HOST: Our first stop, Carla Hall's Washington, D.C., home, where her treasures include prized
family heirlooms.
GUEST: My name is Carla Hall, and I'm a chef, TV host, and cookbook author.
HOST: Carla has brought her energy and good taste to a number of shows, including "The
Chew" and "Worst Cooks in America."
GUEST: We're gonna cut our mushrooms, cutting them evenly so they cook evenly. And a lot
of people know me from "Top Chef." Hootie hoo! (laughing) You know, I've been watching
this show for so long. So, from the ROADSHOW experts, um, I want to know a little more
history about the things that we have. I want to know if there's a story before the story
that I have. I know that a lot of our items have, um, personal value, but I never think
about monetary value. That would be actually kind of fun to find that out.
HOST: Carla and her mom, Audrey, share some family memories from what got passed down
through the generations.
GUEST: My father was a collector, I would say. He was one that was a saver, you know.
GUEST: I'm a saver. (laughs) GUEST: And it, and it's a good thing. Save
your money, and, uh, that kind of... GUEST: Okay, maybe I'm not that kind of a
saver. (both laughing) I picked up the stuff-saving. Maybe not the money-saving.
GUEST: (laughs) GUEST: But, you know, I got half of it.
HOST: ROADSHOW expert Reid Dunavant drops by Carla's home to check out some family furniture
that's been used by three generations.
GUEST: This table was in my grandmother's house for as long as we can remember. And
I just remember this table having little trinkets and a nightlight. And then when she passed
away, my sister got it. APPRAISER: What about the high chair?
GUEST: The high chair usually sat in the den.
APPRAISER: When was your mama born? GUEST: 1908.
APPRAISER: 1908, okay. GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: You think that might have been her chair?
GUEST: That's a possibility. APPRAISER: Yeah? What you've got is two examples
of late 19th-early 20th century manufactured furniture. They both date from the similar
time period, from the 1880s...
GUEST: 1880s... APPRAISER: ...up until about the 1920s. GUEST: Oh, my. APPRAISER: Each of them is about that, could
fall into that category. GUEST: What?!
GUEST: Oh, my goodness. APPRAISER: There's a label inside the table
drawer. It says "Wolverine Manufacturing Company, Detroit, Michigan."
GUEST: Look at us! APPRAISER: Look at you!
GUEST: My! APPRAISER: And, your table has a leg on it,
which we call the barley twist leg. There was a type of candy...
GUEST: Oh! APPRAISER: ...in the 19th century called barley
sugar. This twisted piece of candy resembles the leg, and so that's where the "barley twist"
name comes from. GUEST: Okay.
GUEST: Look at that! (laughs) Oh, my-- that's exactly why we kept this table.
APPRAISER: Because it's food-related. GUEST: Because it's food-related.
APPRAISER: Your chair has a pressed back. GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And by a pressed back, you might look at that and think that that's all hand-carved,
but it's not. GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: It's actually, a template is made on a roller die, which is, with great pressure,
rolled onto the piece of wood to impress it with that decoration to make it look like
it's carved by hand, but it's actually not. GUEST: Right!
APPRAISER: Looking at it, it looks like yours is a convertible high chair. Have you ever
tried to play around with it to see if it does anything else?
GUEST: No! Uh-uh! APPRAISER: If you were to see either one of
these come up for auction, I think you could see either piece bring perhaps as little as
$100, but they could bring upwards of $300, maybe even $400 apiece.
GUEST: Wow. APPRAISER: Depending on who is, the makeup
in the audience that day. GUEST: Yeah, mm-hmm. I can't wait to see what
this does. I think that's the... GUEST: Oh, yeah.
GUEST: That's the biggest question mark. GUEST: Right!
GUEST: Like, how many things... This is like a Transformer. What does it transform into?
APPRAISER: Like a Transformer, yeah. GUEST: It has wheels on it, so it must do
something. GUEST: (cries out)
APPRAISER: (laughing) GUEST: (shrieks) (Carla shrieking, Dunavant
laughing) Oh, my gosh! GUEST: I see!
APPRAISER: I can't believe y'all didn't know that. I taught you something today.
GUEST: Oh, you taught... GUEST: Yeah!
GUEST: Oh, my gosh! GUEST: Well, that, you know, that makes sense.
