jennens was a very committed christian. >> we find jennens going to another friend saying i have done this scripture collection for handel and hope it becomes his best. it is on the best subject. subject is messiah. >> here is handel's composition room. he wrote it in 24 days. many believe it was devinely inspired. one music scholar described the number of errors of incredibly low for a composition of its length. a friend who visited discovered him sobbing. after he wrote the hallelujah chorus, reports saying i do think i saw the heaven before me and the great god himself. for jennens and handel, they made the controversy decision to perform in theatres instead of churches to reach a wider audience. suzanna maria siber was described of being able to penetrate the heart with its voice when others could only reach the ear. >> she touches people on every left whether it be a spiritual level or personal level. >> if you look at the youtube hallelujah choruses, hits are running at 43 million. i doubt all are professing christians. you can see the people listen, you can see the change as th

the firm that one normally thinks of with its very high quality papier-mache items is a firm called jennensd bettridge. and they were the firm, in the 1840s, '50s, really popularized the inlay of mother of pearl abalone. and what you can see here, where the color hasn't faded at all-- you've got all the bright, the vibrancy coming up from the shell which is underneath, but here on the lid... of course, with a bit of ardent polishing, all the detailing of the petals has been lost. right, yes. so, this is how it would've originally looked. stunning. absolutely fantastic. yeah. have you got it in a safe place at home? it's in a very dark corner of my bedroom. all right. because we were always told not really to get the light to it. well, that was very good advice, and of course, the problem here-- it's got a caddy top. you can't use it as a flat surface. no, no. it's a beautiful but useless piece of furniture, really. ( laughs ) well, thereby hangs the rub-- not very useful in this teabag-friendly world. and of course, that has an effect on its value, but i think if you went out to replace thi