GUEST: It was a present to my grandmother in 1936, a Christmas present from a friend. According to the friend, who wrote my grandmother a little note, it dates to the 14th century, it's Chinese from the Sung Dynasty.
APPRAISER: Okay. What is it, do you think?
GUEST: I call it a vase. Not very practical with the holes in it, but...
APPRAISER: So it's a bit of a mystery, isn't it?
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: We'll start out first. It is Chinese, all right? It's a lantern. So you'd have a small oil lamp in the bottom. And the light from that, you could imagine, would cast beautiful shadows. So the other part is, when does this date from? Well, there are all kinds of clues. One is the style of the decoration, and I understand why somebody called it Sung Dynasty, but their dates are wrong.
GUEST: Oh, really. So they're wrong.
APPRAISER: However, they're not that wrong, because it actually dates, I believe, to the early Ming Dynasty, to the 15th century. This is called celadon, and this was made in the kilns in Zhejiang province. Underneath you'll see this kind of reddish color. And that's typical of the clays from that region. So all that confirms what I suspected when you brought it to my table. I think this is worth, at auction, somewhere between $4,000 and $6,000.
GUEST: I'm amazed. Keep it away from my cat.
APPRAISER: Yes, keep it away from the cat.
