'Antiques Roadshow' guest says 'thank you grandma' after hearing the value of her bat necklace
Guests on "Antiques Roadshow" are often people who want to know if the items left behind by their loved ones, which have significant sentimental value, also have any monetary value. One such person was the owner of a unique 'Bat Necklace,' who had no idea about the item until the show's appraiser, Sarah Churgin, told her that it was a French Art Nouveau jewel. Naturally, the guest was left surprised when her grandmother's gift was appraised at over $6,000.
The guest shared the interesting story of the item and how it was given to her grandmother as a gift. "We have my grandmother's bat necklace. It was given to her in the 1920s by Mrs. Clark, a very wealthy woman of the Clark Sewing family. My grandfather and grandmother had done work for her. He was an interior decorator and had painted a black satin bedspread for her. And my grandmother was a fabulous seamstress and had done some work for her," she told Churgin.
The guest added that Mrs Clark once invited her grandparents to lunch to say thank you, and her grandmother admired the necklace that she was wearing at the time. "And, Mrs. Clark-- much to her amazement, took it off and hung it on her, and said, 'It is yours, thank you so much,'" she recalled. She added that her grandmother knew nothing about the necklace apart from that it was bought in Paris in the early 1920s.
Churgin then shed some light on the provenance of the item. She told my grandmother that they had bought it in Paris. "What we have here is a real French Art Nouveau jewel. Now, the first generation of French Art Nouveau jewelry comes from the masters such as René Lalique. But then to bring the media down to the less wealthy, French manufacturers and German manufacturers and American manufacturers and the English, they started making jewelry for what was becoming very quickly a very popular style," she explained.
Churgin added that the French Art Nouveau started at its high point in the 1895s, but the piece in front of her dated from around 1900, as it was mass-manufactured. "I'm sure they didn't make thousands of them, but they probably made hundreds of them because it's a casting," she noted. She shared that the necklace is made out of cast sterling silver, and it has real pearls embedded at the bottom. "The material on the bat's wing is plique-à-jour enamel, it's backless glass enamel. And if we illuminate it from behind, you can see that it's fairly translucent like a stained glass window," she showed the guest.
Churgin noted that the jewel was a 'festoon necklace' and such items are popular in the market as they are better than just a straight necklace. "In fact, the iconography of a bat comes from the Japanese influence on the Art Nouveau. In the Chinese iconography, it's a symbol of good luck," she added.
Coming to the appraisal, the expert noted that the item was extremely wearable, and a fair auction estimate for the item would be about $4,000 to $6,000. The guest took a brief moment to absorb the information before exclaiming, "Really? I am shocked! Well, thank you, Grandma!".
