An Antiques Roadshow guest was stunned to learn that the wooden bowl she bought on her honeymoon was worth thousands of dollars.
In the resurfaced clip, a woman is seen carrying a weathered wooden bowl to an Antiques Roadshow event in 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas.
She purchased the bowl, which she believed was a Pacific Northwest creation, 22 years earlier during her honeymoon on 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 want to cry because of the history of where I got it and how I got it,” she said.
A woman brought a weathered wooden bowl to an Antiques Roadshow event in 2017 in Fort Worth, Texas, and was stunned when she discovered its true value
She bought the bowl she thought was a Pacific Northwest creation 22 years earlier during her honeymoon on the Hawaiian island of Kauai
The dark wooden bowl shows some discoloration and features a unique decorative end with a hollowed out front.
The appraiser determined that the bowl is made of spruce and was likely made by Native Alaskans in the early 1800s or even earlier, in the 1780s or 1790s.
“It’s quite remarkable. I mean, I’ve never seen one before, and neither have my colleagues, with this head on it,” Slayter-Ralph said.
‘The Eskimos don’t really do decorative art. Everything they do has a function. And they also believed that each of these objects has a spirit in it, the yua, and I think the head probably represents the spirit of the bowl.
“Usually you think of them as finger puppets, and that’s a weird idea. I mean, maybe this is supposed to look like a mask and this is the body. You’d be inclined to think it would be ceremonial. I mean, we don’t really know.
The woman burst into tears when he revealed that the item she paid $400 for is worth tens of thousands of dollars
The dark wood bowl has a unique decorative end with a hollowed front and is made of spruce wood. It was probably made by Native Alaskans in the early 1800s.
“The back, you can see that, is actually hollowed out, which makes me think it’s a miniature mask. Very nice grooved carvings on the side here, traces of pigment. There’s been some damage, which has been repaired. I don’t know when — before you got it, I think.”
Slayter-Ralph estimated the bowl is worth between $18,000 and $20,000 and that with more research it could fetch much more at auction.
This appreciation brought the woman to tears and left her with few words to say about the piece that holds so much value to her heart.
“Oh my God,” the woman gasped. “Oh my Lord.”