# The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet > Unknown, southern Persia - Seventeenth century > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/unknown-kirman-vase-workshop/the-clark-sickle-leaf-carpet/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-19 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Unknown, southern Persia - **Date:** Seventeenth century - **Medium:** Knotted pile, wool, silk and cotton; vase technique - **Dimensions:** Approximately 8 ft 9 in by 6 ft 5 in (2.67 x 1.96 m) - **Object type:** Textile - **Period:** Safavid Iran, seventeenth century - **Current location:** Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Doha, Qatar Museums, accession MIA.2013.194 - publicly exhibited there since at least 2023 - **Attribution:** attributed ## Summary A small seventeenth-century Persian carpet, under three metres long, that a Washington museum sold in 2013 for the highest price ever paid for a carpet at auction. It came from the collection of William Andrews Clark, the Montana copper senator, and the museum that sold it was dismantled the following year.The figure reported everywhere, 33,765,000 dollars, is the price with buyer's premium. It is not the hammer, and it is not what the museum received either. Three different numbers describe one afternoon and this record keeps them apart. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **early seventeenth century** Unknown, Kirman, southeast Persia `[unknown]` (origin) No workshop, patron or place of weaving is documented. Probably Kirman is an attribution on structure and design. If Pope's throne-dais proposal is right the carpet was made for a specific ceremonial use, but that is a proposal and no commission is recorded. - **-before 1925** Bacri Freres, Paris `[documented]` (trade stock) The only owner Sotheby's names before Clark, and the whole of the documented pre-American chain. How and when the firm acquired the carpet, and what it sold it for, are not stated in the catalogue. - **before 1925-1926** William Andrews Clark, Butte, Montana and New York `[unknown]` (collection) The carpet carries Clark's name and came to the Corcoran with his collection. Clark died in 1925. The date, price and circumstances of his purchase from Bacri Freres are not established in this pass. - **1926-2013** Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC `[documented]` (bequest) The bequest reached the Corcoran in 1926, the year after Clark's death, and the museum built a wing for it. The carpet was exhibited nine times between 1948 and 2008, in Washington, New York, Cambridge, Sheffield, Birmingham and London. It was consigned to Sotheby's in 2013 with 24 other carpets from the same collection. - **2013-present** Museum of Islamic Art (MIA), Doha, Qatar Museums, accession MIA.2013.194 `[documented]` (purchase) Publicly identified via the museum's own catalogue entry and a 2026 Qatar Museums article; on view in the 2023-2024 Fashioning an Empire exhibition. The accession number's year prefix and the object's identity make it near-certain MIA was the anonymous telephone bidder at the 2013 Sotheby's sale, but no source states the acquisition directly - only the museum's current custody of the object is itself documented, not the specific link to the 2013 sale. ## Auction results Hammer and buyer's premium are stated separately. Where a source conflates them this record says so. - **** , - Two rows follow. The first is this carpet. The second is the group it was sold in, given because a single lot result is not the whole transaction: the Corcoran consigned 25 carpets, and what the museum actually received is a third figure again. - **2013-06-05** Sotheby's, New York, Rugs and Carpets including Classical Carpets from the William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York, sale N09012, lot 12 - Estimate: USD 5,000,000 - 7,000,000 - Hammer: USD 30,000,000 (DERIVED, not reported - the caveat below is unchanged and must survive) - With premium: USD 33,765,000, premium-inclusive - SECOND INDEPENDENT CONFIRMATION OBTAINED, as this desk requires for a figure on a live record. HALI, the trade journal for carpets and textiles, reports the sale in its own words and independently gives all three of lot number 12, the USD 5,000,000 - 7,000,000 estimate and the USD 33,765,000 result, describing it as the new world record for a carpet at auction against a previous record it puts an order lower. That