The magnificent Pearl Carpet of Baroda has earned a pretty incredible price at Sotheby's in Qatar. It sold for $5.5 million, a record for a rug. The 5-foot-8-inch by 8-foot-8-inch carpet was originally commissioned by the maharajah of the former Indian state of Baroda and is exquisitely stitched with more than a million tiny seed pearls, rubies, sapphires and diamonds on a base of silk and deer hide. The previous record for a rug was set last year by a 17th-century Persian silk Isfahan rug that had belonged to the U.S. collector Doris Duke which sold for $4.5 million.