Thirty six years ago the art historian Flora Steel, bought a silver brooch at an antique fair in the English Midlands for about 20 pounds, or about $35 at the time. She loved it at first sight, wore it for a few years and then stored it away for two decades.
Like so many of us, Flora likes to scroll through YouTube looking for tantalizing tidbits of trivia, and enjoys watching the hugely popular television program, Antiques Roadshow, where people bring in everything from worthless trinkets to multi-million dollar forgotten or unrecognized treasures for experts to evaluate.
For lucky Ms. Steel, all these elements combined one day when she was scrolling through YouTube and came across a 2011 BBC story about a brooch being presented on the “Antiques Roadshow.” In the clip, the presenter Geoffrey Munn showed a page with sketches of other brooches designed by the same Victorian-era architect and artist.
Ms. Steel was stupefied. “I thought, ‘Heavens, that’s mine!’”
The art expert said on the show that he dreamed of finding brooches designed by the artist, William Burges, calling his jewelry the “almost-holy grail of Victorian 19th century design.”
Last week, on Tuesday March 19, Ms. Steel’s brooch sold for £9,500 (about $12,000) to a private collector at Gildings Auctioneers in Market Harborough, England.
Made of silver, lapis lazuli, malachite and pink coral, the brooch exemplifies the Victorian esthetic—as interpreted by Burges.
“It caught my eye for its incredible design — its beautiful use of stones,” said Ms. Steel, who has collected silver jewelry since she was 13 years old.
Flora Steel was the third person to sell a William Burges brooch by auction through Gildings; the other two also realized their brooches’ value after watching “Antiques Roadshow.” One of the brooches sold for £31,000 in 2011 (about $50,000 at the time).
The serendipitous find came as a much-needed joy in Flora Steel’s life, after being treated for cancer for the past two years. She plans to share some of her windfall with the breast cancer research fund and give some to her son.
