GUEST: It's been handed down through my husband's side of the family since the 1800s.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: When a relative went over to China for three months to do shopping for antiques, with the purpose to come back and open an antique shop.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: And this piece, I don't know if it just never made it to the antique shop, or they liked it so much, they just always kept it on the fireplace mantle.

APPRAISER: Now, antique dealers have a history or a habit of keeping one of two objects.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: Ob-objects that are either very good, the best they've bought, or their mistake.

GUEST: Oh!

APPRAISER: What-what they thought was real, which is actually incorrect.

GUEST: You're making me nervous.

APPRAISER: I'm sorry.

APPRAISER: Do you know the material it's made from?

GUEST: I guessed it was brass.

APPRAISER: It's bronze.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: And it's a gilded bronze figure.

And then there's some polychrome.

They're colored highlights.

Do you happen to know who the figure is-is modeled after?

GUEST: Not at all.

APPRAISER: Mm.

GUEST: Well, they've always called it in our family, the ancestor.

APPRAISER: That's often what these are referred to.

They're either immortal figures, ancestral figures.

GUEST: Mm.

APPRAISER: This may represent a figure known as the Jade Emperor.

And the Jade Emperor is a Daoist figure that rules the celestial realm, or heaven realm.

This is from the Daoist religion or spiritual philosophy.

It's an earth-based philosophy on moral conduct and ethics.

It's in harmony with the natural world.

And these figures really reached an apex of production or appreciation or devotion, during the late Ming Period.

So about 1615, 1620.

GUEST: Wow.

APPRAISER: These seated immortal devotional figures on the bracket base.

This is a very typical form, really nice example.

It's robust, the proportions are good.

The work on the robe is really good work.

These celestial clouds are really beautifully incised.

And this beaded edge, one thing you'll notice with Chinese bronzes, the beaded edges, the higher the beading, the crisper the beading, the more work done to the beading, the better the object is.

The gilding, the remnants of the gilding.

It's softened with age and is worn in the right spots.

There's a little firing crack here.

That's not a big deal, but it is an imperfection.

It's a weakness in the original firing.

And then as you notice, there's a plug implant here in the shoulder.

During the firing process, this split, not a big deal, common.

They cut a plug, put a plug in, fortified the instability, and then it's been fine for 350 years.

400 years.

GUEST: That's amazing.

APPRAISER: Now I'm just going to tip it so we can have a look at the interior, which is the telltale sign of it being old.

This is a really lovely patina for a casting.

This polychrome counter is often in the recesses of Ming bronzes.

It's a heavy, well-cast figure.

These are faked, these are reproduced.

This is not a fake, this is not a reproduction.

Great provenance, it's 100 years old.

The reproductions have really only started in the last 30, 40 years and they're prolific now.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: Clearly your antique dealer relative kept this because it's one of the better objects he owned.

GUEST: Mm.

APPRAISER: In a retail setting, it would demand a value of $20,000.

GUEST: (chuckling): I brought it in a roller cooler today with snacks on top of it.

(laughs) Oh, my goodness... Go ahead and keep talking, Robert, because I think I lost my ability of speech right now.

I had no idea.

None.

That's amazing.

(chuckles) Wow!

That's, how-- I cannot believe it.

APPRAISER: It's a great object.

GUEST: Oh, thank you so much.