13'1" x 16'2" Chobi Peshawar Rug | Soltanabad All Over Floral Design | Natural Wool, Brand New

This is a big, quiet, confident piece of weaving: 13'1" x 16'2" of hand-knotted natural wool in a soft beige ground, drawn in the Soltanabad manner with large palmettes floating across an uninterrupted field. It has never been used, the pile stands full and even edge to edge, and the handle is supple rather than stiff, which is what you want in a rug this large because it will lie flat the day it is unrolled. Sizes like this are the hardest thing to buy well, and it belongs with the oversize 13x16 area rugs that actually fill a great room instead of floating in the middle of it. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording its size, material, weave and origin.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field carries an all over floral design of broad sunburst palmettes and lotus heads, each one framed by spiky serrated leaves, set in staggered rows and joined by a fine tendril that you only notice on close inspection. Between the big flower heads sit small 4 petal cross blossoms, single buds and curling leaves, so the empty ground never reads as empty. The drawing is deliberately a little soft at the edges, the way a village cartoon translates through a hand-knotted weave, and that slight irregularity is the charm of the type. Three borders frame the field: a wide main band of palmettes and leafy sprays, an inner guard of small rosettes and cross flowers, and an outer vine stripe of curling leaves and tiny birds of a scroll. The corners resolve cleanly, which on a rug 16 feet long tells you the weavers were counting rather than improvising.

The Beige, Sage Green and Brown Palette

The ground is a warm beige that shifts between honey and pale straw depending on where you stand, the natural result of hand-spun wool taking dye unevenly and abrashing gently across the width. Against it, the palmettes are drawn in soft camel and antique gold with cores of deep brown and clay red, and the leaves are shaded in a muted sage green that cools the whole surface and keeps it from reading as one flat neutral. Small burgundy and rust cross flowers appear at regular intervals in the field and along the guard stripes, tiny points of warmth that give the eye somewhere to land. The main border runs a half shade darker than the field, a dusty tan that outlines the composition without any hard contrast anywhere on the rug. This is a genuinely easy palette to live with: it sits comfortably with oak, walnut, linen, cream plaster and warm grey, and it carries oversize floor space without shouting.

Peshawar Weaving and the Chobi Tradition

Chobi rugs are woven around Peshawar in northern Pakistan, where weavers work classic Soltanabad and Ziegler style cartoons in hand-spun, naturally toned wool on a cotton foundation. It is honest, skilled work, and the Peshawar looms have become the main source for large room size pieces in this soft neutral vocabulary. The wool takes a light wash well and gains a low sheen that you can see on the back of this rug, where the knotting is regular and the weave sits tight and flat. If you are weighing this against Persian city weaves, our guide to the difference between Persian and Oriental rug traditions is worth reading before you decide. Practically speaking, a piece like this gives you the scale and the drawing of a formal room rug in a weave built to take daily traffic.