HOST: The surprises don't end there for Carla. Coming up, Reid dishes on her kitchen-related
objects. And vintage clothing expert Katy Kane serves up some fun facts about Carla's
more stylish pieces.
GUEST: My dream find at an auction would be some kind of old bowl or rolling pin. I love
rolling pins, by the way. I love rolling pins. If anybody wants to give me a rolling pin...
Okay, so... (laughs) I just love rolling pins. I think my dream find probably
would, would be something that I can use in the kitchen.
HOST: It's no surprise that the chef's dream find would be related to food. Reid Dunavant
stuck around to see the culinary collectibles Carla already has scooped up.
GUEST: So these seltzer bottles were bought at a flea market. They were five dollars each.
You know, nothing precious. Just, "Oh, hey, I love the color." And this ice cream scoop
was my grandmother's. When I looked at it, I was thinking, "Oh, my gosh, look at the
hardware on this thing." It's nothing like the ice cream scoops that I have today that
are just so flimsy. Plus, I was a scooper at an ice cream store, back when I was a teenager.
APPRAISER: I have the scoop for you. GUEST: Oh, you have the scoop for me?
APPRAISER: I have the scoop for you. GUEST: Okay, Reid.
APPRAISER: On both of, on both of these things. GUEST: Okay, well, for me, it's like the old
soda fountain. APPRAISER: That's exactly what I thought of
when I saw these things. GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: The soda fountain was a place, often a counter inside of another store, that
you would go to get a fresh, fizzy drink. And the soda fountain craze first came about
in the 1850s or so, and then it continued for over a hundred years, to the 1950s. There
has been a resurgence in popularity, with this kind of thing as a collectible. We're
seeing a revival in classic cocktails again. The bottle in the middle is rather interesting
in that its label actually has a Star of David on it. A lot of the deliverers of seltzer
bottles and the people who owned the refilling stations for seltzer bottles in the early
20th century had Jewish backgrounds. And they deliberately put the Star of David to show
how proud they were of their Jewish heritage. Very interesting.
GUEST: Wow! That is so interesting. APPRAISER: So let's talk about the ice cream
scoop. The ice cream scoop was invented in 1897 in Pittsburgh by a man named Alfred Cralle.
And Alfred actually was working in a hotel and a restaurant, where he noticed, behind
the soda fountain, that the soda jerks were having a lot of trouble separating the ice
cream from the spoons they were using. So Alfred came up with the ingenious idea of
putting a mechanism inside of the bowl to eject the ice cream.
GUEST: Brilliant. APPRAISER: He was, interestingly enough, the
first African American man in Pittsburgh to patent anything and hold a patent. Sadly,
though, he never became famous for it, and he didn't get rich, because it was such a
simple, easy, brilliant idea that everybody did knock-offs.
GUEST: Mm-hmm. APPRAISER: And soon enough, everyone had forgotten
who had come up with this genius idea. GUEST: Of course.
APPRAISER: Now, your ice cream scoop was manufactured by the Benedict Manufacturing Company, located
in Syracuse, New York. And they were in business from 1894 until 1953. So it was definitely
made before 1953. Uh, the brand is called Indestructo. The ice cream scoop, I see those
available online regularly, vintage ones, anywhere from $15 to $25 or $30.
GUEST: Mm-hmm. APPRAISER: They don't bring a lot of money,
but they sell. People really-- and people prefer the old ones to the new ones.
GUEST: Because they're good. APPRAISER: And they don't break.
GUEST: And they're indestructible. APPRAISER: Now, the seltzer bottles, there
are a lot of people that collect them. People like the blue bottles better, and they tend
to bring, on a retail level, anywhere from $40 up to $120 or so per bottle.
GUEST: What? I love these things. I still love the blue just as much as I did 20 years
ago, when I bought them, and I will definitely continue to use my granny's ice cream scoop.
GUEST: My sister and I, Kim and I, used to play this game called Dearie, and we would
get dressed up in my grandmother's fur coats and we would put on her hats and her jewelry.
(laughing): And we would be, like, "Hey, dearie, how are you, dearie?" (laughter) But it was
all about my grandmother's fashion, and I think that passed down, just in my modeling
days, without really thinking about that connection of modeling and really enjoying fashion and
mixed prints. I probably get that from my grandmother.
