• Home
• /
• Entertainment

Well, it looked like junk

IT’S A MISTAKE any of us could make. When removal men spotted a dead bird in a matchbox at Courtney Love’s house, they assumed it was junk and threw it out.

But the embryonic chick was an £8,000 artwork, and the widow of Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain is said to be “blazing mad” at its loss.

Insiders say she has thrown a “hissy fit” and fired her assistant for failing to look after such a treasured possession.

The untitled artwork by fashionable British artist Polly Morgan — whose creations are much admired by Kate Moss and Damien Hirst — had been standing on a 6ft plinth in the corner of Love’s bedroom.

But during preparations for the move in Los Angeles, supervised by the assistant, the pedestal was packed ready for shipping to the new house. The chicklet, however, which was normally seen lying under a mini chandelier, was left sitting on a sideboard. When the removal men came in to pack up the rest of Love’s possessions, they spotted the chick and simply disposed of it.

“Courtney is beside herself,” said the source. “She’s been living in a hotel and entrusted her personal assistant to supervise her move from a rented house in Malibu to a big place up in the Hollywood Hills. Courtney has a ton of stuff, everything from a huge vintage clothing collection to a massive doll’s house collection. She also has art everywhere, a lot of it modern. She’s blazing mad and throwing a complete hissy fit because one of the removal men mistook her Polly Morgan artwork for rubbish and threw it out with the trash. She’s fired the assistant and is going nuts because, to her, the work was priceless and irreplaceable.”

London-based Morgan, 29, has enjoyed huge success since being spotted by graffiti artist Banksy in 2005. A trained taxidermist, she has made her name fashioning art out of dead animals that have met accidental or unpreventable death. Her works sell for up to £50,000. Damien Hirst is a major fan and Charles Saatchi has acquired her work for his collection.

Love, 44, whom the artist described in an interview as “completely bonkers”, bought her piece after much debate with Morgan. According to the source, Love asked Morgan to create a piece especially for her but rejected the artist’s first offer of a mummified love bird in a bell jar because it “creeped her out”. The source added: ‘“Courtney eventually settled for the dead chicklet. But when the removal men came in to pack everything up, the dead chicklet obviously looked like junk to them. So out it went.”

Love had previously said of her artwork: “What is great about Polly’s stuff is that people either love it or hate it. I relate to that.”