Slips, trips and blunders - other ruined artefacts

IT is not only historic buildings that suffer from accidental damage. In recent years various priceless artefacts have been destroyed as a result of carelessness or plain stupidity.

In 2006 a priceless 300-year-old Qing vase was destroyed at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge by a man who tripped on his shoelace going down the stairs. Also in 2006, Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn accidentally tore a gash in the 1932 painting Le Rve by Picasso while showing it to reporters the day after he bought it for $139 million.

In 2007 a removal man in Devon let a 45,000 Bosendorfer concert piano slip off the back of his lorry and plunge down a grassy slope, breaking it to pieces. In 1999 a mural by graffiti artist Banksy, which once featured on the cover of a single by rock band Blur, was accidentally painted over by Hackney Council.

In 2000, porters at Sotheby's auction house in London disposed of a box using a crushing machine. They were unaware the box contained a painting by Lucian Freud worth about 250,000.