Antiques Roadshow is known for giving guests something to exclaim “hallelujah” about. This guest’s experience was no different. This guest went from forgotten possessions to a life-changing price tag.
Antiques Roadshow Gets The Background
The guest on this episode of Antiques Roadshow shared her brooches with Peter Shemonsky. Peter Shemonsky evaluated a pair of silver brooches. The guest revealed that they had been a forgotten possession, tucked away in a drawer for years.
The owner went on to tell him about the interesting history of the items, her family and their deep ties to the Cranbrook school campus. The guest went on the explain that Harry Bertoia had crafted the brooches for her and her sisters. She said that the brooches “were some of the very first that he made.” She went on to tell us that her two sisters had worked in the Cranbrook dorms that he lived in. Harry Bertoia made one for her sisters and one for her. “He gave her one and then he knew that she had two sisters so three of us got the brooches and I have those too.”
The owner of the brooches went on to tell Peter the history of Cranbrook and her familial ties to the campus. “Mr Booth owned Cranbrook, when he first married Ellen Scripps, they lived in Detroit.” They went on to move to Bloomfield and buy Cranbrook, where they built their home. ” It was a dairy farm when he first bought it and then he had to have it landscaped and that’s when my dad went to work for him.” Antiques Roadshow’s guest’s family went on to be known as the “second family of Cranbrook.”
Who Is Bertoia?
Harry Bertoia was born in 1915. He immigrated to the United States when he was 15 years old. Bertoia attended a Detroit school where he perfected his craft, metalsmithing. In 1937 he was offered a scholarship to attend the prestigious Cranbrook. There he quickly set up his metal studio. Shemonsky added, “When we look at the work he made, everything is handmade. There’s no solder, everything is done either by rivets or pins or tension fitting.”
It turns out that the Antiques Roadshow guest’s brooches were “very early.” Peter went on to tell her that “He only made jewelry for a few years before going into other areas.”
Antiques Roadshow’s “Hallelujah”
The guest was given a pleasing evaluation of her brooches. Peter concluded, “If these were to come up in an auction house that has maybe modernist furniture, Bertoia’s sculpture, these as an addition to a Bertoia collection, each of these pieces alone would bring somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000.”
To this the Antiques Roadshow guest exclaimed “Well hallelujah, it was worth the trip. It was so nice meeting you Peter.” Needless to say, her forgotten possession was quite the surprise waiting for her. She went on the say she was excited to tell family and go celebrate.
