Piero Fornasetti Folding Screen, ca. 1960
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GUEST:
Well, this screen has spent the last 40-odd years sitting in a dining room in a small town in Central Pennsylvania. It came out of a showroom in New York City on Madison Avenue. My father manufactured ladies' lingerie, and this screen was in the showroom, and it was used to hide the models before they would come out and show the buyers the garments.
APPRAISER:
Wow! (laughs)
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
If this thing could only talk (laughs)
GUEST:
Yes, well, it saw a lot of naked butt.
APPRAISER:
Okay, so... What year was that?
GUEST:
The showroom was decorated in the 19, mid-1950s.
APPRAISER:
Okay.
GUEST:
When they morphed from being a manufacturer into being a contractor, all the antiques in the showroom were dispersed. My mother chose this screen to grace her dining room, and it's been in that dining room ever since.
APPRAISER:
Piero Fornasetti was an industrial designer who designed thousands of things, and one of his iconic things is these room screens. He put these images on lacquered wooden panels. And he did lots of different subject matter: classical subjects, libraries, uh, musical instruments-- you name it. And people today love these. If I had to put a date on this, I would say circa 1960. It looks like you have replaced the hinges and the casters.
GUEST:
Yes.
APPRAISER:
Well, I love looking at this. This is like an English gentleman's closet. On the other side, it looks like a library.
GUEST:
I was under the impression that they never repeated the same front with the same back, that they were all different.
APPRAISER:
Sometimes they would have a less busy design on one side. And the distinctive thing about this is, both sides are very graphic. I did a lot of checking and talking with colleagues, and, uh, an insurance value in today's world would be $15,000 for this. Uh, if it had more of the original hardware, maybe, and a little less wear, you might take it as high as $20,000. Fornasetti's son runs the company now, and they reproduced these in the '80s. So some...
GUEST:
That I didn't know.
APPRAISER:
Yeah, sometimes you'll run into the reproductions, but this is definitely one from the period.
GUEST:
(laughs)
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