GUEST: It's been in my family since about 1958. My father actually bought it in England at auction.
APPRAISER: Was he living there, or...?
GUEST: Mm-hmm, he was living there at the time. And the interesting thing was the reason it was being auctioned was because the death duties at that time, and he bought it for about £2,000 at that time, which was about... I think around $4,500. He was told it was dated to around the mid-1800s, and it's a British table but it has Italian craftsmanship.
APPRAISER: Yeah, I mean, what's neat about it is just that it's such a decorative top to it and that, you know, you can see the butterflies and dragonflies that have been inlaid in marquetry, and the border has just this terrific decoration to it. You've good maple, you've got rosewood, ebony, mahogany, satinwood, all different types of wood that have been used. And what actually would have been done to do the marquetry, actually, this would have been machine-made. I would agree with the dating. It's probably sometime after the mid 19th century, even probably as late as the 1880s, particularly with this sort of very whimsical decoration to it. It tilts; it's a tilt-top table. We can show a little bit like this. You can put it out of the way. It could be used as a breakfast table, a little dining table, even as a games table, or just as sort of a centerpiece, a conversation piece. For today's auction market, I would probably estimate it somewhere in the $7,000 to $9,000 range.
GUEST: Great, wonderful. That's great news.
