GUEST: I think it's called a torchère.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: Four lights, four lanterns. It burns gas. There's a pipe that runs up the center column to kind of a manifold here, and out these arms. These thread out to adjust a valve and up to the burner to make the light. We bought it in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at an antique shop, the kind of town center. The story we heard there was this was in an opera house in Vienna, Austria. There were six pink and six blue. All the others were destroyed. This made its way to South America, and then of course somewhere up to Albuquerque, New Mexico.
APPRAISER: Alright.
GUEST: But it's a story.
APPRAISER: Well, the Vienna Court Opera was commissioned in the mid-19th century by a group of people commissioning public works in Vienna. It begun construction in 1861. It finished construction in 1869. And the cornerstone of the building was actually laid in 1863. Now, there is a mark that we can't see that says the date "1863" on it, so the story that this could be from the Vienna Court Opera is plausible. It is a masterpiece of neo-Renaissance design, as was the opera house itself. We've got gilt decoration in this sort of majolica-type pink glaze that would have been relatively forward-thinking glaze for 1863, but we can believe that it is in fact 1863. It's earthenware pottery, probably made in Austria for lack of any more compelling evidence.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Mounted all over in gilt bronze, the dolphins at the bottom all the way up through here to some foliage and all the way to the top to these incredible shades that are filled with frosted etched glass, all of which appear to be original. Torchère is a word that is generally applied to a multi-light item. We'd call this... we'd really call it a gaslight.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And what did you pay for it?
GUEST: $2,400.
APPRAISER: Okay. Conservatively, at auction, because of the importance of this particular piece, the forward-thinking of its glaze, and the surprising originality of its condition, we would conservatively estimate this piece to bring $10,000 to $15,000 in today's auction market.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: If there are a few people that really get involved, it could well bring more than that…
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: …But $10,000 to $15,000 is what we think it might do.
GUEST: Interesting.
APPRAISER: I wouldn't go all Gene Kelly on it.
GUEST: (laughs): No.