HOST: Vintage clothing and couture specialist Katy Kane assesses the personal artifacts
Carla Hall inherited from her fashionable grandmother.
GUEST: So these were my grandmother's bags. APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: We called her Granny, and she had such a flair. I remember her carrying this one.
And the other two, I just remember getting them, going through her things when she passed
away. APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.
GUEST: I don't remember her carrying this one. I would have been afraid to see that
one as a kid. I was, like... (mock-screams and laughs) That would've been a little, a
little too much for me. APPRAISER: That is a reaction a lot of people
have to that type of bag. GUEST: Yeah, right? So her name was Freddie
Mae Glover. APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: And so hence the F on this bag. APPRAISER: Mm-hmm. Or for fashionista.
GUEST (laughing): Yes, yes.
APPRAISER: With the pearl F on the center. These are all hand-stitched.
GUEST: Wow. APPRAISER: And then it's hand-outlined in
gold bugle beads. And then you have the gold bugle bead leaves and flowers to make the
F look like part of the bouquet. And this lovely scrollwork of pearls, it goes all the
way around, stitched on the satin. I've never seen a bag like this with the monogram or
with this plastic covering. But it's made by a company called Patricia of Miami.
GUEST: Uh-huh. APPRAISER: And they were well-known for their
plastic and Lucite bags, which would have been a little earlier than this. I've never
seen one quite like that. GUEST (excitedly): Ah!
APPRAISER: This one is the newest of the group. GUEST: Okay, okay.
APPRAISER: Okay? This one is probably from the very late '50s or early 1960s, somewhere
in the '60s... GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: And this one is lizard, and then it has this centerpiece of black suede. It's
an unusual bag in that it is this coloration, sort of the cream and the gray, almost black
lizard skin. Most of the ones that you run across are either black or brown.
GUEST: Mm-hmm. APPRAISER: So this is a more special bag.
And this one was made by Sydney of California. So we've got Miami, we've got California...
GUEST: (chuckles) APPRAISER: And now we're going to Havana.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh! APPRAISER: This one is the oldest of the group.
GUEST: Uh-huh. APPRAISER: This is from 1940, and it's an...
GUEST: Wow. APPRAISER: 1940s, I should say.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: We can't date it exactly. These were very, very popular. A lot of the American
tourists would go to Cuba for vacation, and they would very often bring these bags home
as souvenirs. People either really, really love them...
GUEST: Uh-huh. APPRAISER: ...or don't care for them at all.
There doesn't seem to be any middle ground on the alligator bag with the head...
GUEST: Right. APPRAISER: ...and the feet, and then on the
back, you know, it's the full alligator body. You've got his back legs there, too. It's
the full skin. And then this one we also know belonged to your grandmother Freddie, because
it's got her three initials in the center. GUEST: Yes! Freddie Mae Glover!
APPRAISER: Yes. This one is always a conversation piece. A value on this one, in this condition,
would probably be about $150, maybe $200. GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: This one is in about the same range. This is a little bit harder for a retail sale
in that you have to find another person who's got an F initial.
GUEST: Oh. APPRAISER: And then this one is in the $300
to $350 range. GUEST: What?!
APPRAISER: Yeah, so this is... GUEST: Oh, my gosh.
APPRAISER: Well, this one is in the best condition. It would look the most stylish and sort of
fit in with contemporary clothing. GUEST: Mm-hmm. Who knew?
APPRAISER: (laughs) GUEST: Because, honestly, they've been living
in my closet. APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: So let's get them out. I'm gonna have my little purse on.
APPRAISER: Mm-hmm. GUEST: They're, like, "Carla, where're you
going?" "To get the mail." APPRAISER: (laughter)
GUEST: I had no idea how well-made that table was. I could dance on that table.
GUEST: Oh, my gosh. But the moment, the high chair!
GUEST: Chair-- I had... GUEST: What?!
GUEST: (laughter) GUEST: I don't know who sat in that high chair.
I mean... GUEST: Or who rolled in it!
GUEST: Right. GUEST: I mean, it went... (imitating chair
clunking) GUEST: (laughs)
GUEST: I love it even more now. It's so... GUEST: (laughing)
GUEST: I think every day, I'm gonna be, like, (imitating chair clicking)
GUEST: (laughing) GUEST: Sounds freaking awesome.