Allen Jones mannequin table sale sees artist's value up 57.82% pa

A risqué mannequin table produced by British Pop Artist Allen Jones set a new world record for the artist of £970,850 at Sotheby's Gunter Sachs auction on Wednesday (May 23).

The provocative 1969 piece, displaying a woman on all fours, sold for £970,850, a rise of 2,327.1% on its £40,000 estimate.

Alluring yet functional

The previous world record for Jones stood at £361,250, achieved for his Soft Tread in March 2010. The new record correlates to a 57.82% pa rise.

The Jones record was broken three times in the night. A scantily clad mannequin from the same set, purportedly a hat stand, first made £780,450, while a highly provocative chair then sold for £836,450, both making a mockery of their five figures estimates.

"I remember when a set of these came up for auction in the early 1980s," US collector Jose Mugrabi, an underbidder on the pieces, told Bloomberg.

"They sold for about $15,000. I thought they were too vulgar then. Taste evolves and they now appeal to the new generation of collectors."

41 works from the Sachs art collection were auctioned at Sotheby's, a year after his suicide in May 2011.

Andy Warhol's silkscreen of Brigitte Bardot sold for £3m.

Meanwhile, three pieces of furniture by perennial sheep sculptor Francois-Xavier Lalanne sold for a combined £1.6m, 359.7% up on their £350,000 high end estimate.