When you love to draw and paint growing up, you can’t help but dream of becoming a professional artist.
But halfway through her degree in visual arts at York University, Charlotte McGhee, now 34, decided being a starving artist wasn’t for her. She transferred into cultural studies, hoping that would lead to a career.
It did. After graduation and a year teaching English abroad, she came home and found posting for a research assistant at a Toronto company that appraised art and antiques for insurance.
“I just have to get this,” McGhee told herself. Her knowledge of art got her hired on the spot.
For seven years, she learned on the job. Senior staff members would go out and look at a piece of china, art, furniture or jewelry, and come back with photographs and notes. McGhee’s job would be to compare their information to the materials in the company’s extensive library, and write up a report for an insurance company on the object and its estimated value.
As the years passed, McGhee got quicker and more knowledgeable, and soon was doing field work too.
In 2006, the Canadian Antiques Roadshow on CBC needed a fine art expert, and called her in. She worked on the last two seasons of the show.
Around that time, she left her job and started M&G Appraisals (the G is for her husband Wade Gaudette, who helps her out sometimes but mainly works as a chef) out of her home in Orillia.
She does appraisals for insurance purposes, but also to help settle estates when someone has died, and to divide assets in a divorce. Sometimes, people are just curious about the value of their possessions.
Once or twice a week, McGhee attends auctions, mainly to keep herself current on the latest fads and prices. As well, she collects herself and sells a little too, so she’ll often buy.
She divides the rest of her time between visiting client’s homes to either do on-the-spot appraisals (“I have a huge database in my head, I can give pretty accurate quotes”) or to take photographs and notes. Then, at home, she consults her library of books and the various electronic databases she subscribes to find comparable items to aid her in writing a report about the item and its estimated value.
Being around all these antique treasures all the time has its pitfalls. “In my house, there’s not an inch of wall that doesn’t have art on it. I have closets stacked with art: I don’t know what to do with it all.”
