The lady whipped out of her bag this rather wonky white plate. Looks very unpromising but when you turn it around, and you see the painting on the plate, you realize this is very special. Now, the first thing is, this was probably decorated not at meissen. It was made at meissen and then almost certainly it was decorated outside. It is an exquisitely painted image. The quality that comes out of meissen is princely. There was something very specific about the color scheme of this plate. If you look closely at it, heres red, black and green. And this is a scheme we associate with one particular painter. And i told her this was almost certainly from the workshops of a man called meyer, who painted in the town of presnitz. Its almost an extraordinary conundrum that in the first phases of a new art within a few years it reaches the height that it never reaches in decades or even centuries afterwards. So were looking at pcelain painting, already by 1725, as good as it will ever get. There is one of the best bits of painting in miniature on the plate that you will ever see on a ceramic surface. My mother lived in jersey, and she had a very great friend called sylvia macleod. And she was the widow of the macleod of macleod of that time and when she left to be put into a nursing home nearer her children, she gave my mother that as a so it was a fond gift. Yes. Thats an interesting background. It would be interesting to trace that further back. There was, of course a lot of trade between scotland and the continent. After the program was shown, we got a very excited letter from a lady who made a connection with the macleod family, through whom this plate had come, to bonnie prince charlie. She suggested that the portrait of the man on horseback was actually none other than bonnie prince charlie. Now, i would dearly love that to have been the case because i work here at the foundling museum where we have william hogarths very great painting, the march to finchley, which shows the guards marching north to engage with bonnie prince charlies army. So i would love that to be the case but the fact is, the plate is just not quite the right period and besides, gentlemen of the 18th century, they do tend to look rather similar. All i can say is that to a porcelain collector today, that is a little nugget. Whats it worth . Oh, i dont know. If you wanted to buy one of these in a london auction you would probably have to spend somewhere between £4,000 and £5,000 for it. Oh. Thats a lot for a plate, isnt it . Its a little trophy. Well, you know, i only just stopped the cat jumping into the china cupboard the day before yesterday. And now, the china cupboard is shut. So that. Have you thought of budgerie guards . Ive got a parrot. On the roadshow we dont need things to be really very old or anything. For example, those two pictures of pubs that i saw at Bodnant Garden. They were fascinating. I wasnt born when these pictures were painted. This is 1950s pub london, isnt it . Actually, you can almost smell the beer. You can almost feel your fingers getting stuck to that drab, sticky canter. No offense, madame to your cleaning skills. My first thought is, my god, these are brown. The color is sort of an old pint of mild or something. But then, when i looked more closely into them i could see the characterization of the people in it was really colorful. But above all, easily the most interesting pictures i saw all year. Theyre by leslie cole. Signed down there. Leslie cole. Do you know much about him . Not a lot. He was born in swindon, i think. 1910 and was a war artist or part of the war artists in the Second World War. And a very celebrated one, too. The Imperial War Museum has got a lot of his work. Leslie cole really is known for his war paintings. He had an incredible Second World War. He went out with the Royal Marines to europe, i think with the dday landings and covered that and he was in the middle east, and he was all over africa. I think he went to greece and italy. So he covered an awful lot of ground. But he isnt really considered to have done anything terribly interesting after the war. These pictures, i think, prove that wrong. Weve had them for probably, 30 years or more now. And we sit and look at them during our mealtime and often discuss the subject matter and the various characters that we see in the pictures. Can we try that . Shes great, isnt she . How old is she . Shes, what, in her early 30s, would you say . Yes, yes. Shes quite pretty. Doesnt look happy, though. The owners were terrific. First of all they were people who so obviously loved their pictures but more importantly in a way theyd really thought about them. Theyd got right into them and imagined the lives of all the characters in them, and were chatty about it. I just really thought that they responded terribly well, and we were able to have a genuine and fluent conversation about the pictures in front of the camera. The other interesting thing is this piece of screen that theyve got down the counter here. Pubs of this era there was this segregation between the various people and this would be. Between the saloon bar and the public bar . So that was the public bar. This side will be an extra penny on your pint. The posh side. The posh side. Thats very interesting, because these paintings come out of the euston road tradition, and the euston road school was very interested in honest subjects of everyday life. And actually, there were quite a lot of socialists in it, and they were much more concerned with the working man than they were with the posher side of things and the saloon bar. So its very appropriate that it should be the public bar. Its in a great tradition of paintings of cafes or bars. Its very much like manets painting of the bar at the folies bergere. Did you buy them . They were bought at a market in liverpool which was during the 1960s i think, for old money seven shillings and sixpence. And what do you think theyre worth now . I havent a clue to be quite honest. Their familiarity with their paintings and their deep love of them, the comfort that they had with them meets my enthusiasm for them cause i hadnt seen them before then, of course. I just thought they were wonderful. And the heat of that meeting the cool of their familiarity kind of climaxes in the value which doesnt impress them monetarily but