There has been much coverage of the $5.5m paid for the lavish “Pearl carpet of Baroda” (pictured right) which Sotheby’s sold on March 19 in its new Doha, Qatar location. Predictions were that it could make $20m (£13.6m), but in the event it only just made its $5m estimate. What is more, specialists contest Sotheby’s claims that it sets a new world record for a carpet. “It is no more a carpet than is the glass mosaic Kazak rug that embellishes the grave of the ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev, outside Paris,” says Danny Shaffer of the specialist antique rugs magazine Hali.

Carpets are generally defined as woven textiles that you can walk on without damaging them or your feet: the elaborate 19th-century Baroda piece (originally from the family of the Maharaja of Baroda, possibly commissioned for the tomb of the Prophet in Medina) has millions of seed pearls, semi-precious stones and coloured glass beads; Shaffer describes it as “costume jewellery gone mad”.

Sotheby’s said it had never appeared at auction before, which was true, but it has been knocking around the trade for decades, and was reportedly offered at an art fair for $1m about 15 years ago.

At the same sale a gorgeous silk velvet hanging from early 17th-century Persia made a huge, ten-times estimate $3.4m after a fierce battle between six bidders. The complex weaving showed two doe-eyed lady falconers posing languidly against a delicate pale yellow ground.

The winning bidder is a member of the Qatari royal family and the piece is destined for the new Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. Its price bolstered the results of Sotheby’s otherwise deeply disappointing sale of Islamic art, in which just five pieces out of 17 sold and which made a total of $3.98m.

The other sessions, featuring Orientalist art, contemporary art and watches, also turned in poor results, and the auction house made just $18m, well short of the pre-sale total estimate of $30m. Lord Poltimore, one of the two auctioneers in Doha, commented: “While the results weren’t everything we expected, we feel positive for this first sale in a new region. But we will review our position all the time.”

As Cubans celebrate (or not) the 50th anniversary of the Revolution that brought Castro to power in 1959, one art-related case could have far-reaching consequences. The Fanjul family of sugar billionaires has been fighting for years to get back the $100m art collection (their figure) confiscated after the revolution. Now the US State department is investigating their complaint that one painting, a 1910 view of Malaga port by the Spanish impressionist Sorolla, is illegally owned by an art dealer. They say he bought it, and others from their collection, when Cuba sold off hundreds of paintings during the country’s economic crisis after the Soviet Union collapsed. Many have been circulating on the international art market, but the Fanjuls and other families in the same situation have listed these confiscated – they say stolen – works with the Art Loss Register (ALR), a database of stolen artworks.

The problem is complicated, because European governments recognise Cuba and accept the nationalisation of the collections, but under US embargo laws it is illegal to trade in confiscated property from Cuba. But if the State department finds the art dealer guilty in this test case, it could have a major impact on sales of these Cuban-sourced works. ALR executive director Chris Marinello compared the issue of confiscated Cuban art as “a similar situation to the holocaust”.

The Belgian foodstuffs baron Guy Ullens sold a collection of 14 Turner watercolours at Sotheby’s in 2007 for £10.7m, saying he wanted to devote the money to his collection of contemporary Chinese art. The same year saw the splashy opening of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, a vast space in the Dashanzi 798 district which displays his holdings.

Now Ullens is selling some works through the Chinese auction house Beijing Poly, to “finance future acquisitions and support UCCA”. The 18 works range from ancient to contemporary and include Chen Yifei’s “Thinking of the History from His Space” (1979). The works will be on show in Beijing April 8-28, and auctioned on May 25. His spokesperson denied rumours he is trying to sell the whole collection: “Mr Ullens has not yet decided to sell,” she said, “but of course he has to think about the future.”

Georgina Adam is editor-at-large of The Art Newspaper