Event Offers Opportunity to Value Collectables and Heirlooms

Winchester, VA. 3/12/2014…The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley (MSV) has announced that an Americana Appraisal Day will take place in the Museum this Saturday, March 15, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.

During these popular MSV appraisal events, experts provide visitors with fair market estimates for their collectables and heirlooms. Saturday’s event will focus on objects made in America, with items suitable for appraisal including decorative art, pottery, baskets, textiles, chairs, small furniture items, folk art, fraktur, domestic articles, and glass. Jewelry, modern firearms, and antiquities are not eligible for appraisal on this day.

Saturday’s appraisals will be provided by experts from Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates, Mount Crawford, Virginia. On hand for Saturday’s event, Jeff Evans is the firm president and principal auctioneer and decorative and fine arts appraiser. Evans was guest curator for Come In and Have a Seat: Vernacular Chairs of the Shenandoah Valley, which the MSV presented in 2009–10, and he is co-curator for the upcoming exhibition Safes of the Valley, slated to open in the MSV on May 10, 2014. Evans also has served as guest curator at The Virginia Quilt Museum, Harrisonburg, and at the Shenandoah Valley Folk Art & Heritage Center in Dayton, Virginia. He has authored a number of publications and articles focused on American decorative arts, and he has lectured widely, including at the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, the Winterthur Museum in Winterthur, Delaware, and the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.

Evans’s wife, Beverley, director of operations at Jeffrey S. Evans & Associates and an expert on Shenandoah Valley quilts, also will be at the MSV on Saturday to provide additional assistance with textile appraisals.

Appointments on Saturday will be on a first-come, first-served basis. Each participant may bring up to three items for appraisal, with the fee being $10 per item or $25 for three items. All proceeds from the event will support publication of a catalogue that the MSV is publishing in conjunction with the Safes of the Valley exhibition. Museum admission is not required to participate in the appraisal event. For those who also wish to visit the MSV galleries and exhibitions on Appraisal Day, regular Museum admission fees will apply. The galleries will be open from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m., and the Museum Café by Bonnie Blue will offer lunch and desserts from 11:30 a.m. until 2 p.m.

The Museum of the Shenandoah Valley is located at 901 Amherst Street in Winchester, Virginia.  The MSV complex—which includes the Museum, the Glen Burnie House, and six acres of gardens—is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. The Museum galleries are open year-round; the gardens are open seasonally. The gardens will reopen on April 1, 2014. The house will reopen on June 10 following a two-year rehabilitation project. Additional information is available at www.theMSV.org or by calling 540-662-1473, ext. 235