GUEST: This vase has been in my mother's family. She was from Upstate New York. It was her mother's, and my mother died five years ago at age 90 and she left this to me.
APPRAISER: So, what prompted you to bring this to the Roadshow?
GUEST: Well, it was very special to my mother. It was the link back to her home area. And on the base of it, very crudely etched, is the word "Steuben," and there is a second word, also crudely etched, "Aurene."
APPRAISER: What you do have here is an accurate piece. This is a Steuben acid cut back vase, and it's blue aurene over dark blue. It is a piece done by Frederick Carder, who was born in England and spent his time learning glass in England, and then he came to the United States in about 1900 and worked for Steuben in Corning, New York. And he's considered a genius in glass. The marking is down here, and it says "Steuben" and "aurene," and it looks very rough the way it's put on, but that is a normal marking for Steuben. The date for this particular type of work is 1925 to 1930s. In order to get the blue aurene, they added cobalt to the glass. And this particular piece is pretty wonderful because it has the sea, the waves at the bottom, and we have seagulls and the fish in the sea. So it's a pattern piece. The blue-on-blue is extremely hard to find. Usually they'll be different colors. This is a rare piece. I would say that in today's market, we're probably looking at, in an auction, $6,000 to $8,000. If you wanted to insure it, you would insure it at the higher end of that amount.