11'9" x 17'9" Chobi Oushak Rug | Light Gray All Over Floral Field | Hand-Knotted Wool

At 11'9" x 17'9" this Chobi Oushak is a true palace footprint, and it was drawn to be read across a long room rather than studied at arm's length. The field is a quiet light gray, hand-spun wool that shifts a shade lighter and a shade deeper as the light moves across it, and the whole surface is held together by a wide ivory border with slim blue guard stripes. It is hand-knotted in wool on a cotton foundation, never used, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity. Buyers shopping oversize 12x18 rugs rarely find this much floor covered in a palette this restrained.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion. Instead the weaver ran a classic all over floral design across the whole field: large round palmettes and open rosettes set on a thin trailing vine, with 8 petal star flowers, serrated leaves and small cloud-band scrolls filling the ground between them. The drawing is deliberately loose and generous in scale, the way the old Oushak workshops laid out a large room size piece, so the repeat never reads as busy. Everything is outlined in a fine dark brown line that keeps the softer tones legible. The main ivory border carries a meandering vine with alternating palmettes and cross-shaped blossoms, flanked on both sides by narrow blue guard stripes and a thin pearl chain, and the corners resolve cleanly at all 4 turns.

A Light Gray Field with Ivory, Soft Blue and Taupe

The ground is a pale, slightly silvery gray with natural abrash, the gentle horizontal striation you get from hand-spun yarn dyed in small lots. Against it the motifs are worked in warm ivory and cream, sandy beige, a mushroom taupe and a medium mineral gray, so the pattern reads as tone on tone until you are standing over it. The only real accent is blue: a soft powder blue in the flower centers and leaf tips, deepening to a denim blue in the guard stripes and in several of the border blossoms. Traces of pale brown and a faint blush pink appear in a few small flower heads. The overall effect is cool and muted, the kind of neutral that sits under gray, cream, walnut or black furniture without competing, and the wool has the low sheen of a properly washed pile rather than a glossy finish.

Chobi Weaving in Pakistan

Chobi weaving is centered on the Peshawar region of Pakistan, where workshops took up the Oushak drawing tradition of western Anatolia and adapted it to hand-spun highland wool and natural dyes. The name refers to the woody, vegetal dye tones these weavers favor, and the finished pieces are given a soft wash that mutes the color from the first day, which is why this rug already looks settled rather than new. The weave here is even and tight for a piece of this scale, the selvages are wrapped by hand and the ivory fringe is a clean extension of the cotton warps, as the back tag confirms: hand made, 100% wool pile. If you are comparing this against a Persian piece, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from an Oriental rug is worth a read, and the rest of our oversized hand-knotted rugs sits alongside it.