T here’s a new bar set for the highest price ever achieved at auction for a work by François-Xavier Lalanne. A heated 26-minute bidding battle between 7 bidders pushed the total price for ‘Hippopotame Bar, pièce unique’ to $31.4 million.
The one-of-a-kind ‘Hippopotame Bar’ was commissioned in 1976 by Anne Schlumberger, a devoted early patron, and is the first and only example done in copper. Watch Auctioneer Simon Shaw hammer it home during Design Week at Sotheby's New York.
