Art collector wins £350,000 over 'binned' sculpture, The Guardian

A firm of fine art storage experts was today facing a £350,000 legal bill over the accidental "binning" of an important work by the Turner prize-winning sculptor Anish Kapoor.

The money, plus costs, will go to the Swiss-based art collector Ofir Scheps, who put Hole And Vessel II into the safekeeping of Fine Art Logistics, in south-west London, in June 2004.

A high court judge said that, on the evidence he had heard, the sculpture, which was made of polystyrene, cement, earth, acrylic and pigment, was probably placed in a skip by mistake during building works at the company's packing shop and destroyed at a waste transfer station.

Mr Scheps called expert evidence that the work would have fetched a current auction hammer price of £580,000, including the buyer's premium. The defendant's expert put its value at £250,000.

Mr Justice Teare arrived at a figure of £351,375, consisting of £132,000 as the value of the piece when it was lost and £219,375 to reflect the increase in the value of Kapoor's works since then.

The judge said the sculpture was created in 1984 and measured 95cm x 162cm x 109cm. "It is not possible for me to describe it," he added. "One expert described it as sensuous and sexy, the other as clumsy and somewhat absurd."

There was, however, agreement that it was made during Kapoor's transitional phase when he was "moving away from an exploration of the male/female dichotomy towards an exploration of the void".

In later works by the 52-year-old Indian-born artist, "the void" became an important element.

He won the Turner prize in 1991 and, in recent years, the value of his sculptures has increased very substantially, the judge said.

Mr Scheps sued for damages or the return of the missing piece, which he bought for around £20,000 - considerably less than its real value - in June 2004. It was put in storage pending its intended removal to Kapoor's London studio for restoration work.

Fine Art Logistics said it could not return the piece because it had probably been placed in a skip for disposal as waste, and that its liability for the loss was limited to £587.13 pursuant to its standard terms and conditions.

The judge held that those terms and conditions were not included in the firm's agreement with Mr Scheps and that, in any event, its liability limit was not fair and reasonable in the circumstances of the case.

The judge said it was reasonable for such a company to limit its liability to a fixed sum per weight or volume because the goods entrusted to it could vary so much in value and the owner of the property could insure it for its true value.

However, in this case the company had not taken steps to bring the limit to the customer's attention, and there was no evidence that it had offered to arrange insurance.

Kapoor has spoken of his "deep regret" over the sculpture's disappearance. "It's an important work in terms of what I was up to then," he said. "I only made seven or eight works that year, and it's a shame to lose one of them."