it does put a measure on what we think of them. Their Human Interest to us today. Well, put it this way. You could drink an awful lot of pints of beer with the value of these pictures now, i really think. People are after this kind of gritty realism now. Id be amazed if they went for less than £6,000 each. Thats amazing. Really amazed if they went for less. Thats quite something. That day at Bodnant Garden proved to be rich territory. Our ceramics expert, david battie found himself face to face with a familiar object which, at first, had him mystified. And then it all came rushing back. You see, when davids not at the roadshow he loves nothing more than surfing the net. The internet intrigues me for a whole raft of reasons. I love the fact that its a completely new market. I came up for 35 years in auctions. Real auctions. And now, suddenly, people are sitting in their own home, clicking away at a keyboard, putting up objects which are being put on not by professional cataloguers, but by themselves. And blow me, an object i bid on on the internet turned up at bodnant. Do you collect japanese objects . I do, yes. Why do you like japanese things . The intricacy of the articles, how they were made. Its unbeatable, isnt it . Unbeatable when you see the top stuff. Absolutely defies belief. This one youve bought . Yes. Recently . Fairly recently, yes. Where did you get it from . I bought it off the internet. Did you . Yes. I know you did. How do you know . I was the underbidder. You werent. I was. Cant believe that. Its true. Its absolutely true. Youre joking. What a chance i couldnt believe it. I simply couldnt believe this object, which only a matter of a month or so earlier, had been on the internet was suddenly sitting there on the table and i thought, well, maybe its a different one. Perhaps the guy that carved it and inlaid it had done several but once i really looked at it, it was obviously the same one. Well, its a fantastic quality box. Made of boxwood. Boxwood is extremely slow growing and therefore has a very dense grain to it. And thats a socking great chunk of box. Its signed here. Shu oh si. Not known to me. And carved and engraved over all with monkeys playing amongst peach trees, and i have to tell you ive looked at this very carefully and im of the opinion that this was pretty much new when you bought it. Not old. Not old. This is the problem of looking at something on a vdu screen, is that you havent got the object in front of you, and youre not gonna get the same number of pixels off a screen as you do off the object in real life. So its extremely difficult to tell what youre looking at. It is the best piece of modern carving of its kind ive ever seen. It was in the order of £300, was it . Originally. At that kind of price, its worth it. I think, i cant remember now but i think i bid 300 on it. I think that was what i bid. And you leave the bid, of course, and i went off and whatever. Came back and found that id lost it and was actually really fed up that id lost it because i thought it was a very good box. Well, i hope that, sometime in the future ill meet you again on the internet. I will try to avoid you. laughter excellent. And believe it or not, the internet came to haunt david battie again this time, at oxburgh hall. Now whose is the blue and white jug . Thats mine. Thats yours. And where did it come from . I bought that from internet auction. The internet . Yes. How long ago . Less than a year. So i missed it. You did. What did you pay for it . Round about £65. Oh, i want to kill myself because its my family. Is it really . It was sitting there on the table with my name on it. It was mine. I wanted to take it home. But its not allowed. George and abigial. Lovely name, abigial. Batty. Now thats not spelled my way. Im an ie at the end. But we are all descended from the same stock. Just an extraordinary thing to happen, because my names not a common one by any manner of means and i am very interested in the batty family. And so, this wouldve been a real dream to have. I wouldve thought fairly definitely, that this jug was made for this man and his wife, who are george and abigial batty. They owned hinchcliffe mill. And they owned it in 1790. Its pearlware which is not a strong body. Its creamware with a blue glaze to make it a bit more like porcelain. Started perhaps only ten years earlier than this jug, and ran through to the 1820s. Well, i think its glorious. I think a realistic price, if you were to put that in at auction, it would make somewhere like £600 to £800. So youve multiplied your bid by a good ten. So i congratulate you, but i also hate you i think, to me Bodnant Garden is a wonderful setting having driven there in pouring rain the night before and thought we were going to get absolutely drenched in an outside broadcast, but no, it was lovely weather. So you get there youve got this lovely house fantastic gardens, and then the view, which just went on for hundreds of miles almost. Just wonderful welsh scenery. And it reminded me when i saw this bronze heres this bronze indian appealing to the great spirit like this, and just basically the way we were in the american plains. It was lovely. Just lovely. It was a great day. Ever since i first started to learn about sculpture and animal sculpture i literally fell in love with the american western image. Perhaps its from watching too many cowboy films as a child. I dont know, but have you done Much Research on the sculptor . Not really at all. I know he was working the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th century. Lets try and fill in the gaps if i may. I think, for me, this American Culture is fascinating. I grew up in the generation where people watched black and white cowboy films like roy rogers and that was exciting for me. The whole part of the culture that one learned about at the time. And this sculptor, for example, went to paris and worked alongside buffalo bill in the circus. And rosa bonheur another one who sculpted so it was all part of this extraordinary, exciting culture. Here youve got his name. C. E. Dallin. And dated 1913. He was born in 1861. Had a long life. He died in 1944. But his main work, as you say was the early 20th century. Trained in paris like most sculptors. All good painters and sculptors from america would go to paris in that wonderful epoch of the