12' x 15'6" Peshawar Oriental Rug | Sage Green Tree of Life Field | Hand-Knotted Wool, Excellent Condition

This is a big, calm, beautifully drawn Oriental rug in a true room-filling format: 144" across by 186" long, hand-knotted in hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation and finished in the muted sage, beige and rust palette that made the Peshawar weave famous. The field carries an all-over tree of life composition rather than a central medallion, so the rug reads as texture and movement from every seat in the room and never fights the furniture placed on top of it. The wool has the slightly uneven, hand-spun character that catches light differently as you walk past, and the pile is even and unworn across all 4 corners. It is in excellent condition, never used, and ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is 100% hand-knotted. At this footprint it belongs with the oversize Oriental rugs, sized for a great room, a long dining table or an open-plan main floor.

Design and Motifs

The field is a garden read vertically. Slender flowering trees rise from small footed vases, flanked by weeping willow sprays that arch over like fountains, spear-shaped cypress forms, and feathered arrow-like stems stacked in chevrons. Between them sit narrow urns with stepped shoulders, 4 petal rosettes, scattered single leaves and tiny birds, all drawn with a loose, semi-tribal hand that keeps the repeat from feeling mechanical. There is no central medallion and no strict mirror symmetry, which is exactly why this design works on a rug this long. The main border is a wide ivory band of alternating rounded pomegranate forms and split palmettes on curling vine, separated from the field by a rust vine stripe and a narrow zigzag guard, with a second matching guard on the outer edge. A pair of fine reciprocal minor stripes tightens the whole frame and keeps the eye moving around the perimeter instead of stopping at a corner.

The Sage, Beige and Rust Palette Up Close

The ground is a soft sage green warmed toward camel and old gold, with visible abrash so that the tone shifts gently from one end of the rug to the other, lighter and greener in some passes, deeper and more honeyed in others. Over that ground the drawing runs in rust and terracotta, warm ochre, chocolate brown and a deep oxblood burgundy used for the vases and a few of the tree trunks. The cool relief comes from a dusty slate blue and a soft mushroom grey in the willow sprays and leaf forms, which is what keeps an otherwise golden rug from turning orange in lamplight. Border ground is a pale ivory gold, with the palmettes picked out in caramel and taupe and outlined in fine brown. Small touches of cream and off-white sit inside the blossoms and give the field its sparkle. This is a low-contrast, sun-washed range: it sits easily with oak, walnut, linen, leather and painted woodwork, and it does not demand that the rest of the room match it.

Peshawar Weaving and the Quality of This Piece

Peshawar rugs are woven in and around the city of Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, by weaving families who carry the classical 19th century workshop drawing forward in hand-spun, naturally dyed wool. The wool is the reason to buy one: long staple, lanolin-rich highland fleece, spun by hand so the yarn varies slightly in thickness and takes dye unevenly, which is what produces the striped abrash and the soft luster you see across this field. The knotting here is regular and honest village workshop work, with straight sides, square corners, tight selvages and a firm handle that will take traffic in a main living space for decades. A rug 12' x 15'6" on a single loom is a long commitment for a weaving team, and the consistency of the drawing from the bottom border to the top says the same hands stayed with it. Hand-knotted, hand-washed and finished with a natural wool fringe, it arrives ready to lay flat and be lived on.