By Stefene Russell
Photography by James Maritz
“We’re here with Bob, Marianne and this is the naked lady … what’s her name?” said Leslie Keno (in the khaki blazer), as he and his brother, Leigh (in navy) bantered with a pair of invisible newscasters in front of a TV camera outside of the St. Louis Science Center. The naked lady in question was “Reclining Nude,” a 1931 oil painting by Joseph Jones (Joe Jones?), a noted Missouri artist who began his career as a modernist and finished as a regionalist. The Kenos’ “solid estimate of value” was $30,000-plus. Marianne, who’d brought the painting to the Science Center’s “Trash or Treasure” appraisal day, politely restrained her giddiness; Bob, the owner of a piecrust tea table that was also being appraised on live TV, composed himself gracefully when it was announced his piece was merely a cleverly made reproduction. But the sting of disappointment doesn’t last long around the Kenos (who started a joint diary at the age of 12 to record their acquisitions, proclaiming on the first page: WE ARE ANTIQUE DEALERS) because they are just so excited about stuff, whether it’s highly valuable or just highly quirky.
“We have fun,” said Leigh. “Even if we have to tell someone that something’s not first period, like the table over there, there’s always a bright side to it. I had an email last week, literally from a five-year-old gal using her dad’s computer. She’d discovered a tea table like that one at a tag sale for $50, but it was18th-century. She said, ‘Dear Mr. Keno, I watch the Antiques Roadshow and I want to be an appraiser and a television star someday. I go to tag sales and garage sales and I found this with my dad, can you tell me what it is?’ That’s what she said—it was so cute! I told her, this tea table was from around when George Washington was alive and she was so excited.”
The effervescent Kenos drew a crowd, but most folks were here for one reason: to discover, for good or for bad, just how much their possessions are worth. A well-dressed young man strode in, a gilded mirror under his arm; a tiny old woman slowly carried two overflowing shopping bags full of mysterious objects down to the basement, where the appraisers had set up their tables; and a model ship rolled into the lobby on a camo-pattern Radio Flyer. Later that morning, the Kenos (who weren’t scheduled to appraise, but couldn’t keep themselves away from all … that … stuff!) sneaked down the escalators to get a better look at the ship once it was removed from its Plexiglas cube.
Jenny Manganaro’s carefully packed shoulder bag had two items in it, both inherited from her maternal grandma: a framed Chinese headdress piece studded with semi-precious stones and a tomb figure of a court lady, a Tang dynasty piece dated somewhere between 618–907 A.D.
“It’s very crude,” Manganaro said as she waited in line to meet with Mike Boysen, the Asian art appraiser. “As children, we used to make fun of it, we thought she was so ugly.” But the lady, made of terra cotta and finished with a mottled, tri-colored glaze, radiated an impressive patina of age.
As the morning wore on, the line at Jonathan and David Kodner’s art appraisal table grew longer and longer, crisscrossing from one corner of the room to the other, while the jewelry appraisers yawned and drummed their fingers on the table. Wheelock Crosby Brown, proprietor of La Charrette Fur Trading Post museum in Washington, Mo., had a pair of French colonial portraits appraised by the Kodners at $4,000–$7,000 each. His dignified, old-school appearance (white beard, long white hair, tweed jacket and tie) drew as many eyes as his paintings. The Kenos, he said, were dying to take a look at the paintings, but had to leave for a luncheon.
“The portraits were pulled out of the attic from an old French log house in Ste. Genevieve,” he explained. “They were a prominent couple. Helped found the town. I call that one”—gesturing towards the husband’s portrait—“my Lyle Lovett painting.”
Back at the Asian art booth, Boysen examined Manganaro’s tomb lady with a gold magnifying glass, speaking in a calm, quiet voice, barely audible above the din. The room was now fully packed with people and their weird belongings, including fossilized nautilus shells; Cabbage Patch dolls; Native American squash-blossom necklaces; goblets inscribed with Danish script; framed and unframed still lifes; folk art that defied description; Kaiser helmets; World’s Fair ephemera; and crazy quilts. A humble-looking chair, made in 1947 by Hans J. Wegner, was given a low estimate of $15,000. The owner of a rare 19th-century star map, Ann Milan, donated it to the Science Center; it was pronounced to be worth about $1,000 by rare book dealer Rod Shene.
And what about Magnagaro’s piece? It was far older than the Wegner chair, more historic than the star map.
“He said that 25 years ago, it might have been worth $35,000,” Manganaro said. “These days, it’s only worth $300 or $400,” the price of the phosphorescence test that could confirm its authenticity. Why? In the late '90s, the Chinese government pulled relics from 10,000 tombs before they were submerged under the waters of the Three Gorges dam. Hence, the market is … erm, flooded with tomb figures. But as the “treasure twins” have said, sometimes family storytelling and the connection between generations trumps market value—and, after all, a treasure is in the eye of the beholder.
