`Roadshow' stars pull into Redmond

Twin brothers Leigh and Leslie Keno have stalked antiques since they were kids prowling abandoned barns in upstate New York.

Now they no longer have to hunt. The antiques come to them.

The Keno brothers are familiar to millions as the twin experts on the PBS series "Antiques Roadshow" (8 p.m. Mondays, KCTS-TV, repeating at 9 p.m. Fridays). Fans live for the inevitable moment when one brother or the other turns to an unsuspecting owner and asks innocently, "Do you have any idea what this piece might be worth?"

On one memorable episode, filmed in Secaucus, N.J., the answer turned out to be $490,000 - the price a retired schoolteacher eventually received at auction for an early American table she bought at a yard sale for $25.

The program, which has now surpassed "Masterpiece Theatre" as the public network's most popular show, seems to have tapped into something primal, says Leslie Keno, who will be in Redmond with his brother later this week.

"Everyone loves to think that they might have treasure in the attic, or the winning lottery ticket," he said in a telephone interview. "But I think the popularity of the program also shows there's a widespread fascination with things that are rare and beautiful and speak to us of our past."

Even before the television series, the Keno brothers were well-known in the antique world. Individually, they have handled some of the biggest sales in recent history - an early American secretary-bookcase that sold for $7.5 million at auction, a Colonial tea table that brought $3.65 million, a Philadelphia-made wingback chair that sold for $2.5 million.

The brothers have put these triumphs and other antique tales into a book, "Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture" (Warner Books, $29.95). It is the book they will be signing starting at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Borders Books and Music in Redmond Town Center. The store will be their only public appearance in the area.

Leslie is a senior appraiser at Sotheby's, the venerable New York auction house. Leigh runs his own gallery in the same city. Sometimes the brothers collaborate in finding a rare piece and bringing it to auction; sometimes they are rivals.

In separate interviews, both men talked of their astonishment at finding themselves twin television heartthrobs.

"I knew from the beginning it ("Antiques Roadshow") would be successful, but I had no idea it would be this successful," said Leigh Keno.

The thrill of the treasure hunt is part of it, he said. But he's been surprised and heartened by the number of people on the show "who have no interest in what their piece is worth - instead they want to know who made it, what it was used for, what makes it interesting. I find that immensely gratifying."

Said Leslie, "Collecting is almost a universal impulse. At one time or another, we've all collected something - toys, marbles, coins, seashells at the beach. But there's also, I think, in this high-technology age, the desire to go back to another way of life, when things were beautifully crafted by hand."

Many people find "a wonderful, quiet solace," Leigh added, in contemplating an old object.

"You pick up an old carved bowl, for instance, and feel in your hands all the wear patterns and chopping marks and the soft edges that have been rubbed smooth by handling, and it's almost like having a tape recording of the past 200 years."

In "Hidden Treasure," the brothers chronicle their lifelong fascination with antiques, beginning when they were 12-year-olds prying iron strap hinges off abandoned barns around their rural home in Herkimer County, N.Y. Taking turns by chapter - and with the help of a ghostwriter, Joan Freund - the brothers get off some great antique fish stories: how a million-dollar chair was kept in a chicken coop, or a priceless early American bureau became a television table.

It makes frustrating reading for Northwest antiquarians - it seems unlikely anyone will ever find a 1720 Newport desk in a barn in Woodinville.

"Well, that's not necessarily so," said Leslie Keno. "I remember a wonderful William and Mary highboy that turned up in a little house in San Francisco. It turned out to have been made in Boston in 1715, and it sold at auction for $1.6 million."

As the population shifts, the brothers said, there is also a steady trickle of inherited furniture from east to west.

"One story that didn't make the book is about a 10-foot-tall Philadelphia clock from the 1770s that turned up in Cody, Wyoming," said Leigh Keno. "The owner had inherited the piece, and he brought it to a Cody antique store in his pickup truck, sticking out with a red flag on the back, like a load of lumber."

There's also a good deal of 19th-century furniture worth collecting, Leslie Keno said, including some actually made on the West Coast.

"There is a style of furniture called Greene and Greene, made in San Francisco in the 1890s and early 1900s," he said. "Some of the pieces are inlaid with a Japanese-style insect motif, and the workmanship is exquisite."

(Charles and Henry Greene were California architects and furniture makers whose designs heavily influenced the Arts and Crafts movement around the turn of the century.)

Shaker furniture often turns up in the West, because it was sturdy and utilitarian, he said, and is well worth collecting.

In a chapter called "The Tacoma Come-on," Leigh tells how he was lured to an auction house in Tacoma by a rare Newport desk that turned out to be fake. Though disappointed in the desk, Leigh poked around the shop until he discovered a nice 18th-century Vermont blanket chest.

"I sold that chest in New York for enough to pay for my plane fare, so the trip wasn't a total loss," he said. "And it proves you can find early Americana in the Northwest."

Leslie Keno lives in Manhattan, in an apartment filled with Old Dutch paintings. He and his wife, Emily, have a 3-year-old daughter who is already learning to leaf through Sotheby's catalogs.

Leigh (pronounced "Lee") Keno also lives in Manhattan, but he admits his bachelor flat "is not decorated in any sense of the word - I don't even have drapes." He has a 3-year-old son, Brandon, who "likes to bang on Chippendale drawer brasses."

"He seems to prefer them to Federal era because they make more noise," he joked.

To some, the brothers' antique quest seems contradictory. They spend their lives ferreting out rare, beautiful pieces that promptly disappear into private - sometimes even anonymous - collections. Does that bother them?

"Sure, you would like to see these pieces in museums, where the public can appreciate them," Leslie acknowledges. "Sadly, museums often cannot afford to compete with private collectors. At the same time, the sellers are real people with real bills to pay."

Nevertheless, he said, "private collections often become public," as bequests or donations.

Leigh draws an analogy to catch-and-release trout fishing, a pasttime both brothers enjoy.

"These objects surface and resurface just like great trout," he said. "A wonderful piece is found. It's photographed, measured, cataloged. Then it's sold, and goes back under. It may be under for years, decades, but eventually, it will show up again. And that's the thrill. Where will it show up next, and who will catch it?"

---------------------------

Authors appearance

Leigh and Leslie Keno will sign copies of their book, "Hidden Treasures: Searching for Masterpieces of American Furniture" (Warner Books, $29.95), at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Borders Books and Music, 16549 N.E. 74th St., Redmond Town Center.