8'2" x 9'8" Chobi Peshawar Zigler Rug | Burgundy Field, Ivory Border | Organic Hand-Spun Wool, Never Used

This is a brand new, never used hand-knotted Chobi Peshawar in the Zigler drawing, measuring 8'2" x 9'8" and woven in organic hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation. It is a slightly squarer 8x10, which is exactly what many rooms want: a shade wider across the front of a sofa, a shade shorter down the length, so it fills the seating area without crowding a doorway. The wool is the story here, hand-spun and plant-dyed so the burgundy ground breathes in soft vertical striations across the field, visible in the close-up photographs. Pile height is generous and even, the selvages are tight, and the fringe is clean and untrimmed. Every rug we sell, including this one, ships with a certificate of authenticity confirming that it is handmade and knotted entirely by hand. If you are shopping the format rather than the origin, you can compare it against our other 8x10 Oriental rugs.

Design and Motifs

The field carries a classic all-over floral layout with no medallion, built on a loose lattice of thin curling vines that wander rather than repeat mechanically. Three motif families alternate across it: large open palmettes drawn in profile with fanned petal tips, round 8 petal rosettes with a small burgundy center, and broad serrated leaves that spread like oak foliage. Small budded blossoms and star flowers fill the spaces between, and tiny crescent leaves punctuate the vine work, a detail you can see clearly in the field close-ups. The wide ivory main border runs a stately procession of rosette heads and cartouche-like flower clusters linked by scrolling vine, flanked by narrow gold guard stripes of stylized petals, and the whole thing is framed by a plain burgundy outer band that pulls the eye back to the field. Corner resolution in the border is handled honestly in the village manner: the drawing turns the corner without forcing a perfect mirror, which is one of the clearest signs of handwork.

Burgundy, Gold and Ivory: The Color Reading

The ground is a deep burgundy that leans toward wine and, in the macro shots, shows a faint plum cast where the hand-spun yarn takes dye unevenly. That gentle abrash is intentional and is what keeps a large red field from reading flat. Against it, the florals are worked in a graduated range of golds: pale butter and antique ivory at the petal edges, warmer saffron and apricot in the cores, so each palmette appears lit from inside. Olive and sage green do the leaf work and the small vine sprigs, cooling the warm palette, while touches of soft brown and a darker rose appear in the flower centers. The border is a calm cream to light honey ivory, slightly deeper than the pale blossom tones so the field still dominates, with the same olive green and small ruby-red dots repeating through the vine. There is no harsh white and no synthetic brightness anywhere in the piece; the range sits comfortably with warm woods, brass, leather and oatmeal upholstery.

Chobi Weaving in Afghanistan and the Zigler Tradition

Chobi, sometimes spelled Choobi, is the Afghan weaving tradition that pairs hand-spun highland wool with plant and mineral dyes, often finished in the Peshawar workshops that have handled Afghan production for decades. The Zigler drawing these weavers use descends from the late 19th century Ziegler and Company commissions in Sultanabad, which simplified dense court florals into the open, large-scale palmette layout Western interiors have wanted ever since. Afghan Chobi weavers kept that formula and brought their own wool to it, and that wool is the difference: long staple, high in natural lanolin, hand-spun so the yarn varies slightly in thickness and scatters light instead of reflecting it evenly. Knot count here is moderate by design, as this is a bold-scale village drawing rather than a fine city weave, and the resulting dense pile on a cotton foundation is built for real traffic. As an Oriental rug rather than a Persian city piece, it offers that same hand-knotted construction and natural-dye palette at a far more accessible level, and the back shown in the photographs is crisp, even and free of any repair.