GUEST: This is a shield that's been hanging in my dining room. My husband and I, his mother was an avid antique collector, and she passed away, and after she passed, we found this in the attic, probably around 1999. And my husband thought it was really cool, and so we hung it in our dining room. He has since passed away, but it was something that he very much adored. He loved "ROADSHOW." This was one thing that he always talked about, whenever we thought about things that we would bring if we ever got a chance to go to the "Roadshow."
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: He always said that he would bring this shield.
APPRAISER: So it's very special.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: It's, um, a sil, electroplated silver shield. It's made by Elkington and Company out of Birmingham, England. They sort of were on the forefront of the electroplating process. It's a thin, thin layer of silver over a, a base metal, and it was designed by LŽonard Morel-Ladeuil. He was a French artist, he died in 1888. But he designed the shield having in mind that he was going to design it for the 1867 Paris Exhibition, where it did win a gold medal. And after that, the gold medal and the shield, or the original shield, which was in silver, in sterling, are now at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: After that, the Elkington Company produced many replicas and sold them. They were replicas in electroplate. So on the front, after the artist signature, it's dated 1866. Copies of these were sold after 1867, and this is one of those copies. It was purely promotional to help them sell their more everyday wares that they made. This is called the, the Milton Shield because the imagery that inspired this by th, by the sculptor was John Milton's epic poem "Paradise Lost." In the middle, you've got the angel Raphael and Adam and Eve, you know, being cast out. And they were made for purely decorative purposes. They come up at auction in varying degrees of condition, and they consistently bring around $4,000 to $6,000 at auction.
GUEST: Wow. Wow-- well, thank you.
