In circa 1420 craftsmen from the village of Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province created a magnificent blue and white dish which would become known as The Mahin Banu ‘Grape’ Dish. The piece has passed through some of the most distinguished collections ever assembled and now appears in the Important Chinese Works Of Art sale at Sotheby’s New York on 18 March 2015 with an estimate of $2.5/3.5 million.

Read More: The Dish that Travelled the World

See also (Video): The ‘Mahin Banu’ Grape Dish

Centuries-old Rajasthani and Pahari miniature paintings will be placed on the auction block for the first time as part of the Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian Art sale on September 17 at Bonhams, the third largest international fine art auction house. Selected from the Barbara Janeff Collection of Indian Painting, the miniatures are among the sale’s highly anticipated highlights. The group features products of distinguished Indian schools of painting which flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries.

Read More: Important Indian Paintings to Feature at Bonhams’ Asia Week Sale on September 17th in New York

Following a New York auction late last year, Christie International PLC’s staff reached out to the U.S. Treasury Department for permission to ship Iranian goods to overseas buyers. Strict U.S. sanctions on Iran, intended to punish the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program, mean tight controls even for sales of Iranian antiquities–in this case, Persian carpets. The sale of these antiquities was unlikely to benefit Iran’s economy. They may have been out of the country for two centuries, said a compliance counsel at Christie’s. Yet the auction house would still need a license before shipping the carpet to a winning bidder in the United Kingdom or Australia.

Read More: Centuries in Europe, Still Sanctioned as Iranian

New money is pouring into the art market as never before. Two sales conducted at Sotheby’s in the past six weeks, one in New York on June 5 and the other in London on July 3, reveal the massive impact this unexpected intrusion has on prices in areas that long seemed too specialized to tempt the new buyers. When the auction house announced that its New York sale would include the rugs that the entrepreneur and politician William A. Clark bequeathed in 1925 to the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, it did not exactly cause a worldwide stir. Collecting carpets from Safavid Iran, Ottoman Turkey and Egypt or Moghul India requires an understanding of complex cultures and a degree of technical knowledge. Moreover, the offerings were a mixed bag.

Read More: At Sotheby’s, Treasure is as Treasure Does

See also: Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet Breaks World Record at Sotheby’s

A Persian carpet decorated with swirling vines and vibrant flowers that was stored for decades by the Corcoran Gallery of Art sold Wednesday [June 5th, 2013] 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.

Read More: Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet Breaks World Record at Sotheby’s

See also: The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet Sets a New World Record at Sotheby’s

One of the most beautiful and famous Safavid carpets, and one of the outstanding examples of Persian carpet weaving from the first half of the 17th century — the Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet — sold for US$33.765 million at Sotheby’s, New York, today [June 5th, 2013].

Read More: The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet Sets a New World Record at Sotheby’s

See also: The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet

See Video: The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet (Video)

The intricately woven carpet of red and blue and green, with its asymmetrical pattern of sickle-shaped leaves and floral profusion, was created by an unknown artist in Persia, for someone important, possibly the shah, in the first half of the 1600s to decorate the dais of his throne. Later, it fell into the hands of a dealer in Paris, where a blustery billionaire industrialist-turned-senator from Montana fancied it. William Clark probably hung it on the wall of his Fifth Avenue mansion in New York in the early 1900s. Upon his death in 1925, his will bequeathed the rug, with his other art, to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Highly acclaimed — yet rarely seen except in art books — the carpet spent most of the next 88 years in delicate storage.

Read More: Corcoran Museum to Auction Rare Rugs at Sotheby’s

On June 5th, 2013, Sotheby’s will offer Important Carpets from the Collection of William A. Clark on behalf of the Corcoran Gallery of Art in a dedicated auction in New York. Comprising 25 rugs and carpets from the 16th and 17th centuries, the group includes one of the most important and revered carpets in the world, The Clark Sickle-Leaf Carpet, as well as one of the most majestic, The Lafões Carpet. Both epitomize the pinnacle of weaving attained during the Safavid dynasty in Persia (1501–1722) and are extraordinarily beautiful works of art.

Read More: Important Carpets from the Collection of William A. Clark

In Safavid Persia, silk was one of the most expensive materials available and, therefore, was reserved for use by the court and the most elite workshops where highly skilled weavers executed designs supplied by court artists. The present carpet, with its complex, layered design of spiraling tendrils terminating in palmettes, was originally in the collection of Edmond de Rothschild (1845-1934), and is estimated at US$500-700,000.

For the catalogue description, see: Safavid Carpet