GUEST: I was at a small country auction barn. It was hanging on the wall, and it just glowed.
APPRAISER: Was it displayed like this, or were they actually separate?
GUEST: It actually was separate. The two figures came from someplace else.
APPRAISER: Okay. Well, Limoges is actually a region of France where they make this type of elaborate, beautifully colored metalwork, and how they make it is they take a copper plaque, and they score it, and then they add what is finely ground glass, and they fire it at a very high temperature, which is what gives it that beautiful sheen and those really wonderful colors. What we have here is a group of plaques. Obviously we have the birth of Jesus, and then below we have Saint Luke and Saint John, all done in Limoges enamel. Originally, this material is made round about the 15th century and earlier, and during the 1800s there was something called the Gothic Revival.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And it's when they wanted to reaffirm Gothic principles and beliefs. And what they would do is they would take old wood and rework it, and actually you see all these little sort of holes in here?
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Well, those are worm tunnels, and when they reworked the wood, the worm tunnels appear, so we know that this is probably a very old piece of wood that has been reworked to conform to the shape of these very interesting plaques. Taken from, probably, out of a church. When they would take the churches down, they would rip out this type of work and basically scrap-heap it when they were renovating it. You have a tiny little signature right down here that says "A.P.", and "A.P." probably doesn't stand for the artist, but more than likely stands for the etching beyond which this was actually copied.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: So you have a copy of an engraving here, and you probably have copies of engravings down here, but beautifully done, very nice quality for 19th century. Now, how much did you pay for this?
GUEST: Total $5.50.
APPRAISER: Well, I'd say you did okay, because it's probably worth around $2,500 to $3,000.
GUEST: Okay, good.
APPRAISER: Excellent.
GUEST: Thank you.
