When Jordan Piluso went to a New Jersey estate sale in late January, she had one goal: to purchase a porcelain rabbit from the designer brand Herand.
She’d learned about the sale online and viewed photos of the items available. She didn’t plan to buy any other decorative animals.
But her mission quickly changed.
“When I walked into the house, this [ceramic] cat was sitting on a piano right in the entryway,” the 34-year-old stay-at-home mom told Business Insider. “No one was looking at it, so I just grabbed it. I thought it was such a whimsical, out-there decor piece, and that’s my style.”
She later purchased the $25 cat decoration, along with a few other pieces. She didn’t know it at the time, but her secondhand find was actually an Italian art piece from Fornasetti.
“I love very eclectic, conversational pieces, and I just thought: I’ve never seen anything like this cat,” she added.
Jordan Piluso
Hidden in plain sight
When Piluso purchased her cat statue, she didn’t immediately look for markings or a signature indicating the artisan who made it.
“I picked it up and was like, ‘You’re coming with me,'” she said. “It was just a no-brainer.”
The people running the estate sale were equally unaware of its origins.
“They were just happy to get rid of it,” she said.
Jordan Piluso
It wasn’t until Piluso got home and did a Google image search that she realized it might be valuable. She saw photos of similar cat pieces by the Italian artist Piero Fornasetti and noticed that each had a stamp at the base of its tail.
Sure enough, her cat statue has one too. It reads “Fornasetti Milano, Made in Italy” and features an image of a hand holding a paintbrush.
Jordan Piluso
Cats have been a signature motif for the late artist and his brand for decades.
Its modern feline pieces retail between $73 (€62) and $2,353 (€2000) each, while vintage cat statues like Piluso’s have sold for upward of $2,500 on secondhand sites.
Piluso confirmed with the brand via email that it’s authentic and was hand-painted between the late 1950s and early 1960s. Business Insider reviewed the email exchange.
Ken Farmer, an antique and fine-art appraiser, told Business Insider that Fornasetti created over 13,000 designs during his career and aimed to bring art into ordinary homes.
“This playful, smiling cat ceramic figure with black leopard spots on a white field, circa 1960, is likely worth $1,000 to $1,500 at auction and $3,000 retail,” he said.
Valuable, but priceless
The potential profit she could gain from her Fornasetti piece doesn’t matter much to Piluso. She has no intentions of selling it.
“It’s something that brings me so much joy,” she said. “I’m always going to be able to talk about this when people come over. I can tell my kids the story someday.”
“To me, that is a far more valuable gift than the monetary value this cat could bring,” she continued.
Her husband, a dog person, was less convinced that they should keep the decor piece when Piluso originally brought it home. However, he’s since come around, she said.
The couple is keeping the ceramic cat, which doesn’t have a name, on a tall mantle out of reach of their toddler.
Secondhand treasures
Don’t worry — Piluso didn’t leave the estate sale without the pink-and-gold embellished bunny she had initially gone there for.
She purchased the rabbit piece for $600 and a ceramic tiger for $50 — both of which will be displayed prominently in her home.
Jordan Piluso
Piluso said she’s relatively new to shopping secondhand. She was looking for a hobby after having her second child, and eventually landed on decorating her home with vintage pieces.
She said she loves the charm vintage decor adds to her home and the stories she can share with guests. That’s why her husband encouraged her to create a TikTok account to share her finds with a wider audience.
And clearly, she’s a natural at finding hidden gems.
“When you go to estate sales or thrifting, don’t be afraid of the oddities,” she said. “They can be the coolest, and in this case, some of the most valuable things you can find.”
