GUEST: My dad used to collect Indonesian and Persian weapons. He allowed me to take a piece from his collection, and that had jewels, and of course as a girl, jewels are something that I really am drawn to, so I selected that piece. He told me that it was a knife handle. He believed it was a knife handle because it was only the hilt with no blade, so he believed it was a knife handle.
APPRAISER: I believe that it's Mughal as opposed to Persian. I believe it's Indian, and this is going back to the era where the princes still owned their small principalities in India, towards the end of the 19th century before the British took complete control of the country. It's the sort of thing somebody who had wealth and prestige would have in his accessories. Now, as far as its function, I think it's most likely either a flywhisk handle or a parasol handle.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: Now, the material that we're looking at is carved white jade, which is very difficult to do. White jade is very tough-- all jade is very tough, that's one of its characteristics-- and it's beautifully carved. It's carved through and it's very balanced. The gems that we have around it are foil backed, all of them, which include green foil back emeralds and white foil back topaz that have a coloration behind them. The red gems, some of them are highly florescent, and those are indicative of Burma rubies, and then some of them are not florescent, which goes to my thinking of its age. I believe this piece dates from between 1880 and 1900, because there's a mixture between the rubies and the spinels in the piece. The later pieces tend to use pretty much all rubies. Some of the color is missing, and then there is some damage to the piece as well. There's some small damage to the jade on this side and some small damage to the jade on the reverse, and that goes into affecting its value. There's been an embargo on importation of Burmese rubies for around 14 years now. That's possibly coming to a close, but this material is legal to own, but not legal to import into the United States. In an auction market today, I would place this piece, in its condition, at around $7,000 to $9,000.
GUEST: Fantastic, that's great.
