1922 German Tapestry
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GUEST:
Well, I found it in my aunt's attic back in 1973, and I brought it home, rolled it up, put it in my bedroom closet, and it's been there since then. We found a great big box of letters and all sorts of things. And as I started looking through them about six or seven years ago, I realized that, you know, this tapestry might be worth something.
APPRAISER:
This was your aunt's, right? Well, we have a letter from her where she said she visited a tapestry factory, and then we have invoices—the original invoices-- for the purchase of three tapestries in Germany. And I believe that the purchase price for this particular tapestry was $140. She ordered this tapestry in 1922, and it took about six months to make. And the subject matter of this tapestry is from a very famous painting by Jan van Eyck, and it's a 15th-century artist, and it is in a church in Flanders. And this is very common for the tapestries to use this early subject matter. One of the clues that this is a newer tapestry is the color palette and it's got very soft, sort of pastel hues, and the early tapestries are very rich greens and blues. The other tip-off is that the faces are very crude, relative to the quality that you would see in an 18th-century tapestry.
GUEST:
I see.
APPRAISER:
What do you think the value might be?
GUEST:
I haven't the faintest idea, but I'm hoping I go home in a limousine today.
APPRAISER:
Oh, well, I can't guarantee a limousine, but I would value this at about $8,000 on the retail level.
GUEST:
I can't believe that! That's fantastic!
Appraisal Details
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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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