The World’s Most Expensive Carpets
# 9 At Sotheby’s London’s “Arts of the Islamic World” auction on October 7, 2009, this Safavid silk, wool, and metal-thread prayer rug was estimated at $127,368 to $191,052. The circa-1575-to-1625 carpet, inscribed with Persian verses in nastaliq, earned a whopping $4.3 million, making it the ninth most expensive carpet ever sold at auction. The inscriptions suggest that it may have been a diplomatic gift from the Safavid Persian court to the Ottoman Turks.
____# 8__Three carpets of this exact design by Pierre-Josse Perrot were made for the Crown Furniture Repository in France, the administration responsible for furniture and art inside the royal residences. This__Louis XV Savonnerie carpet, woven sometime between 1740 and 1750, was the last one produced. The carpet surpassed an estimate of $2 million to $4 million, selling for $4.4 million, as part of Christie’s New York’s November 2, 2000, sale “Magnificent French Furniture.”
____# 6 This central-Persian Isfahan carpet (circa 1650–1699), was estimated at $800,000 to $1.2 million for Sotheby’s New York’s “Important Carpets from the William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art” sale on June 5, 2013. The lot, which had been on display in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, sold for $4.65 million.
