An Antiques Roadshow guest disagreed with an expert’s enormous five-figure valuation of a 100-year-old item, labelling the item ‘priceless’.
Presenting a portrait bust sculpture that had been carved by her mother, the guest wowed expert evaluator Ronnie Archer-Morgan.
He said: ‘I absolutely love this portrait bust. I think it’s an amazing, skillful piece of work. I mean, it’s a really beautiful sculpture. You’ve got to tell me all about this’.
Explaining the story behind the striking piece of art, the guest replied: ‘It was carved by my mother out of teak [wood] when she was teaching in South Africa at a school in about 1925, she was there quite a few years.
‘She was there as a young woman about 23, to set up a school of sculpture and modelling at the invitation of the director of the Slade School of Art in London.’
An Antiques Roadshow guest disagreed with an expert’s enormous five-figure valuation of a 100-year-old item, labelling the item as ‘priceless’
Presenting a portrait bust sculpture that had been carved by her mother, the guest wowed expert evaluator Ronnie Archer-Morgan
Evidently impressed, Ronnie replied: ‘Slade was the epicentre of art at the time. She would have studied all the greats to come up with this. She is a really brilliant sculpturist.
Antiques Roadshow expert Ronnie praised the guest’s mother, who was called Margaret and known as Peggy.
Predicting that ‘people would go crazy’ for the piece, he said tthe item could fetch between £5,000 and £10,000 if it went on sale at an auction.
However, the guest instantly suggested the sculpture was ‘priceless’ and belonged in a museum instead of being sold.
She said: ‘I think it’s such a priceless in its own way to be honest’ adding: ‘I feel it isn’t a domestic piece, it should be in the public domain’.
Although Ronnie and the guest appeared to disagree on the potential value of the item, the former was still full of praise for how it was expertly crafted, adding: ‘This is over-brimming with suppressed energy and power that sounds like an oxymoron. But she must have sat with the sitter, just to get to know him and to try and understand him and get inside his head and feel about who he was.
‘We have to remember that this was done in South Africa at a time where people that look like him were living in this world of suppression. This is the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of those awful times.’
He continued: ‘We’ve still got the excellence of your mother, here in this sculpture. I love the way she’s done his tight curls on his head, she’s left what we call the ads marks as the texture of his hair.’
Giving his thoughts on the piece, Ronnie said: ‘I absolutely love this portrait bust. I think it’s an amazing, skilful piece of work. I mean, it’s a really beautiful sculpture’
The guest instantly suggested the sculpture was ‘priceless’ and belonged in a museum instead of being sold
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