'Amazing' Sculpture on 'Antiques Roadshow' Found to Be High School Art Project
The jug was originally valued at between $30,000 and $50,000.
— -- A piece of art originally appraised as a piece from the late 19th century and valued at as much as $50,000 on the popular PBS series “Antiques Roadshow” was instead found to be a sculpture made by a high school student decades ago.
The sculpture, referred to by PBS online as “Grotesque Face Jug,” was brought on “Antiques Roadshow” by a man who said he purchased it for $300 at an estate sale in Eugene, Oregon.
The show’s appraiser, Stephen Fletcher, called the sculpture “bizarre and wonderful” and said it looked “a little bit” like the work of Pablo Picasso.
“It's a little difficult to identify precisely when this was made, but I think it's probably late 19th or early 20th century,” he said on the episode in question, adding, “... Somebody might well ask in the area of between $30,000 and $50,000 for this.”
The episode was filmed last June in Spokane, Washington, and aired in January. A viewer then contacted "Antiques Roadshow" after the episode aired to say she recognized the jug as the work of her friend. The show reached out to the friend, Betsy Soule, a horse trainer in Bend, Oregon, who confirmed the sculpture was her work from high school in the 1970s.
“I was just a really passionate, artistic kid,” Soule, who could not be reached by ABC News, told her local newspaper, The Bulletin. “I don’t know where those faces came from; they just came roaring out of me onto those pots.”
“Antiques Roadshow” corrected the sculpture’s appraisal on its website to between $3,000 and $5,000. It also changed the sculpture’s origin date to 1973.
“Over the years watching our appraisers work, I’ve learned it’s a very difficult profession, and even with decades of experience, sometimes they can miss the mark with an item,” “Antiques Roadshow” Executive Producer Marsha Bemko told ABC News in a statement. “In those rare instances, our goal is to provide that new information to our fans, as we’ve done in this case with an updated online appraisal segment and page, including information on the artist and a statement from the appraiser."
The appraiser, Fletcher, also issued a statement together with the online correction posted by the show in February.
"The techniques of making pottery, in many ways, haven’t changed for centuries. Obviously, I was mistaken as to its age by 60 to 80 years," Fletcher wrote, in part. "I feel the value at auction, based on its quality and artistic merit, is in the $3,000-$5,000 range."
He added: "Still not bad for a high schooler in Oregon."