belle epoque in the turn of the last century. And he became internationally known, but very wellknown in america. Cyrus e. Dallin was a typical american, really. He was born in the west, in utah, and in very reduced circumstances. A mormon family. But he grew up almost in the wild west, modeling animals as a small boy with his hands as you would do out of clay that he found in the rivers. And people realized, this mans got a gift, or the boy has got a gift. So eventually, people clubbed together and sent him east to boston for training. And thats part of the Great American story. Its part of the whole culture and the excitement of america and what they were able to achieve. What i like about it ill get down here. Its got the foundry mark which is a good sign. Gorham founders. Thats stamped in there. Then weve got gorham co. Founders, written in by the sculptor himself in the wax model. And it certainly looks very, very nice. Color, condition. But have you ever noticed this little chap down here . I would need my glasses to see it. Youve never noticed it. I havent. Right. Lets go back up again. The figure 82. He made 107 of this 21 1 2inch cast. So this is number 82. So thats quite exciting. So its a genuine bronze. Excellent. The trouble is, so many of these american bronzes, they make such a lot of money that they often get faked, and thats the one thing one dreads and its actually quite difficult to tell and explain to someone. Ive just luckily seen so many i can get a feeling, almost when i saw its head i knew it was right. The color of the bronze, the surface of the bronze, the patination the general feel. It was a genuine hand, not someone just making some expensive ripoff copy, of which there are an awful lot, im afraid. Outside the Boston Museum of fine art which is a Wonderful Museum is a fullsize figure of this indian chief. I mean, its a very emotive bronze. And i think, in american history, its a very important bronze. So wellknown that this bronze figure, amazing as it may seem to us today was as wellknown as the statue of liberty in its time. It was that important. When you hold these pieces and youre holding something in your hand and you can touch it turn it over and look at it, thats part of the excitement and fun of being on the antiques roadshow. Youre in touch with the object. And you have to touch them to understand them. You cant do it from 100 yards away. You must have it in your hands and talk to it. Well, i have to try and value it, really. I think the only way i can do this is just go like this. I do know that in 2005 at auction in new york cast number 90 made 120,000. Wow. In todays money its £66,000. Thats the same size as this. The same size. And it was cast number 90. Youve got 82. Thank you very much indeed. The market, as we know has become very unpredictable, but i was quite pleased. Ive been trying to monitor the price and see what is happening. And another samesize figure but i dont know what number it was made, really not that much less only a few months later, after the market had socalled crash, so its holding up im delighted to say. Our final selection in this look back at the best finds of this series is truly magical. Its probably one of the most talked about of the last six months and found Paul Atterbury in seventh heaven. I think belfast, a city i dont know very well is a slightly magical place. And it was a day that ill always remember, cause it was a day that i came facetoface with the cottingley fairies story. Now, i suppose a silly question thats been said many, many times is do you believe in fairies. Of course, if we go back a long time in history people did believe in fairies. They felt that there was another type of life out there. And i have always been familiar with a very famous group of fairy photographs taken in 1920. Anyone who has looked at late 19thcentury, 20thcentury history particularly in the art world, cannot but know by heart the story of the cottingley fairies. These extraordinary photographs of children and fairies in a garden environment that appeared on the world in about 1918, in through the early 1920s and took the world by storm. How do you have these . The girl that took one of the first series of photographs in 1917 was my mother. Hang on a minute. So your mother was, what frances griffiths. So the story is that these two children, one aged 16, one aged ten believed there were fairies in the bottom of their garden. And in order to convince their father they took a camera and they took photographs, and that was in july and august of 1917. And those two photographs, as i understand it were those two. Is that right . Thats right. So which is your mother . This is my mother here. Thats your mother. Like anybody interested in that period i know those photos intimately. Ive seen them reproduced so many times, and so, to actually have the real photographs on the table in front of me with one of the cameras that had taken the photographs, and to be talking to the lady owner who is the daughter of one of the children involved, was actually more than i could hack. I didnt really know what to do with myself. And by 1920, it had become a big story, hadnt it . And the world had woken up to the fact that there were fairies and more important there were fairy photographs. And so, this is frances camera. Actually, we thought that was missing until about ten years ago. We thought it had been thrown out, and my grandmother had thrown it out. I was going through the safe about ten years ago, and i found an old brown envelope. I looked inside the envelope and i saw that. I brought the camera to my mum and asked was that grannys camera. So it survived but its pure chance. It is, really, yeah. It was obviously meant to be. And did the photographs reappear at the same time . Just the last couple of years we discovered them. In fact, two we only discovered two days ago before the antiques roadshow. Really . Yes, cause we were looking for stuff to bring here. These are the most important pieces, because these have come directly from that camera. Today, looking at these, its very hard to believe why anybody believed it. You grew up with your mother, frances. Did she ever talk about it . No. She was very ashamed of it. She was ashamed of the deception. So through her life, she knew it had happened, but she said nothing. Unti