Auction record set to tumble at Christie’s New York
Friday, May 30, 2008
There is every chance that the world record price at auction for an
oriental carpet will be surpassed at Christie’s Rockefeller Center
rooms in New York on Tuesday 3 June 2008. The rug in question, a very
beautiful and delicate central Persian `Polonaise’ style silk rug,
probably made in Esfahan around 1600, is no newcomer to the market,
having last been sold at Sotheby’s inNew York in December 1990 for
$506,000 (see HALI 55, p.162), when it was presumably bought by the
American heiress Doris Duke, who died in 1993. What sets it apart from
the mainstream of the `Polonaise’ weaving genre is its all-silk
foundation and the lack of precious metal-thread brocading. With an
illustrious provenance that also includes Kouchakji Frères, Hagop
Kevorkian, Mrs Grace Rainey Rogers (sold at Parke Bernet in 1943) and
Doris Duke, it is being sold from the Doris Duke Collection on behalf
of the Newport (Rhode Island) Restoration Foundation. Estimated by
Christie’s Elisabeth Parker at $1-1.5 million, it is perfectly likely
that in the present buying climate, where the best classical carpets,
especially those with the added allure of good provenance, perform
well above reasonable expectations, that it will pass the current
record, which stands at just under $2.5 million, paid at Christie’s in
London in July 1999 for the Rothschild Tabriz medallion carpet, now in
the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar.