8'10" x 11'6" Zigler Chobi Oriental Rug | All-Over Palmette Design | Coral Red & Ivory | New

This is a brand new, never used Zigler Chobi rug, hand-knotted in fine natural wool on a cotton foundation and finished in the soft, lightly washed palette that collectors look for in this group. At 8'10" x 11'6" it falls into the 9x12 Oriental rugs bracket, the size most often chosen to carry a full seating group or a dining table with all chairs pulled out. The field is a rustic coral red with visible abrash, drawn with large ivory and gold palmettes and framed by a wide beige border. Image 14 shows the back with the dealer tag reading 8'10 x 11'6 and a tape measure laid across the weave, so you can see the knotting and the exact piece you are buying. Like every hand-knotted Oriental rug we sell, it ships with a certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The drawing is a classic Zigler all-over design with no central medallion. Large fan shaped palmettes and lotus heads sit on a thin, loosely swinging vine that repeats in staggered rows the full length of the field, with curled serrated leaves, small 5 petal blossoms and short flowering stems filling the spaces between. Because the scale of the palmettes is generous, the pattern still reads clearly from standing height on a rug this size, and the open red ground between the motifs keeps it from feeling busy. The border system runs 3 bands: a wide beige main border carrying alternating gold palmettes and little flower vase motifs with red blossoms, flanked by a saffron gold guard stripe of 4 petal rosettes on one side and a narrow ivory meander on the other. Corners are resolved cleanly, as image 7 shows, and the outer edge finishes in a plain coral red band that pulls the whole design back to the field color.

A Rustic Coral Red Field With Beige, Gold and Sage Green

The palette is the reason this rug works in rooms where a saturated red would not. The ground is a rustic coral red, somewhere between terracotta and brick, softened by abrash that runs in horizontal bands where the wool was dyed in separate lots. Against it, the palmettes are worked in antique gold and saffron, with ivory and cream outlines that give each motif its shape, and muted sage green and dove gray shading in the flower heads and leaves. Small accents of deep red appear inside the border vases, visible in images 8 and 10. The main border is a pale beige, almost oatmeal, which cools the whole composition and makes the overall effect neutral rather than loud. Nothing in the rug is a hard, synthetic looking color; the tones are warm and chalky, and they sit comfortably with oak and walnut floors, cream plaster walls, leather, linen and both blue and green upholstery. Buyers shopping rust and coral rugs often end up here for exactly that reason.

Zigler Chobi Weaving and Quality

The Zigler design takes its name from the Ziegler and Company commissions of the 1880s, which adapted Sultanabad drawing for Western houses by enlarging the motifs and opening up the field. Chobi refers to the wood and plant based natural dyes and the soft wash that gives these rugs their mellow, slightly antique tone from the first day. This piece was hand-knotted in Pakistan, where the weaving houses working this group have built a real reputation over the last 30 years for handspun wool, natural dyes and even, well-balanced knotting. The quality shows in the specifics: the back is tight and regular, the weave stays square across almost 9 feet of width, the selvages are firmly overcast and the fringe is the original warp ends of the cotton foundation. The pile is fine natural wool, clipped at a medium height with a clear sheen in images 5 and 11, dense enough to live under a dining table and soft enough to sit on. It has never been on a floor.