Antiques Roadshow Primer
   Carol Prisant
  1999 Workman Publishing, NY USA
   ISBN: 076111775X


Through its traveling events & popular PBS series, Antiques Roadshow has taught us to look for hidden treasures in our attics & rescue those horded leftovers from other times. Some are worth small fortunes while many others are worthy because of their unique stories & provenances.

My parents bought a home in London after WWII near the fabled Portobello Market where I would spend both my pocket money & my Saturday afternoons ambling around the laden stalls & poking about in cramped hole-in-the-wall shops. Back in the 1950s artifacts from the war years & before were plentiful. When I returned 40 years later all had changed: the stalls were no longer horse drawn carts & those magical individual nooks & crannies of shops had been melted into malls & much of what was for sale seemed too bright & ordinary to be unearthed heirlooms.

When I lived in Berkeley, California I frequented a super fleamarket at the Ashby Avenue BART station & became a topnotch garage sale manager, trained by the best ashram devotee. Now I live far from the madding crowd & my opportunities to visit flea markets or garage sales are rare so I sate my appetite for antiquing by watching the PBS show & browsing through Carol Prisant's Antiques Roadshow Primer.

Is it old? Is it valuable? Those are the two most asked questions during those rambling, interesting programs & because of my years in an antique-rich society I often guess pretty accurately.

The Antiques Roadshow Primer is exactly that: a pleasingly laid out basic text book to start you off on your treasure hunts. In a format with sidebars on Tips from the Experts(what are the famous craftsmen/how to preserve what you've got), Antiques Roadshow Discovery(very fine condition samplers/lost paintings by American Masters) & How to Tell The Difference Lists(fake or real/copy or original). Black & white photos dot each page & there's a glorious section of colored photographs.

With a Foreword by Chris Jussel, the show's charming & charmed host, who gives us a glimpse of the unfolding of what has arguably become one of the most watched shows in the history of television - there are no stars, no scripts & the stories come from everyday people like you & me.

Carol Prisant, in her Introduction, says it all: Like millions of other Americans, you probably wander away from the TV set at the end of the Antiques Roadshow and roam around your living room picking up things, turning them over, measuring your chairs and lamps with a newly critical eye, and generally wondering if you really should have given that dreary ancestor portrait to your third cousin, once-removed. You've learned a lot from watching the show every week, but now you want to know more. If that's the case, this primer promises you immediate help.

While the Furniture is fine & the Silver dandy; the Pottery is charming & the Porcelain exquisite; the Paintings are fascinating & the jewelry astonishing; the clocks are wonderful & the Metalworks magnificent - when I got to the Rugs, Quilts & Samplers I felt like I'd gotten home & I lapped up the lessons.

The only thing missing in this worthy primer is a section on Buttons - one of my all time favorite collectibles. I realize in the scheme of things antique, buttons are of little consequence. Being of the female gender, however, I've had a lifelong affection with those useful little critters ever since my Great-Grand Aunt opened up her button box for me one cold & wet winter afternoon & spun her tales from the previous century of what clothes they adorned & who wore them.

There is a useful Glossary, a long & lucid Index & a thorough Photo Credits Sections. What I like about the Antiques Roadshow Primer is you're learning all the time, on every page; learning to see what's before you, to classify, verify & testify.

The Antiques Roadshow Primer is a gift waiting to be given to any & all who enjoy browsing through fleamarkets, garage & estate sales, other countries & country auctions as well as dealers' stores. Very well done!

Carol Prisant is the New York editor of the British magazine The World of Interiors & writes about antiques & collectibles for Martha Stewart Living, House Beautiful & New York. She has been an antique dealer and is now a member of the Appraiser Association of America.
(08/27/00)

Rebecca