Someone Clearly Wanted a Hippo Bar For Christmas

This hippopotamus just smashed two world records at Sotheby’s in New York.

Credit: Sotheby's

A hippo-shaped bar cabinet designed by French artist François-Xavier Lalanne fetched an eye-watering $31.4 million. The sale, more than triple the work's high estimate of $10 million, is the highest-ever price for Lalanne at auction. It also marks a global record for a work of design generally.

Bidders fought for the copper-clad pachyderm, titled Hippopotame Bar, pièce unique, in a battle that lasted for nearly half an hour - in a testament to the global mania for all things Lalanne, says Wallpaper. The hippo is, according to the auctioneers, particularly desirable. It was commissioned in 1976 by Anne Schlumberger, a French heiress and Houston resident, and is the only one of its type to have been produced.

Like many of the whimsical-yet-practical designs created by Lalanne (and in collaboration with his wife and design partner Claude Lalanne), the hippo is a fully functioning bar. The animal’s side opens up to reveal a revolving bottle rack, storage for glasses, an ice bucket and a tray for serving food, reports the Art Newspaper.

Credit: Sotheby's

Schlumberger was an influential art collector and the elder sister of Dominique de Menil, the matriarch of the major collecting family in Houston who commissioned the Rothko Chapel and founded the Menil Collection museum. Other objects from her collection that sold at Sotheby’s this year include a necklace designed by Salvador Dalí in 1963, called the Swirling Sea necklace - in 18k gold with sapphire and emerald beads, pearls and diamonds. Sotheby's described it as a triumph of technical virtuosity and spectacular visual pyrotechnics, embodying his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive.”