An Antiques Roadshow guest was stunned to learn that the wooden bowl she bought on her honeymoon is worth thousands of dollars.
In the resurfaced clip, a woman brought a dilapidated wooden bowl to a 2017 Antiques Roadshow event in Fort Worth, Texas.
She purchased the bowl she believed to be a Pacific Northwest creation 22 years earlier on her honeymoon trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
Appraiser Anthony Slayter-Ralph reduced the woman to tears when he revealed that the item she paid $400 for is worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“This is my wedding present. I feel like crying because of the story of where I got it and how I got it,” she said.
A woman brought an aged wooden bowl to an Antiques Roadshow event in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2017 and was shocked to discover its true value.
She purchased the bowl she believed to be a Pacific Northwest creation 22 years earlier on her honeymoon trip to the Hawaiian island of Kauai.
The dark wooden bowl shows its age with some discoloration and features a unique decorative end with a hollowed out face.
The appraiser determined that the bowl is made of fir and was likely made by Alaska Natives in the early 19th century or even earlier, in the 1780s or 1790s.
“It’s really something extraordinary. I and my colleagues have never seen an object with this head fixed on top,” Slayter-Ralph said.
‘The Eskimos don’t really make decorative art. Everything they make has a function. And they also believed that each of these objects has a spirit inside it, the yua, and I think the head probably represents the spirit of the bowl.
‘They’re generally seen as finger puppets, and it’s a strange idea. I mean, maybe this is supposed to look like a mask and this is the body. One is inclined to think it would be ceremonial. I mean, we don’t really know.
The woman cried when she revealed that the item she paid $400 for is worth tens of thousands of dollars
The dark wooden bowl features a unique decorative end with a hollowed out face and is made of fir and was likely crafted by Alaska Natives in the early 19th century.
‘The back, as you can see, is hollowed out, which makes me think it’s a miniature mask. It has some very nice grooves on the sides and traces of pigment. It has some damage that has been repaired. I don’t know when… I think it was before you got it.’
Slayter-Ralph determined the bowl was worth between $18,000 and $20,000, and with further research, could fetch much more at auction.
This assessment brought the woman to tears, leaving her with very few words to say about the piece that holds so much value in her heart.
“Oh my God!” the woman gasped. “Oh my God!”