GUEST: Uh, my dad was a professor at the University of California, and they had just finished updating an old house and needed to furnish it. And they went to an auction and pretty much bought up any pieces of old oak furniture they could find. My mother has told me that if he paid ten dollars for it, it probably was a lot.
APPRAISER: So you remember this as a kid?
GUEST: I do. I do.
APPRAISER: Wow. Wow.
GUEST: It had a long journey. It left Berkeley, it lived in Jerusalem, Israel, for many, many years.
APPRAISER: Wow.
GUEST: And when my father passed away, and my mother left her house there, um, she divided up some of her things, and this was one of the pieces I picked to bring back to the United States for me, because I liked it.
APPRAISER: This is in a style a lot of people refer to as Mission. Uh, Gustav Stickley was not fond of the term "Mission." "Mission" refers to Spanish Colonial Mission furniture.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: This is more Arts and Crafts in the European tradition. Stickley and the Stickley family is a fascinating story. Gustav had many brothers. There were five of them. There were several iterations of the Stickley companies.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: This iteration was with two brothers, Albert and John George Stickley. Uh, they came together to form Stickley Brothers Company in roughly 1891. And then they launched this line called Quaint Furniture in roughly 1903. It has the model number, which I get a kick out of.
GUEST: (laughs)
APPRAISER: 314 and a half. So what we have here is a piece that many people refer to as a taboret. A taboret can be a stool.
GUEST: (chuckles)
APPRAISER: Uh, I think, however, this table was intended to be used as a plant stand or a lamp stand.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: The whole piece is made of white oak. Mm. And there was another version of this which was in dark oak.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: And that was a fumed finish or an ammonia finish to get it nice and dark. This one is closer to natural, but when you cut it on an angle, it gives you, like, a tiger pattern.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And you may have heard people call, uh, oak tiger oak.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Well, it's really quarter-sawn and it has to do with how the lumber is cut down to reveal a more expressive, dancy fluid in the grain. We have a very, very thick top, and then the thickness steps down to a slightly thinner leg. On the top, we see the legs coming through. That's a tenon. And then over here, we have this connection pulling the whole form together with these wedge-shaped pieces. So there's no screws, there's no nails, there's no hidden aspect to the way this is made. Arts and Crafts collectors are very keen on originality and finish. They do like the darker version slightly more than the lighter version. Um, there are some boo-boos...
GUEST: (chuckling)
APPRAISER:...or blemishes on this table.
GUEST: Definitely.
APPRAISER: But all told, it's still very desirable because they're so easy to use and they're so practical. In this original condition, at auction, this would bring about $800. And the same piece in a dark finish, with roughly the same, uh, blemishes, would bring about $1,200. In a gallery, no problem-- $2,000 for a piece like this.
GUEST: And if it didn't have the blemishes?
APPRAISER: If you had something that was free of any of these blemishes, to the right collector, it's easily $3,000.
GUEST: Whoa! (laughs) Not what I would have expected.
APPRAISER: (laughs)
