GUEST: My father had bought the house on Grosse Ile Island on the Detroit River from Mickey Cochrane, who was a catcher for the Detroit Tigers at the turn of the century.
APPRAISER: Famous Tiger.
GUEST: Right, and he had had all this furniture made for that house on Gross Ile, and this is just one representative piece of it.
APPRAISER: Well, that's fantastic. The chair itself was made by a gentleman called Thomas Molesworth, who was making this kind of Western-influenced furniture. He used a lot of cowboy motifs, but then he did also a lot of Indian motifs. He used a lot of rustic material. These are Adirondack-type chairs. Picture this in like a mountain lodge somewhere. He did a lot of work for the Hollywood stars out in Los Angeles.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: And this is like a perfect example of the type of work that he did. It's really kind of like an icon chair for him. This cowboy relief in the back, the original leather seat. I mean Thomas Molesworth recently has come into vogue. He was kind of like the Remington of the furniture makers. He really celebrated the American West and really wanted to make it come alive through the furniture. A chair like this on its own in this condition, which is pretty good, and the original seat is probably worth as much as $1,500 to $2,000. The whole suite is probably worth somewhere in the $8,000 to $10,000 range.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness!
APPRAISER: So you've got a great thing from a great designer, and it's a wonderful piece of furniture.
GUEST: Wonderful.
