Appraisal: Pyrography Hutch Table, ca. 1920

GUEST: Well, I call it a table chair or a chair table, whichever.

APPRAISER: (chuckles) GUEST: But it, uh, was handed down to my husband on his maternal side.

Brooklyn, I believe, is where they first were.

And we're not sure when they came over from Denmark.

He was told that he thought a relative made it, carved it, you know, like, in wood shop or something.

(chuckling): Kind of, I mean, that was, they... APPRAISER: Right.

GUEST: No big deal about it at all.

APPRAISER: So what you have is, is what we often refer to as a hutch table.

And as you alluded to, you said a chair table.

If we do this, with a simple hinge, it converts from a, a table to a chair.

And this is actually what we call pyrography.

It's the art of carving and burning these designs into wood.

I would probably date it from about the 1920s.

And it's what we call the Art Nouveau style.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: This is really an ambitious piece of work.

GUEST: (chuckling): Yes.

APPRAISER: To think about it, probably hours and hours of work went into this piece, but it's, it's fabulous.

Where was your, your husband's family from?

GUEST: The grandmother was from, uh, Denmark.

APPRAISER: Do they have a, a Jensen family name attached to them at all?

GUEST: Should have looked for that.

(chuckling): Um, I think there is.

APPRAISER: Okay, 'cause the reason I ask is, 'cause believe it or not, there's a signature of Minnie G. Jensen under here.

GUEST: There is?

We looked everywhere for a signature.

APPRAISER: Really?

GUEST: (chuckling): Where did you find it?

APPRAISER: If I shut the top, what I'm just going to do is, I'm going to lift it like this.

GUEST: Oh, my goodness!

APPRAISER: And right under here we have "Minnie G.

Jensen."

GUEST: Well, that's definitely one of the...

I don't know, I can't remember if it's the grandmother, I, you know, the names, but Jensen is definitely in there.

So...

I have it written down in my purse.

APPRAISER: Really?

Well, that is probably who, who did this, this ambitious work.

I'm just going to...

GUEST: And so what would they do?

Get patterns?

APPRAISER: Yeah, exactly.

They had pattern designs.

Most pyrographic work brings, you know, a couple hundred dollars.

It, no, nothing too crazy.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: But because of the, the great size, proportion, and for me, this central panel of, of the woman, it, it gets my heart beating.

I just think it's so beautiful.

If this were to come to auction, I would estimate it to sell in the $1,000 to $2,000 range.

GUEST: Wow, very nice.

APPRAISER: It's pretty special.

GUEST: That it is.