An Antiques Roadshow guest was left lost for words when they found out that their items weren’t really what they thought they were. 

During a recent episode of the BBC show, filmed at Ebrington Square in Derry, the collector asked John Sandon for his expert advice about some pots that he thought were created by William Moorcroft.

The guest told John: ‘I’m a collector and I’m a ceramicist myself.

‘I teach and I make, but I also collect mostly Irish ceramics.  And these are the kind of my first delve into collecting English ceramics.

‘When I seen the name William Moorcroft, I thought “Yeah I’d like to get something that was quite old of his.”‘

He confessed that he had some pieces from 2004, but the pots in front of the expert were from around the early 1900s. 

An Antiques Roadshow guest was left lost for words when they found out that their item wasn’t what they thought it was

During a recent episode of the BBC show, the guest asked John Sandon for his expert advice about some pots that he thought were made by William Moorcroft

John told him: ‘To find a matching pair, and they look in pretty good order too, they look in wonderful condition. Where did you find them?’

To which the guest said that he found them after a guy was advertising them and he drove down to Cork to get them… and then the bad news started.

John then picked up one of the pots and said: ‘Well there’s all the marking you’d expect to see  on the bottom.

‘The mark there printed in brown is for Macintyre. That’s of course, the factory who produced them. He was working for Florian Ware. 

‘It’s a little bit smudgy mark, but there’s printed on there. 

‘But the signature is what we look for. 

‘What worries me when you see them here is,  are they too good to be true? Because they would be 1905, so 110, 120 years old…

‘You’re going to expect to see defects here and there. A bit of signs of crazing. 

The expert was very impressed with the condition of the pots that had supposedly been made in the early 1900s

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‘There’s some fine cracking in the glaze. It IS there, but you can hardly see it. Underneath there, smears of old.

‘Has it just been dipped in tea? 

‘You know, the more I look closely, the mark there is… instead of being printed on a transfer print, that’s a sort of pH๏τograph and a pH๏τo litho that’s been done. 

‘A pH๏τograph of a genuine mark has been put on there… Not looking good. I think they’re brand new.’

He then explained that if they were real he would have had a bargain because they would have been three or four times more than what he bought them for. 

The expert then told the guest the words that nobody wants to hear.  

John told him: ‘They’re modern fakes, and therefore they’re just pretty.’ 

Despite the bad news, the guest looked on the bright side of things and took the news like a champ. 

He replied: ‘Well it’s good to hear.

‘It’s good to know. 

‘Better than me thinking I have a masterpiece on the mantelpiece, you know.’ 

 Antiques Roadshow airs on BBC Two.