who could forget the time when david battie valued a piece that norah ambrose brought to the "antiques roadshow"? what do you think this is? - well-- - as an object. it's a teapot, definitely. battie: well, norah, she brought in a large teapot. i think it might well have been a punch pot actually-- whieldon ware, mid-18th century. why are you so sure it's a teapot? well, my mother-in-law told me when she was a little girl that they used to use it as a teapot. i'd been chatting to norah and she was wonderful. she was-- i suppose she was then in her '70s and chatty and spontaneous. well, when my mother-in-law gave it to me, she said to me, "look after it now because," she said "it's over 100 years old," she said. "it was very old when i was a little girl." it's more than true. - this is actually a very ancient pot indeed. - oh! battie: it was the first time that i think anybody had ever teased a client over the pricing. battie: you think it might be worth several hundred pounds? i don't know. i don't think so. - you wouldn't have thought so? - no. so even if i told you it was worth £600

our ceramics expert, david battie found himself face to face with a familiar object which, at first, him mystified. and then it all came rushing back. you see, when david's not at the roadshow he loves nothing more than surfing the net. the internet intrigues me for a whole raft of reasons. i love the fact that it's a completely new market. i came up for 35 years in auctions... real auctions. and now, suddenly, people are sitting in their own home, clicking away at a keyboard, putting up objects which are being put on not by professional cataloguers, but by themselves. and blow me, an object i bid on on the internet turned up at bodnant. do you collect japanese objects? i do, yes. why do you like japanese things? the intricacy of the articles, how they were made. it's unbeatable, isn't it? unbeatable when you see the top stuff. absolutely defies belief. this one you've bought? yes. recently? fairly recently, yes. where did you get it from? i bought it off the internet. did you? yes. i know you did. how do you know? i was the under-bidder. you weren't. i was. can't believe that. it's

there were objects that were flown in from all around the world, and david battie got the ball rollingly on. tell me, where did you have this hanging in your house? i used to have it hanging on the wall, but, not being my favorite object i'm afraid it's just in the bedroom at the moment. find it a bit difficult to take, do you? just a bit, yeah. it's a bit sort of um...strong. very strong. it looks to me as if the colorist was on acid or he was smoking something a little on the strong side, and he'd gone mad with the color. that makes sense yes, definitely. do you know where it comes from, for anything about it? um, my grandmother used to be a housemaid back in the '30s and early '40s. when she left that particular family, they asked her if she would like to take something from the household to remind her. and she chose this. how fascinating. that really is interesting. have we got any information on the back? we have "schutz". that means "registered". right. "gilli"--i don't know what that is. no idea. so, we don't know who it's by. of what we are fairly certain is that it is german.