A Persian rug from the early 17th century has sold for $33.7 million in New York City.
Sotheby's auction house says Wednesday's price for the Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet was more than three times the previous auction record for a carpet...
Undated
file photo provided by Sotheby's shows Sickle-Leaf Carpet, a Persian
rug from Washington, D.C.'s
Corcoran Gallery of Art, that was auctioned
in New York on June 5, 2013 by Sotheby's
The Washington Post goes into more detail:
Corcoran’s Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet breaks world record at Sotheby’s auction
A Persian carpet decorated with swirling vines and vibrant flowers that was stored for decades by the Corcoran Gallery of Art sold Wednesday for more than $30 million. That sum, fetched at a Sotheby’s sale, shattered the previous record for rugs sold at auction. But it won’t help the struggling Washington gallery overcome its financial woes because the money must be used for future acquisitions, not to help the bottom line.Some international rug experts were not impressed with the price or the piece:
The winning bid for the Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet stunned viewers and participants at the sale, in which 25 rugs and carpets were auctioned off to raise money for new acquisitions of American and contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery. The anonymous bidder, who participated by phone, paid $33,765,000 for the 17th-century Persian piece, which came from the bequest of William Clark, the industrialist and U.S. senator who donated more than 200 works of fine art and rugs to the Corcoran upon his death in 1925. Before Wednesday’s sale, a blue leaf-patterned 17th-century rug from southeast Iran held the global record, selling for $9.6 million at Christie’s in London in 2010...MUCH MORE