matches the record's existing estimate exactly and adds the lot number, which was empty. The Washington Post's report of the same sale is the record's existing source and was retried today: the fetch returned no response at all (curl exit with a zero status code and zero bytes) rather than a bot-wall status, so it is neither confirmed nor contradicted and no attempt was made to quote it from a summary. THE DERIVED HAMMER IS UNCHANGED AND STAYS LABELLED. No source consulted, HALI included, publishes a hammer. The record's 30,000,000 is a reconstruction from the Sotheby's New York premium schedule of the period and remains one; that it lands on a round number is corroboration and not confirmation. HALI's phrasing 'sold $33,765,000' is a sale price in trade usage and is premium-inclusive; it is not a second hammer and must not be read as one. ONE TYPOGRAPHICAL POINT, so nobody re-derives from it: HALI's running text prints the figure once as '$33,765,00', eight digits short a zero, and once correctly as '$33,765,000' in its caption block. The correct form is the one that agrees with every other source. THE GROUP TOTAL IS NOT SETTLED AND IS DELIBERATELY UNTOUCHED. The record's second 2013-06-05 row gives USD 43,800,000 for the 25 Corcoran lots; secondary summaries of the same sale give about USD 44 million. That is a rounding difference in appearance and possibly a real one, it is not resolved by anything read today, and this patch does not alter the row. - **2013-06-05** Sotheby's, The whole Corcoran consignment, 25 carpets - With premium: USD 43,800,000 - The group total, premium-inclusive. The Corcoran netted 38.4 million dollars after buyer's premiums, which is the number that mattered to the museum and is not the number anyone quotes. The gap between 43.8 million gross and 38.4 million net to the consignor is the clearest illustration on this site of why hammer and premium have to be kept apart: three different figures describe one afternoon, and the largest of them never reached the seller. Proceeds were restricted to future acquisitions and could not be applied to the Corcoran's operating deficit. ## Exhibitions - Carpets for the Great Shah (3 October - 16 November 1948), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1948 - From Persia's Ancient Looms (23 January - 30 September 1972), The Textile Museum, Washington DC, 1972 - Shah Abbas and the Arts of Isfahan (11 October - 2 December 1973), Asia House Gallery, New York, 1973 - Shah Abbas and the Arts of Isfahan (19 January - 24 February 1974), Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 1974 - Carpets of Central Persia. The carpet was labelled The Corcoran Throne Rug, Mappin Art Gallery, Sheffield, and Birmingham, 1976 - The William A. Clark Collection (26 April - 16 July 1978), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 1978 - The Eastern Carpet in the Western World (20 May - 10 July 1983), Hayward Gallery, London, 1983 - The World at our Feet (4 April - 6 July 2003), Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington DC, 2003 - Masterpieces: European Arts from the Collection (25 August 2007 - 6 January 2008), Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC, 2007 ## Literature - 1939, Arthur Upham Pope, in A Survey of Persian Art. Called the carpet definitely the finest of the group and surely one of the outstanding examples of Persian carpet weaving, and proposed that it was woven for a throne dais. Cited at second hand from the Sotheby's catalogue entry; the desk should read Pope directly and replace this. - 2013, Sotheby's, Rugs and Carpets including Classical Carpets from the William A. Clark Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, New York, 5 June 2013, lot 12. The primary catalogue entry: attribution, dimensions, provenance, exhibition history, design analysis, comparanda and full condition report. ## Open questions - What was the hammer price as recorded by Sotheby's? No published account states it. The 30,000,000 dollar figure in this record is derived from the premium schedule and should be replaced with a documented figure if one can be obtained. - What were Sotheby's published buyer's premium rates in New York in June 2013? The derivation assumes 25 per cent to 100,000 dollars, 20 per cent to 2,000,000 and 12 per cent above; it has not been checked against a primary rate card. - Who bought it? The 2013 anonymous telephone bidder was never named at the time. The