A British museum visitor was arrested on Wednesday despite claiming to have accidentally smashed three 17th-century Chinese porcelain vases after tripping over a shoelace, police said.
Nick Flynn (42), from Fowlmere, southern England, was arrested at his home on suspicion of criminal damage by smashing the Qing-dynasty vases at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge on January 25, they said.
A specialist ceramic restorer is gluing together more than 400 pieces to recreate the three vases and hopes to have one on show at an exhibition in the museum by June, Britain’s domestic Press Association news agency said.
Museum director Duncan Robinson last week loosely estimated the value of the vases at about £500 000 (about R5,3-million).
He said they were not insured, although the museum might review its insurance policy in the light of what happened.
Flynn, who is unemployed after suffering a severe back injury, claimed he had tripped on his shoelace and tumbled down a staircase at the museum and into the vases.
He was photographed after his fall lying amid the porcelain, and later described it as ”my Norman Wisdom moment”, in reference to a British slapstick comic. It was front-page news in some newspapers.
Robinson said Flynn had not been banned from the museum, but he added that staff had thought it wise that he should stay away in the immediate aftermath of the incident. — Sapa-AFP