Rowdy's Week in Review

ITEM!

I know it's long overdue, but I promised to tell folks how last month's trip to Antiques Roadshow went down.  Our tickets were for 4:00 o'clock and we arrived about ten minutes early.  The ticket said not to arrive more than 30 minutes early anyway.  We passed through security who wanted to ensure we weren't bringing in great-grandpa's favorite box o' dynamite, then entered the line.  About two hours later we reached the front of the line where we met with the "General Appraiser."  She looked over our stuff to determine which of 20 categories they belonged to.  She gave us four "Asian Art" tickets and told us to go stand in the Asian Art line.  It was the shortest secondary line there, only one person ahead of me.  Some of the Americana lines stretched for miles, and after waiting two hours I was glad I didn't have to wait longer.  The first three items were the tanuki, kappa and daruma we got in Japan last November.  The appraiser took a look at the daruma and said it was 1960s kitsch that might fetch a few dollars at auction, same for the tanuki.  Fair enough, that's what I thought.  But then came the kappa... "Yeah, this looks like something you could find in any regional antique store..."  Mrs. T just about punched him.  She is under the impression that the kappa (which we paid much more for) is Meiji era.  She says it was made long before Japanese started pumping out crap novelties to sell to American servicemen in country for the Reconstruction or the Korean War... that's the stuff you see in American antique stores.  Mrs. T lost all respect for the appraiser at that point.  Then came our big one.  Mrs. T's grandmother gave her an old book that appeared to have many hand-drawn illustrations in it.  Mrs. T told me when we got it that it was Edo period.  Mrs. T's grandmother had a friend whose mother lived in the old jōkamachi of Gifu.  The book came from this woman's mother who'd gotten it in the long, long ago.  Mrs. T and I assumed we were sitting on gold.  Just before we left for Antiques Roadshow, Mrs. T gave the book a more careful look and discovered that it was manufactured in the Meiji Period and not the Edo.  She was crushed, but I still held out hope because of all it's hand-drawn illustrations.

So, I pull out the book in front of the appraiser and he unfolds the centerfold and says, "Ooo, what do we have here?"  This attracted the attention of the second appraiser sitting next to him and she took it for a more careful look... "It's a history magazine..."  We knew that.   "It was published in 1892...."  We knew that too.  "Now these illustrations aren't hand-drawn, as they might appear, but they were printed by hand on wood blocks."  I looked at Mrs. T and said, "I thought you said these were hand-done?"  She says, "Duh, they're wood-block can't you tell.  I told you they were made by hand meaning that they were hand-made by wood block."  My dreams of early retirement evaporated at that point.  "This is really nice, you'd probably get $100-$150 for this at auction, have a nice day."   Auughh!  We gathered our stuff and shuffled solemnly back to the car.  No words were spoken.

I showed up at work Monday and one of my associates had gone too.  He had an antique German stein appraised at $900.  Jerk.

ITEM!

This has been a wild week online.  I joined Facebook and have reconnected with a number of old high school friends that I haven't heard from in 15 years.  Just as I was in the thick of reconnecting with folks, I got an email today from completely out of the blue... not through Facebook, but through Classmates.com.  It was my 8th grade French teacher!  She was one of my all-time favorites and I always hung around after class to talk with her.  So I get this email today, "Rowdy!!  One of my very first students!  What have you been up to?"   This is so cool, I'm so used to being the one looking.  It's nice to be found for a change.

Comments

[J. Go]

I always thought the Meiji era was one of the most underrated eras.