'Antiques Roadshow' is shooting in S.L. this week

Last time they came to Utah, they found everything from $900 hair jewelry to $17,000 cast-iron toys to a $15,000 Fremont Ellis painting.

The PBS reality series "Antiques Roadshow" is back, looking for more treasures that may be hidden in the attics and closets of Salt Lake City while in town this week. The cast and crew will be at the Salt Palace Convention Center Saturday to examine antique objects. Three hourlong segments taped in Salt Lake will air next year.

Tickets were distributed at random a month ago, and only people with tickets may attend.

Three on-location shoots will be part of the Salt Lake segments. They will focus on Olympic memorabilia (taped at Utah Olympic Park), European furniture (filmed at a warehouse filled with English antiques), and minerals and rocks (at the Utah Museum of Natural History on the U. campus).

Marsha Bemko, the show's executive producer, said she's excited to see what Salt Lake City has in store this time around.

"We don't know what's coming until it comes through the door," she said in a phone interview from her office in Boston. "We want to get to know the flavor of Utah and its people, not only from the items they bring in, but also from on-location shoots."

One of the special shoots will take place at Euro Treasures, a warehouse off 600 South stuffed with more than 40,000 pieces of antique European furniture. Local antiques dealer Scott Evans bought the collection from an elderly British man.

"He (Evans) still doesn't know what all he has in there," Bemko said. "We're going to go in and discover it with him."

Evans shipped the furniture to Salt Lake City in hopes that locals would love it just as much as he does. Because so many Utahns trace their roots to pioneers and immigrants, many of them don't have antique family furniture from the home country. The antiques in his warehouse bring a "wealth of history to this valley," he said in an interview at the warehouse.

Also, the centuries-old tables, bureaus, desks and chairs remind people how talented the artisans were with their hands.

"Woodworkers were the most gifted craftsmen of their time," Evans said. "They learned geometry and how to make hinges and carve decorations . . . they were very technologically advanced."