Métis Cree Frock Coat, ca. 1840
GUEST: The coat was in my father's possession. And he passed away a few years ago. So I inherited it. And I have not actually ever taken it out of the box before.
APPRAISER: What do you--
GUEST: I've looked at it and seen how beautiful it was and didn't want to hurt it or disturb it. So it's been in a box.
APPRAISER: This is from Canada. And the folks who made this are called the Red River Cree, the Métis Cree. This was tailored by a Indigenous woman, a First Nation woman of Canada, but in a western style. It's in the style of a frock coat. In, uh, the 1600s, Canada was called Rupert's Land, and it was being settled and exploited for beaver pelts, the beaver trade. The Hudson Bay Company was extremely active in Canada. They ruled Canada in a certain fashion. Many of the Hudson’s Bay factors were Scottish. Thomas Douglas in 1811, founded a colony, and it became known as the Red River Colony. So we have two cultures here. We have frontiersmen harvesting beaver pelts and sending them back to Europe. And we had, uh, the Native Cree ladies who were living in the area, and they intermarried with these men, and they became called Métis Cree. So this is made by a First Nation woman of Cree heritage for probably her husband, who was perhaps a factor in the Hudson’s Bay Company, or at the very least, he was working in the fur trade, and he was someone of some significance because it's a pretty fancy coat. Your average individual would not have had a coat of such splendor. I would say that this is made perhaps somewhere between 1830 and 1850. The coat is made out of deer hide. It's Native-tanned. The ornamentation is porcupine quill. The ladies would harvest quills. They'd flatten them with their teeth. They dip them in different pigments to dye them, and then they would embroider this quill work in traditional patterns. So you have floral elements and then stars, celestial orbs, sun devices, moon devices-- extremely important to Native people. They would derive power from these celestial entities. These ladies are very attuned to the natural world. And then the whole device may also be seen as a tree of life. Ancestors are exceedingly important to Native people. The glass beads, made in Venice, Italy. The dye pigments are traded, probably from either France or England. The blue silk, undoubtedly from France. It does have some wear-- some of the porcupine quill is missing. There's a little bit of soiling. On a retail basis, I would say this is worth $30,000.
GUEST: (exhales) Wow. Wow.
APPRAISER: It's just fabulous.
GUEST: It's beautiful, it really is. I love to see the back-- I hadn't seen it before. (laughs)
APPRAISER: Maybe $35,000, $40,000 for insurance purposes.
$30,000 Retail
$40,000 Insurance
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Understanding Our Appraisals
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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