Ripley's revealed as buyer of $12m golden toilet

The first edition of Maurizio Cattelan's work was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019.

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America, created by Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, is a fully functional toilet, made from more than 15st 13lb (101.2kg) of solid 18-carat gold.

The first version of the work was initially installed in a public bathroom at the Guggenheim museum in New York in 2016 but hit the news again three years later when a gang of thieves stole it from the Oxfordshire palace.

The existence of a second golden toilet was later revealed, and went under the hammer at Sotheby's in New York City on Tuesday. The 101 kg toilet received just one bid.

The auction house said that in a world first, the starting bid would be determined by the exact price of its weight in gold, at about $10m (£7.6m).