11'10" x 14'8" Chobi Peshawar Oriental Rug | Ivory All Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Wool

This is a quiet, confident piece: an Oriental rug woven entirely in the pale end of the palette, with an ivory field carrying a soft all over floral repeat and three framing borders in taupe and olive. At 11'10" x 14'8" it sits squarely in the oversize rug range, wide enough to hold a full seating group or a 12 seat dining table with the chairs pulled back and still show a margin of floor on every side. The pile is hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation, cut low enough that the drawing stays crisp, and the back photographs show even, consistent knotting from selvage to selvage. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted and describing the size, materials and origin exactly as listed above.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion. Instead the field runs as an unbroken all over pattern built from large serrated palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, small budding sprays and long curling cloudbands that float between the flower heads, all tied together by a thin scrolling vine that you only notice once you stand over the rug. Two anchoring pendant ornaments sit on the centerline at each end, giving the field a top and a bottom without forcing symmetry on the rest of the drawing. The border system is three deep: a broad main band of alternating palmettes and cloudbands, flanked by a pair of narrow guard stripes filled with small 4 petal flowers and stepped geometric fillers, with a final outer stripe of leaf and vine. Image 4 shows how cleanly the corners resolve, the main border turning the angle without the pattern breaking, which is the detail that separates a well drawn weave from a rushed one.

An Ivory Field With Taupe, Sage and Rust

The ground is ivory drifting toward cream and oatmeal, and because the wool is hand-spun it takes dye unevenly in the best way, so the field reads as a soft wash of tone rather than a flat block of color. Over that sit motifs in warm taupe, camel and soft chocolate brown, with a quiet sage to olive green in the leaves and, in the main border and several of the larger palmettes, small strokes of muted rust and terracotta that supply the only real warmth in the design. The two guard stripes lighten to near white, which is what keeps the wide main border from looking heavy against the pale field. In practice this is a rug that changes with the light: cooler and greyer under north facing windows, honeyed and sandy under lamplight in the evening. The close-up of the pile shows the natural luster of the wool, which is where that shifting quality comes from.

Chobi Weaving in Peshawar

Chobi rugs are woven around Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, where the workshops have built a real reputation over the last few decades for hand-knotted work at a scale most weaving centers no longer attempt. The name Chobi refers to the wood and plant based dyes behind the muted, slightly faded palette, which is the point of the style: the color is meant to look settled from the day it comes off the loom rather than ten years later. Wool is hand-spun before it is dyed, which is why the field breathes rather than banding harshly, and the weave here is dense and regular, with tidy selvages and a flat, even back. A rug of this length takes a team of weavers the better part of a year, and at 11'10" x 14'8" it was made to cover a large formal room without a seam, a joint or a single machine-made shortcut.