13' x 22' Ziegler Chobi Rug | Pale Green All Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Wool, Never Used

This is a true palace piece: 13' x 22' of hand-knotted wool, woven in the Ziegler Chobi manner with a muted sage green field and a deep ivory border that runs the full 22 foot length. Rugs at this scale are made to order on oversized looms and take a team of weavers a long time to finish, which is why so few of them reach the market in a quiet, decorator-friendly palette like this one. The pile stands at 5/16" over a cotton foundation, the handle is supple rather than stiff, and the rug has never been on a floor. It ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is hand-knotted, and if you are shopping the oversized rugs category because a great room or banquet-sized dining space has defeated everything else you have seen, this is the kind of piece that solves it.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a classic Ziegler all over drawing: large lotus palmettes and 8 petal rosettes strung on a thin, almost invisible vine that wanders across the green ground rather than snapping to a rigid grid. Between the big blossoms sit curved serrated leaves, small cypress-like sprigs and tiny cruciform florets, all drawn with the slightly relaxed, softened line that separates this style from the tighter city patterns. There is no central medallion, which is exactly what you want at 13 feet wide, because furniture can be floated anywhere over the surface without cutting the composition in half. The border system runs to 5 bands: a broad ivory main border filled with alternating cartouche-style palmettes and scrolling arabesque vine, flanked by golden caramel guard stripes and narrow ivory minor borders with repeating leaf and flower heads. The 4 corners resolve cleanly, with the vine turning the corner rather than colliding, which is a fair test of the cartoon and the weaver.

Color Palette

The field is a pale, dusty sage green with a gentle abrash that lightens toward a silvery celadon in places and deepens to a soft olive in others, so the surface breathes instead of reading flat. Against it, the motifs are worked in cream and bone ivory, warm honey gold, caramel and cinnamon, with quiet accents of blush rose, mushroom taupe and a powdery slate blue that only shows itself when you are standing over the rug. The main border shifts to a light wheat ivory, and the guard stripes pick up a richer amber gold that frames the green field and keeps the whole thing from drifting too pale. Small touches of brick red appear at the centers of the border palmettes, just enough warmth to tie the rug to wood tones and leather. Overall it is a neutral, low-contrast palette built around green, ivory and gold, easy to live with in a room full of natural light.

Origin and Weaving Quality

This rug was made in Pakistan, in and around Peshawar, the workshop belt that has become the world's main source for Ziegler and Chobi weaving. The name goes back to the 19th century Ziegler company, which commissioned large-scale floral designs for Western rooms, and today's Peshawar looms carry that tradition forward using handspun wool, natural dyes and a careful wash that mutes the colors without stripping the wool's luster. Look at the back and the foundation is straight and even across 13 feet of width, no small achievement on a loom this size, and the fringe and selvedge are finished by hand. It is an Oriental rug in the proper sense of the term, knot by knot on a vertical loom, and it sits comfortably alongside the rest of our Oriental rugs for buyers who want handmade work in a contemporary neutral range.