7'10" x 10'4" Chobi Peshawar Rug | Ziegler All-Over Floral Design | Tussock Brown & Ivory, Never Used

This is a quiet rug, and that is the whole point of it. Hand-knotted in hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation, the 7'10" x 10'4" field sits in a soft tussock brown while the drawing floats above it in ivory and cream, with nothing in the palette raised loud enough to fight a room. The proportions land squarely in the most useful footprint we sell, which is why it belongs with our 8x10 hand-knotted rugs, big enough to carry a full seating group or a table for 6 without crowding the walls. The pile measures 5/16", short enough to take chair legs and daily traffic, thick enough to feel like real wool underfoot. It has never been used, and it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The layout is a classic Ziegler all-over: no central medallion, just a loose repeating lattice of large palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and serrated leaves linked by a slow vine scroll that runs corner to corner. Because the repeat is open rather than dense, a sofa or a dining table can sit anywhere on the field without burying a focal point, which is exactly what the Ziegler drawing was developed to do for Western rooms. The main border carries alternating shield-shaped cartouches and flowering rosettes on an ivory ground, framed by narrow guard stripes filled with small paired sprigs, visible clearly in the corner photograph. Look at the close-up and you will see how the weaver let the outlines blur slightly at the edges of each leaf, a softness that comes from hand-spun yarn rather than from wear.

A Tussock Brown Field With Ivory and Beige Drawing

The ground colour is a warm tussock brown that shifts with the light: photographed flat it reads as a deep olive-tinged camel, and photographed on the floor under daylight it lifts toward a soft gold. Against it, the palmettes and vines are worked in ivory and pale beige, with quiet grey-green shading inside the larger leaves and faint blue-grey outlining on a few of the inner rosettes. The wide border drops almost entirely to ivory and sand, which is what gives the rug its light frame and keeps the brown field from feeling heavy, and a scattering of muted rust outlines on the border cartouches supplies the only real warmth of contrast. Gentle abrash runs horizontally through the field, a natural variation in the dye lots of hand-spun wool that keeps a large expanse of one colour alive rather than flat.

Woven in Peshawar, Pakistan

Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, is where a great deal of the best hand-knotted work in this style is now made, woven largely by Afghan weaving families who settled in the region and kept their loom traditions intact. Chobi takes its name from the word for wood, a reference to the plant and vegetable dyes that give these rugs their muted, sun-softened colouring from the day they come off the loom. The back photograph shows the weave clearly: even rows, a tidy cotton foundation, and a straight selvage with the fringe left as a plain natural continuation of the warps. As an Oriental rug, it is honest about what it is, a contemporary hand-knotted piece built in a 19th century idiom, and the handle of the wool is the proof of the workmanship.