Those wanting to make a quick buck could do worse than raiding their old schools' chemistry laboratories. An RSC periodic table poster recently sold for a staggering £6000, with a second selling for £3600.

Those wanting to make a quick buck could do worse than raiding their old schools’ chemistry laboratories. An RSC periodic table poster recently sold for a staggering ?6000, with a second selling for ?3600.

The posters, sold at Sotheby’s in London, UK, made up part of artist Damien Hirst’s collection of chemistry-related paraphernalia that he had used to decorate his failed London restaurant, Pharmacy.

After the restaurant closed, Hirst, more often remembered for his work with sizeable farm animals sawn in two and preserved in formaldehyde, decided to auction off all the decorations and crockery that he had used to create the atmosphere of a real pharmacy for his diners.

Hirst told the RSC before the auction that he sees the periodic table as ’the most perfect symbol of man’s attempt to understand and ultimately control nature’.

Before you go on the rampage in your local comprehensive, though, bear in mind that the auctioned posters were unique because they had been signed by Hirst, and had hung in his restaurant alongside other periodic table-esque art pieces that the artist produced.

The highest price of the evening went to a large medicine cabinet, which fetched ?1.2m. The sale of the entire collection made a total of ?11m.

Katharine Sanderson