(RightWing.org) – “Antiques Roadshow” star Henry Sandon has died at age 95. The British expert appeared on the BBC show for 40 years and specialized in ceramics and porcelain.
Henry George Sandon MBE was born in London on August 4, 1928. During WWII he was evacuated to Buckinghamshire as part of a program of moving children from heavily bombed cities to safer areas. Sandon finished high school at the Royal Grammar School in High Wycombe. He then returned to London and studied at the Guildhall School of Music. His first career was as a music teacher, interspersed with minor movie roles.
However, in the early 1950s, he was digging in the garden of his home in Worcester when he found pieces of Roman pottery (as well as an assortment of human bones). That sparked an interest in archaeology and ceramics, and he began collecting decorative ceramics from old buildings that were being demolished. By 1966 he’d become enough of an expert that the Dyson Perrins Museum, located in the Royal Worcester ceramics factory, hired him as curator. He went on to work for several other museums.
In 1979, the BBC started filming the second season of “Antiques Roadshow,” and brought Sandon on board as its pottery and ceramics expert. His enthusiasm and friendly personality quickly made him one of the show’s most popular presenters. He also made some of the show’s most impressive finds. In one 1990 example, a family brought in an unusual owl-shaped pot they’d been using as a vase. Sandon identified it as a rare piece of Staffordshire slipware; it had been made around 1680, and despite its comical appearance a museum later paid £30,000 ($38,000) for it.
Sandon married once, in 1957; his wife Barbara died in 2013. Sandon himself died in a care home on Christmas Day. He had three children; his son John followed him onto “Antiques Roadshow” as a ceramics and glass expert.
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