GUEST: My aunt had gone out to the trading post to visit a friend. As she was leaving, she saw this pot sitting on the porch. And so she asked her friend, the trading post owner's wife, if she could buy the pot. She said, "Oh, that old thing, you can have it." So she took it.
APPRAISER: So that was the Mike Kirk?
GUEST: Mike Kirk's, his wife, uh-huh.
APPRAISER: Trading post, and they were in Manuelito, New Mexico.
GUEST: Yes. She had no idea who the maker was. So she had it all those years. They were having a dinner party one night, and members from the university were there, and they told her. And she immediately got really interested in it to find out some more about it.
APPRAISER: Did the people from the university identify the maker to her?
GUEST: The daughter came and identified it and signed it.
APPRAISER: It was made by Nampeyo, who was the matriarch of Hopi pottery...
GUEST: Yes, yes I understand.
APPRAISER:...in the modern age. Nampeyo was born about 1856, and she passed in the 1940s. If I had seen it without any information like you've shared, this glorious information you're sharing, I would have placed it about 1890s, 1910 time period.
GUEST: Oh, my.
APPRAISER: Nampeyo's daughter, Fannie Nampeyo, was a very important piece of the picture, because around the 1920s, as Nampeyo started to lose her sight, she would still form the pots, but Fannie and her husband would help do the decoration of the pots. On today's auction marketplace, this pot would sell for between $30,000 and $50,000.
GUEST: (gasps) Really? I love it even more.
APPRAISER: Yeah. You gasped.
GUEST: My goodness.
APPRAISER: Did that take you by surprise?
GUEST: Yes, it did.