A specialist fine art storage company was facing a £350,000 legal bill yesterday after it accidentally threw away an important work left in its care by the Turner prize-winning sculptor Anish Kapoor.

The money, plus costs, will go to the Swiss collector Ofir Scheps, who put Hole and Vessel II — a 1984 abstract made of wood and cement — into storage with Fine Art Logistics, a specialist removal and storage company in southwest London, in June 2004.

Mr Scheps had bought it as an anniversary present for his wife. Three months later, in trying to arrange for it to be transferred to the artist for some restoration work, he discovered that, despite its huge size of 37.5in (95cm) by 64in by 43in, the sculpture had disappeared.

Mr Scheps began legal proceedings after he was offered less than £588 by the storage company.

A High Court judge held yesterday that, on the evidence he had heard, the sculpture was probably mistakenly placed in a skip during building works at the company’s packing shop, and later destroyed at a waste transfer station.

Kapoor, who is best known for filling the whole of Tate Modern’s cavernous Turbine Hall with his sculpture Marsyas in 2002, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and was awarded the Turner Prize in 1991.

Since then, and more so in recent years, the value of his sculptures had increased very substantially, the judge said.

Mr Scheps called expert evidence that the work would have fetched a current auction hammer price of £580,000, including buyer’s premium. The defendant’s expert put its value at £250,000.

Mr Justice Teare arrived at a figure of £351,375, consisting of £132,000 for the value of the piece when it was lost and £219,375 to reflect the increase in the value of Kapoor’s works since then.

Some of Kapoor’s work is reported to have changed hands privately for as much as £11 million.

Fine Art Logistics had said that it could not return the work because it had probably been placed in a skip for disposal as waste, and that its liability for the loss was limited to £587.13 pursuant to its standard terms and conditions.

The judge held that those terms and conditions were not included in the firm’s agreement with Mr Scheps and that, in any event, its liability limit was not fair and reasonable in the circumstances of the case.

He said that it was reasonable for such a company to limit its liability to a fixed sum per weight or volume because the goods entrusted to it could vary so much in value and the owner of the work could insure it for its true value.

But in this case the company took no steps to bring the limit to the customer’s attention and there was no evidence that it offered to arrange insurance.

Kapoor has spoken of his deep regret over the loss of the sculpture.

“It’s an important work in terms of what I was up to then. I only made seven or eight works that year. It’s a shame to lose one.”

That’s rubbish

— A bag of rubbish was thrown away at Tate Britain after a cleaner assumed it was just that. It was in fact a Gustav Metzger artwork

— A sculpture made from frozen blood was destroyed accidentally when builders switched off the freezer in which it was stored

— Binmen took away a John Chamberlain abstract that had been welded from crushed cars after a gallery left it momentarily on a pavement in New York

— Porters at an auction house failed to appreciate that the brown paper wrapping they removed from a chair was in fact a complete sculpture by Christo, the artist who covers everything from buildings to objects

Source: Times database

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