GUEST: I always love to go to thrift shops. I was a New York City teacher, and I had long vacations, and I occupied my time with trying to find little treasures. And this was in a jumble, all in a box with other jewelry. I saw, like, a couple of these peeking through, and I said, "Ooh, these would make really pretty earrings." Because I like to make jewelry for my friends, and I said to her, "I'm interested in this," and she said, "Well, what do you want to give for it?" And I said, "A dollar a bead, would you consider that?" And she said, real quickly, "Yeah!"
APPRAISER: So since there's 20 beads, that means you paid $20 for this.
GUEST: Yeah, I paid $20 for that. Okay. And then I was checking them to see exactly how many of them I could use, and looking for chips and stuff like that, and in my search, I found the name of Renė Lalique on one of them, and I said, "Oh, my! This is nothing I'm going to give away to friends!"
APPRAISER: Well, I'm glad you didn't take it apart, and I'm glad you've kept it all these years. It's a wonderful necklace. These are molded glass. It's iridescent glass, and these are ivy leaves. And it's strung on silk cord, and this would have been able to be purchased at the boutique on Place Vendôme in Paris. And this is sort of, when you think about it, this is Paris in the '20s, so this was, like, the flappers.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: That's why it's so long, which is a little bit unusual for these pieces. And so this would have been a very high-end, chic look for a woman of the period.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: Have you ever had it appraised?
GUEST: I took it to a local jeweler. I said, "There's a Lalique name on it," and he said, "Well, it says Lalique, but I don't know much about it." I just decided to put it away and hope someday that... Actually I was saving it to find out about it on the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW!
APPRAISER: So here you are! The one thing that's interesting about Lalique's history is that he started off as a jeweler, and in the Paris Exhibition of 1900, he had a salon in the exhibition where he had featured just jewelry itself, made out of gold, enamel, diamonds, and that's what he was known for originally. He was so copied by other artisans of the Art Nouveau period that he moved away from jewelry. That's when he gets into his glassworks, into early 1910, 1915. But, his true love was always jewelry, so that's why he still did pieces, even in glass, for jewelry, all through the '20s and the '30s, as well. So in looking at the piece, there are damage issues, some little nicks and chips. The signature is engraved on the side of this leaf. It's not always easy to see. It's engraved "R. Lalique" and it is correct, and this is a very well-documented piece. It's well-known in the Lalique circles of collectors and in his repertoire and catalogue raisonnė. So a piece like this today, even with the damage-- because most of them do have a little bit of damage-- at auction, this would bring somewhere between $1,500 to $2,500.
GUEST: Oh, oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER: So I'd say that's a fairly good investment on $20.
GUEST: (laughs) Oh, my gosh! That's, that's wonderful.
