wiggly grocery bag, pull off the Crown Royal cloth bag and unwrap the tissue paper. I feel the need to preface it with the admission that I know it isn’t worth much, unlike the silver Tiffany bowl I should have brought.
Miller Gaffney smiles warmly.
“Well, let us see what it’s worth anyways,” she says, taking the glass and turning it to read the cursive inscription: Henry Hensel, World’s Fair, 1893. She doesn’t point at it with a wand, like I’ve seen them do on Antiques Roadshow, but she peers into her laptop, pecking away at the keyboard for a moment. Her mother turns it over and looks at the ridged bottom.
“It’s something of sentimental value. It’s nice cranberry glass,” Miller Gaffney offers, looking up from her screen, but I can see her smile fade into an expression of sympathy. I immediately want to offer context—that the World’s Fair of 1893 is where they first exhibited the Ferris Wheel, that my sister will inherit the silver Tiffany bowl and I will only get this cup—as if telling these parts of my story will somehow increase the value.
“I’m thinking maybe fifteen, twenty dollars,” Gaffney says apologetically. “Maybe.”
Nevertheless, it occurs to me that there are the objects we sell, the objects we display, the objects we use better, the objects we carry with us for the stories they allow us to tell. And who better to prove this point at the Road Show than Jerry Sanders, of South Congaree.
Sanders, a member for more than 40 years of Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative, brought in a handmade quilt with the signatures of country music legends on each of 56 white patches. His wife made it. They conceived of the idea in Nashville, and traveled the country to concert meet and-greets to get the signatures of Roy Acuff, Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Carl Perkins (“Who everybody should know wrote ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ before Elvis”), and many others.
“It took over four or five years to make. Anywhere we’d go, like the doctor’s office or something, she’d work on it,” Sanders says proudly.
But he isn’t here to have it appraised. He just happened to be driving near the museum, stumbled on the Road Show, and brought the quilt inside because he wanted to show it off to anyone who would care to listen.
Likewise, I’d already decided that it was time to take my World’s Fair cup from the display shelf and start drinking from it. Because now, if anyone asks or cares to listen, I have my own story to tell.
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Get There
The Summer Edition of the Museum Road Show will take place in July at the State Museum in Columbia. For details, visit scmuseum.org or call (803) 898-4952.
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Find out what other visitors learned about their treasures in "What's it worth to you?"