11'9" x 17'8" Chobi Ziegler Peshawar Rug | Oversize All-Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Wool, Never Used

This is a brand new, never used Chobi Ziegler measuring 11'9" x 17'8", hand-knotted in Peshawar from hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation. At 141" x 212" it belongs to the true oversize 12x18 rugs group, the size that finally covers a great room or a long formal dining space without leaving bare floor at the ends. The pile is cut low at 5/16", so the drawing reads crisply and the rug sits flat under heavy furniture. Every piece we ship leaves Freeport with a certificate of authenticity confirming the weave, the wool and the origin.

Design and Motifs

The Ziegler layout is an all-over floral design with no central medallion, drawn large and spaced generously so that it still reads as a pattern when you stand across the room from it. Broad palmettes and split rosettes sit on long curving vines, flanked by serrated leaves and small 4 petal blossoms that scatter into the open ground between the main stems. The drawing mirrors left to right and repeats up the length of the field, which is what keeps a 17'8" rug from looking busy. The wide ivory main border carries alternating palmettes and round rosettes joined by a thin vine, held between narrow guard stripes of the same vocabulary in miniature, and the corners resolve cleanly rather than being cut off mid motif. Close up, tiny squared red flowerheads punctuate the pattern at regular intervals, a deliberate spark against an otherwise quiet scheme.

A Quiet Palette of Blue-Grey, Ivory and Gold

The field is a soft blue-grey, closer to slate than to true blue, and it moves across the width in gentle horizontal striation as the hand-spun wool takes the dye at slightly different rates from batch to batch. Against it the ornament runs warm: antique gold, camel, wheat and cream in the palmettes, with muted olive and sage in the leaves and taupe in the vine work. The main border is a pale ivory to sand ground where the same golds and greys reappear, so the frame lifts the field without cutting against it. Small accents of deep red, no larger than a fingertip, sit at flower centres and inside the leaf tips. The selvages and the low fringe pick up the grey of the field, which ties the whole piece together. It is a low-contrast, neutral scheme that works with cool greys and warm woods at the same time.

Chobi Weaving in Peshawar and the Quality of the Knot

Peshawar in northwest Pakistan is the centre of Chobi weaving, where the name comes from the local word for wood, a reference to the plant and wood based dyes used to get exactly this washed, muted palette. The design vocabulary descends from the 19th century Ziegler workshop drawings, and today Peshawar produces the most convincing large-format work in that tradition: hand-spun wool rather than machine-spun, knot by knot on cotton warps, finished with a wash that softens the colour without stripping the wool's natural sheen. The back photographs show even, regular knotting from edge to edge, which is what allows a rug nearly 18 feet long to stay square and lie flat. This is an Oriental rug in the strict sense of the term, made entirely by hand, and at this scale it is a piece of furniture as much as a floor covering.