GUEST: I inherited it from my parents. I just sit it on a table top and look at it and feel it once in a while because I love the inside of it. Have ever since I was a child.
APPRAISER: It's made by a man named Glen Lukens, and Glen Lukens was an incredible innovator in ceramics. In the 1940s and '50s, American studio ceramics production was almost under attack by a new young generation of innovative thinkers. And in Southern California, Glen Lukens was leading the charge. He was a teacher at USC.
GUEST: My father was a color photography teacher at USC.
APPRAISER: Aha.
GUEST: Aha.
APPRAISER: Aha. So he would have known Glen Lukens.
GUEST: I'm sure.
APPRAISER: A fellow professor at USC.
GUEST: That is very possible.
APPRAISER: Glen Lukens was extremely well known and well liked. Everyone on the campus-- all the professors, all the teachers, his classes were incredibly popular. He was much more influential than just a ceramics teacher. Among his innovations was making ceramics in molds and letting the raw body of the clay stay exposed. And using glaze not in a traditional manner, but he was almost painting with the glaze and making modern statements with it.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And because he did that, he influenced an entire generation of artists. So he had a very wide range of styles. Today, collectors really like this style. This is what they're looking for, they're looking for this raw body here with raw clay, and they're looking for this very colorful glaze. This glaze is applied in a way that no one was using glaze previously. It almost looks like melted cheese.
GUEST: (laughing) Yes, yes, it does.
APPRAISER: Well, that's a funny way to decorate a clay body, isn't it? But today it's very highly prized by collectors. It's signed on the bottom here, in typical fashion, "Glen Lukens." So this would have been made probably in the very late '30s or all throughout the 1940s. That's when the production of this thick body of clay was most popular in his work. Have you ever thought of how much it might be worth?
GUEST: I haven't the faintest idea. I've always just loved it, especially as a child I loved to reach in and feel the melted cheese. I have no idea, it just occurred to me last night to bring it to the Roadshow.
APPRAISER: Well, I can tell you that in today's market, I would appraise this for $5,000 at auction.
GUEST: Really. Oh, my gosh, that's exciting and completely unexpected. Completely.
