GUEST: At one point in time in my career I served as dean of the College of Business at the Rochester Institute of Technology. After that I decided to take a position elsewhere. But they wanted to provide me with a gift in recognition of the service. And so they put me in contact with a faculty member, Hans Christensen, who was a faculty member of the American Craftsman School. And he and I sat down together and discussed designing and producing some piece of silver.

APPRAISER: So you're sort of partly a designer as well.

GUEST: Well, it was really fun. We sat down at a table like this, and we discussed it, and within a minute or two he made some rough drafts, drawings. No, I didn't keep the drawings.

APPRAISER: I was going to say that would be phenomenal if you still had the drawings to go with it.

GUEST: But, you know, he was wonderful and extremely creative and skillful, but a very humble person.

APPRAISER: Well, it is really a stunning piece of American silver. Hans Christensen apprenticed with Georg Jensen. He represented Georg Jensen for an exhibition in 1952 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. And at that time, he was highly encouraged to stay in the United States. And as I understand, he went back to Denmark, but eventually emigrated in 1954 to take a position on the faculty at the school where you worked with him there. And it's fantastic that you actually knew him and worked with him.

GUEST: Oh, yeah, wonderful.

APPRAISER: I was very excited when you brought this to our table because it exemplifies the 1970s, when this was made, stylistically, so much. And that is in fact one of the major areas of collecting today. People are so interested in things from the mid-century onward. And the 1970s is really starting to become popular again. Primarily because people who are buying things remember the 1970s fondly from childhood. So the generation that grew up in the '70s recognizes forms like this and they have an affinity for them. What year was this commission made?

GUEST: This was made in 1979.

APPRAISER: It's got a wonderful mark, which has his HC as well as a hammer, signifying handcraftsmanship. It's got this wonderful hand-hammered texture and this uneven sort of roughness to the edge of the bowl, and that's really very nice. It definitely symbolizes handcraftsmanship. If I were going to advise people of an item of collecting for the future, this would be the direction I would point them. I would say that if this were to come to the auction today, it would probably bear an estimate of $2,000 to $4,000, and could perhaps exceed that.

GUEST: Yeah, that's great.

APPRAISER: But I think in the coming years it's only going to appreciate in value.