5' x 6'10" Pakistani Chobi Peshawar Rug | Wool | Cream and Rust

A 5' x 6'10" rug knotted in Pakistan in the Chobi Peshawar manner, with an all-over floral field on cream and a rust main border holding it in. From a few feet away it reads as one pale warm panel with a band of brick around it. Closer in, the field resolves into palmettes, open rosettes and long serrated leaves drawn in tan, olive and soft grey, most of them only a shade or two darker than the ground they sit on.

Design

The field carries a thin vine lattice that runs corner to corner and links three vertical rows of large palmettes, each one built from layered leaves with a small lobed heart at the centre. Between them sit round rosettes seen face on, curling acanthus leaves and a scattering of tiny squared motifs that break up the empty ground. The main border alternates a standing palmette with a pair of angled leaves, repeating steadily along all four sides, and is framed on both edges by narrow guard stripes of running vine on a gold-beige ground. The outer guard continues to the plain woven ends, which finish in a short natural fringe. Nothing in the drawing is symmetrical in the strict sense: the flowers shift slightly in size and in the colours they are filled with, which is what keeps the repeat from looking printed.

Colour

The ground is a warm cream that turns closer to buttermilk where the light runs with the pile and closer to pale straw against it. Against that, the main border is a clear rust, a touch dusty rather than bright, with the filler motifs picked out in beige and gold. The flower heads work through brown and tan into a muted sage green on some of the leaves, while others take a cool grey that reads almost as shadow across the cream. The guard stripes lift the whole thing slightly with a soft gold, and a thin line of red outlines the innermost petal of several palmettes, the single sharp note in an otherwise quiet palette.

Making

Hand-knotted with a wool pile, in a rectangular format. Chobi is a Pakistani workshop type rather than a single pattern, the name taken from the word for wood and used for this timber-toned, low-contrast colouring; Peshawar names the weaving centre the style is associated with. The pile here is cut short enough that the outlines stay crisp, and the reverse shows an even, regular knotting across the whole width. The table records the rug as new and in perfect condition, and it looks it: full pile height corner to corner, intact selvedges and clean ends, as with the rest of the hand-knotted rugs we hold in new condition.