In 1964, pop-artist Andy Warhol shocked the art world by making hundreds of replicas of supermarket cartons and presenting them as art. He painted screenprints of soup cans, then sculptures of packaging for Kellogg’s cornflakes and Heinz ketchup. Among the most notorious were his sculptures of boxes of Brillo soap pads. 

One of the many copies of Brillo boxes sold at auction in 2010 for $3 million. HBO would subsequently make a documentary about the pricey and somewhat controversial Brillo box sculpture.

So, what does this have to do with superyachts? Recently, a news story about what happened to the 3 million dollar Brillo box has been floating around the internet. According to an article in Nautilus International from several years ago, the sculpture ended up in the possession of an unnamed superyacht owner, who proudly put it on display on his boat. 

Unfortunately, a member of their crew didn’t realize the wooden Brillo Pad box was a famous piece of art. According to Nautilus International, the crew member inadvertently tossed the iconic sculpture in the trash.

Pandora Mather-Lees of Pandora Art Services told Nautilus International that it is important for yacht owners to educate their crew about any expensive items used to decorate the ship.

“The biggest risk is moving the art. There’s a lot of accidental damage. When art is moved around, it is vulnerable – it gets dropped or inadvertently ruined because people just don’t know what it is,” she explained, noting there are many cases of crew members damaging a piece of art while cleaning the vessel.