13'10" x 15'9" Chobi Peshawar Rug | Soft Blue-Grey Field, Ivory Floral Border | Hand-Knotted Wool

The first thing to say about this 13'10" x 15'9" Chobi Peshawar is the proportion: it is almost square, and that is unusual at this scale. A rug 166" wide and 189" long fills a great room, a wide formal living room or a large square dining space where a 9x12 simply floats in the middle of the floor, which puts it squarely in oversize hand-knotted rug territory. The field is a soft blue-grey with a faint green cast, carrying an all-over floral system in ivory, camel gold and taupe, and it is framed by a broad sand-ivory main border. The pile is hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, handspun yarn that takes dye unevenly enough to give the ground a gentle abrash instead of a flat printed wash. Condition is excellent and never used, with full even pile, straight sides and clean selvedges. It ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The drawing is an all-over floral pattern built on a loose diagonal lattice of vines, with large lotus palmettes and multi-petal rosettes anchoring the repeat and long curved split leaves sweeping between them. Smaller star flowers, buds and cloudband tendrils fill the ground so the field never looks empty, yet the spacing stays open enough that the pattern reads as calm rather than busy. The border system runs three bands: a wide sand-ivory main border carrying its own procession of palmettes, shield-shaped rosettes and arabesque vine, flanked by narrow reciprocal guard stripes of tiny florets and hooks. Corners are resolved properly, with the main border motif turning cleanly at all 4 corners instead of being cut off mid-flower, which is a fair test of whether the weaver was following a well drawn cartoon. Fine rust-red outlining appears in single strokes around a few blossoms and inside the guard stripes, a small amount of accent color used with restraint.

The Neutral Blue-Grey and Ivory Palette

The field sits between blue and grey with a quiet green undertone, closer to sea glass or weathered slate than to any true navy, and it moves in soft horizontal bands of abrash where one batch of handspun wool met the next. Against that ground the floral work is drawn in ivory, warm cream, sand and camel gold, with olive and taupe used for the leaves and stems so the pattern reads as tonal rather than high contrast. The main border is a pale sand-ivory that lifts the field and gives the eye somewhere to rest, and its own motifs pick up the same camel gold plus small touches of dusty blue. Accents of rust-red and a muted charcoal-blue appear in single outlines, no more than a fraction of the surface. The overall effect is genuinely neutral: it will sit with greys, warm woods, linen upholstery and brass without fighting anything, and it reads as an antique-style palette rather than a bright modern one.

Woven in Peshawar: Chobi Weaving and Quality

Chobi rugs are woven around Peshawar in northwest Pakistan, where generations of weaving families have worked to Sultanabad and Oushak drawings for decades. The name chobi refers to wood, a nod to the plant and vegetable dye tradition these workshops are known for, and the finished rugs are given a soft antique wash that mellows the color into the muted range you see here. The wool is handspun rather than machine spun, which is why the pile has that slightly irregular, lustrous surface and why the abrash bands appear at all. Structurally it is straightforward and honest: cotton warp and weft, wool pile, hand-knotted throughout, with a substantial handle and enough weight that a piece this size lies flat on its own. It is an Oriental rug made in Pakistan, not a Persian city piece, and the value is in exactly that: room-filling hand-knotted wool at a scale that is hard to find, in excellent unused condition.