carpet is now identifiable in the Museum of Islamic Art, Doha (accession MIA.2013.194), publicly exhibited since 2023 - strong circumstantial evidence MIA was that buyer, but no source states the 2013 purchase and MIA's acquisition directly; treat as a near-certain inference, not a documented fact. - Who was the underbidder? The contest is reported as multi-bidder and lasting about ten minutes, which establishes real depth at the price, but no underbidder is identified. - When did Bacri Freres acquire the carpet, from whom, and what did William Andrews Clark pay for it? The documented chain before 1925 is a single dealer's name. - Did Clark's bequest impose conditions on sale, and were they engaged in 2013? The terms of the 1926 bequest have not been read in this pass. - Is the carpet half of a mirrored design, and was it made for a throne dais? Pope's proposal explains the asymmetry and the cut half-motifs, and nothing else does, but it remains a proposal. - Where are the Jekyll fragments, the Behague carpet and the Brown carpet now? Sotheby's names them as comparanda without locating them, and a full cohort census does not exist in public. - Was an OFAC export licence in fact required or obtained after the sale? The catalogue raised the question and no answer is on the record. ## Sources - [1] Sotheby's, ecatalogue entry for lot 12, A Sickle-Leaf, vine scroll and palmette Vase-technique carpet, probably Kirman, Southeast Persia, sale N09012, New York, 5 June 2013. The primary catalogue record: title, estimate, dimensions, materials, provenance (Bacri Freres, Paris), nine exhibitions, the design and comparanda essay, the Pope throne-dais proposal, the red-ground claim, the OFAC export notice and the full condition report. - [2] Associated Press wire report, Carpet from 17th century sells for 33.7 million dollars at auction, via The Christian Science Monitor, 6 June 2013. States that the price includes the auction house premium, that the buyer was an anonymous telephone bidder, that the bequest reached the Corcoran in 1926, and that the previous record was 9.6 million dollars for a Persian carpet at Christie's London in April 2010. - [3] Washington City Paper, The Corcoran's 40 Million Dollar Magic Carpet Ride. Reports the group result: 25 rugs from the William A. Clark collection making 43.8 million dollars, netting the Corcoran 38.4 million after buyer's premiums, with the proceeds restricted to future acquisitions and unavailable for operating costs. - [4] HALI, Classical Carpets from the William A. Clark Collection at Sotheby's, New York, 5 June 2013. The specialist trade record of the consignment: 25 classical sixteenth and seventeenth century carpets sold by the Corcoran Gallery of Art to benefit future acquisitions. (hali.com restructured its site; cited via Wayback Machine snapshot, 2024-10-10.) - [5] Wikimedia Commons file page for the Sotheby's photograph of the Clark Sickle-Leaf carpet, carrying the catalogue description, attribution and dimensions, and the licence statement. Note that the Commons transcription says South Persia where the Sotheby's lot page says Southeast Persia. - [6] The Washington Post, Corcoran's Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet breaks world record at Sotheby's Auction, 5 June 2013. LOCATED BUT NOT READ: the site returned HTTP 403 to direct fetch and Access Denied in the browser. Cited so the desk can find it; no figure in this record depends on it. - [7] Metropolitan Museum of Art, collection record for a Vase-technique Carpet with Overlapping Cartouches, object 451348, consulted for the structural definition of the vase technique and its attribution to Kirman. TERTIARY FLAG: the three-shoot weft definition originates with May Beattie's structural analysis and the desk should cite Beattie directly. - [8] Qatar Museums, 'A Masterpiece of Persian Grandeur: The Bacri-Clark Sickle-Leaf Throne Carpet', by Nicoletta Fazio, Curator for Iran and Central Asia, Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, published 2026-03-03. - [9] Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, exhibition page for 'Fashioning an Empire: Textiles from Safavid Iran' (23 October 2023 - 22 June 2024), listing the carpet as 'Throne Carpet with a Sickle-Leaf Design, Iran, Kerman, 17th century CE, MIA.2013.194'. - [10] hali.com, web page cited for the Sotheby's, New York sale of 2013-06-05. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.