Fortuny Silk Velvet Jacket, ca. 1925
GUEST: I have a velvet kaftan from Fortuny, which, as I understand, is a couture design house in Italy. It's from my great-grandmother, and was passed down from her to her daughter and then my mom and then to me.
APPRAISER: It is by Mariano Fortuny, and he was born in 1871 to a family of very well-known artists in Granada, Spain.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: When his father died, his mother ended up moving the entire family to Venice, where he then continued to work for the rest of his life, and he died in '49. As a family full of artists, they were inspired by textiles and things from around the world. Mariano was specifically inspired by Persian textiles and Renaissance velvets. What we have here is a silk velvet kaftan. It is a T-shaped. Going to lift up one of his very simple... Simple long line, simple seam here, up the side. It's open. It was always meant to drape. Soft as anything silk velvet.
GUEST: It's so soft.
APPRAISER: Fortuny is often identified with these amazing proprietary techniques. In this example, it's actually how he stamped the metal onto the silk velvet. We don't know how he did the metal stamping. It's a mystery and it's luscious. They still stamp things and it's still a secret. It is a classic open, sort of, jacket robe. It's in a very simple construction. It's not about construction. It's about the expression, the colors, and the, the motifs he's using, the inspiration. His stamping is meant to... give that effect of what we see in brocaded Ottoman and Renaissance velvets. Around the neck, we have the sort of tendrils, and an abstract floral of some sort. Here it looks, we've got these roundels. It's very reminiscent of a, of a Coptic, uh, tunic with these roundels. At the bottom, we have a very wide printed area. And what we see is these roundels are actually sort of a tree of life. It's just a simple V in the back. Meant to drape very elegantly over a very kind of bohemian woman.
GUEST: Yes. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: We see a small damage, which makes sense, it's a point of stress. Aside from this stunning color, you always have a contrasting color. This is a lovely taupe silk inside. He opened his couture house in 1906, and sometimes it's hard to date these, because he did the same things for a, a long time. It was circa 1925, circa 1930. I was not able to find this exact pattern, but it, I don't believe this would have been a one-off design. Color.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: Lovely. It's so stunning.
GUEST: Really beautiful.
APPRAISER: Color does not make a difference to the market. Because you could wear this over anything.
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: Right now on the market-- this is a retail price I'm going to give you...
GUEST: Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER: ...they are selling consistently in the $15,000, $16,000 range.
GUEST (laughing): Oh my God. That's crazy.
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: It's, they come up on the market, and they are beloved. They are in museums all around the world.
GUEST: Oh my gosh.
APPRAISER: Many examples.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: They are, uh, very, very desirable. I would put an insurance valuation of $18,000 on this. If you had to replace it, yeah.
GUEST: Wow.
$15,000 Retail
$18,000 Insurance
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Understanding Our Appraisals
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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