5'10" x 8'10" Pakistani Chobi Ziegler Rug | Wool | Ivory and Green

A rectangular room rug of 5'10" x 8'10", knotted by hand in Pakistan with a natural wool pile. The field is a pale biscuit beige carrying an all-over tracery of thin vines and flowerheads, and the whole of it is held inside a wide olive green main border. Seen from across a room, as in the second photograph, it reads as a quiet light-ground carpet; up close the drawing is busy and finely articulated.

Design

This is a Chobi treatment of the Ziegler all-over pattern, a pattern of linked floral compartments rather than a central medallion. Fine rust-brown vines sweep out, curl back on themselves and form rounded cartouches, each one filled with a palmette, a serrated leaf or a small eight-petal rosette. The drawing mirrors along both the long and short axes, so the same lotus palmette that stands at the top of the field stands again at the foot, reversed. The main border runs a repeating sequence of large leaf-and-blossom sprays on a dark olive ground, with gold scrollwork threading between them, and is flanked by narrow guard stripes on beige carrying tulips and single rosettes. The corner photograph shows the border turning squarely, with the repeat resolved rather than cut off mid-motif.

Colour

The ground is a light beige that sits between cream and dry sand, and it takes up the light so the pile looks a shade warmer where it lies against the nap. Against it the border is a mossy green, closer to olive than to sage, dark enough to draw a firm line around the field. The flowerheads work in rust and brick, in an old rose that softens to dusty pink in the smaller blossoms, and in a muted mustard gold that appears mostly in the leaves and in the border scroll. Nothing here is loud: the strongest contrast in the rug is the green border against the pale ground, and the field colours stay a half-step down from full saturation throughout.

Making

Hand-knotted in Pakistan with a pile of natural wool, the rug is listed as new and in perfect condition. The folded-back corner shows a back as legible as the front, with the pattern reading clearly through the knots and the pile cut at a medium height, firm enough that the vine lines hold their edges. The warps run out at each end as plain ivory fringe, and the sides are finished flat against the pile.