8'10" x 11'7" Chobi Oriental Rug | Vegetable Dyed Black & Burgundy All-Over Floral | Hand-Knotted Wool

Black ground rugs of this scale are uncommon, and this one is handled with real restraint. The field is a deep charcoal black that reads almost like ink under lamplight, and it is drawn over with large gold and ivory palmettes on thin vines. The weave is 100% hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, with a 3/8" pile that still has its full height because the rug has never been on a floor. At 8'10" x 11'7" it falls squarely into the 9 x 12 hand-knotted rugs class, the size most often used to carry a full seating group. Every piece we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, the wool content and the origin.

Design and Motifs

The drawing follows the Chobi Ziegler formula: a loose, open all-over floral design with no central medallion, so the eye travels across the whole field rather than settling in the middle. Oversized sunburst palmettes anchor the composition, each one built from a ring of pointed petals around a small rosette center, and between them sit smaller lotus blooms, serrated acanthus leaves and curling cloudband forms. The vine work is deliberately thin and slightly wandering, which is what keeps the layout from feeling mechanical. The main border carries a rhythm of shield cartouches alternating with lozenge medallions and scattered animal and bird figures, framed on both sides by narrow floral guard stripes and a fine reciprocal minor band. All 4 corners resolve cleanly, with the border pattern turning properly rather than being cut off.

Vegetable Dyed Black Field and Burgundy Border

The color story here is high contrast but never harsh. The ground is a soft-edged black that carries a faint charcoal abrash, visible in the close-up as gentle horizontal banding where the dye lots shift, the natural fingerprint of handspun wool taken in vegetable dyes. Against it, the flowers run through butter gold, wheat, antique ivory and a muted sage green, with tiny points of oxblood red at the flower centers that pick up the border. The wide main border is a deep burgundy red, more brick than cherry, drawn with gold and cream ornament, and it is set off by pale gold guard stripes that glow at the edges. The effect is a rug that grounds a light room, sits perfectly against oak or walnut flooring as shown in the photographs, and pulls together black, cream, brass and leather furnishings without competing with them.

Woven in India in the Chobi Tradition

This is a contemporary Oriental rug, hand-knotted in India, where most of the world's best modern hand-knotted weaving is now done. Chobi work, named for the plant and wood based dyes used to color the yarn, was developed to revive the softer palette and open drawing of 19th century Ziegler production, and the Indian workshops execute it with handspun wool, hand-carded yarn and a careful post-weave wash that gives the pile its low sheen. Knot by knot the weave is even, the selvedges are tight and hand-wrapped, and the ivory fringe is the cotton warp itself, tied off by hand rather than sewn on, as the ruler photograph shows. The wool is dense enough for daily traffic yet supple in the hand, and at 3/8" the pile has the depth to hold detail in the palmettes for decades.