Woodlands Carved Ash Burl Bowl, ca. 1800
GUEST: I brought a wooden bowl that has been in my family for many years. It had been passed down from mother to daughter, all sharing the common name Mariah. That's my middle name. So that's why I got the bowl.
APPRAISER: It is a wooden bowl.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And it's actually a burl wooden bowl.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: And burl is harvested from an outgrowth on the tree. It's cut off and then carved. And it usually has a, a most interesting pattern because it is an outgrowth. And in this case, the wood is ash.
GUEST: Oh, okay, I never knew.
APPRAISER: So we would actually call it an ash burl bowl.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: We do agree that it really dates back very early, probably to the early 1800s.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And could even be late 18th century. We see the wonderful pattern that Mother Nature has formed. We also see a foot.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And the foot... We feel that the entire conception is made by a Native American.
GUEST: I had a great-great-great-grandmother who was half-Native American from a Indian tribe in Western New York, but nobody knows what tribe. And she was born in the late 1700s.
APPRAISER: Okay, so we're starting to...
GUEST: Oh! Yes.
APPRAISER: ...connect the dots here.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER: We don't know the exact tribe, but we refer to it as "Woodlands." So it could be as far west as Iowa...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...where, obviously, your family ended up, and possibly was brought there by other family members.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: Yet the Woodlands go right to the Atlantic Ocean back east, so it covers a pretty wide range.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And this foot, we feel, was influenced, possibly, by a piece of early Colonial treenware that one of the Native Americans might have seen. And they put this foot on the bowl, which is a wonderful additional element, as well as this crease line...
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: ...which adds an element of design and a sense of style to it. Now, when we turn it, what we see, you would call this a handle.
GUEST: Right.
APPRAISER: And really what it is, it's an abstraction of a spirit being. And the spirit being they called a "manitou." And this is actually the arms and the head and the other arm. So it's actually a human form.
GUEST: It's a... It's a, a form.
APPRAISER: It's not an animal form.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness. I knew there was something special about the bowl, but I thought it was because it was a family item.
APPRAISER: It just has all the elements in it that clearly indicate Native American-made. I would say, retail value, in today's market, I'm gonna be conservative and say $12,000 to $15,000.
GUEST: Oh, my goodness. Really? It was just a utilitarian item on the farm for hundreds of years. Oh, my goodness.
$12,000 - $15,000 Retail
$12,000 - $15,000 Retail
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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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