Hockney's 'Airlifted To Safety' |
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After Jasper Conran's Chiswick Mall home is flooded
He may live in the most expensive home in Chiswick, but unfortunately for flamboyant fashion designer Jasper Conran, it was no safegaurd against flooding. Walpole House, which once provided the setting for Miss Pinkerton's Seminary for Young Ladies, was flooded during last week's terrential downpours which resulted in Conran's valuable art collection having to be airlifted from his basement according to an item in a national newspaper. "It's been extraordinary to watch all these David Hockney paintings being air-lifted out," a neighbour told The Telegraph. "Poor Jasper's been there less than a year and had only just begun to settle in when this happens." Works of art are a sore subject for Conran after Sotheby's was forced to reimburse the designer £78,000 after a pair of portraits sold as 16th-century originals were revealed as 18th-century fakes. The refund came after Sotheby's, David Moore Gwyn, misdated the works when they were put into an auction in 2005, even though other experts claim to have seen "at first glance" that they were pastiches and renders them, in the words of one respected dealer, "complete tat and worth a few grand at best as decoration".
July 30, 2007
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