Object Stories: Famille Hippopotames by François-Xavier Lalanne

By Penny Craswell

Last year, Sotheby’s in Paris sold a hippopotamus bathtub, bidet and toilet set by François-Xavier Lalanne for 2.1 million euros.

François-Xavier Lalanne (1929 – 2008) was a French artist known for his large animal sculptures that also open out to form desks, cupboards, dressers, bars and other functional items. As well as the Hippopotamus Family, there’s also Lalanne’s Duck dresser which also sold for a similar sum this year, and his Rhinoceros desk and sheep drinks cabinet ‘Grand Mouflon de Pauline’, two of many Lalanne pieces that sold at a 2019 Sotheby’s auction for quadruple the expected prices.

Lalanne and his wife Claude Lalanne designed a variety of sculptural functional pieces over a period of five decades from when they met in the 1950s. ‘Les Lalanne’, as they became known, worked side by side but did not collaborate on their pieces – François-Xavier’s works were mostly animals, while Claude’s works were inspired by plants. They both believed that art should be present in our daily lives and so created one-off works of functional art for the home.

The Hippopotamus Family sold at Sotheby’s was commissioned by Jerome Savary who first became aware of François-Xavier’s work in the 1970s when Claude’s daughter Valérie Kling performed with his Grand Magic Circus. Savary subsequently saw Lalanne’s works in galleries and studio visits, including some earlier versions of the hippopotamus and, in the early 1990s, commissioned a hippopotamus family for himself to reside in the bathroom of his 17th century house in Switzerland.

The result is a three-piece set, with the larger hippo containing a bath in its main body and basin in its mouth, and the two smaller hippos containing a toilet and bidet respectively. These functional pieces are made of patinated bronze, copper, gilt metal, wood and glazed ceramic.

More on the Hippopotamus Family

More on The Lalanne

One thought on “Object Stories: Famille Hippopotames by François-Xavier Lalanne

  • May 29, 2021 at 1:36 am
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    Nilpferde! Sweet or disturbing? Maybe both. Very interesting in any case.

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