8'7" x 12'1" Chobi Peshawar Oriental Rug | Ziegler All-Over Floral Design | Brand New Wool and Silk

This 8'7" x 12'1" Chobi Peshawar piece is a brand new, never used Oriental rug, hand-knotted in Peshawar with a wool and silk pile on a cotton foundation. The drawing is the Ziegler manner that Peshawar workshops are known for: a quiet wheat gold field carrying an all-over floral design rather than a single medallion, framed by a coral rust border of ivory palmettes. Chobi takes its name from the wood-based natural dye palette associated with the style, and you can see the result in person, soft and slightly chalky rather than bright. At 8'7" x 12'1" it covers a full seating group or a dining table with chairs pulled back, and it sits comfortably among 9x12 Oriental rugs in scale. It ships with our certificate of authenticity.

Design and Motifs

The field is built on an open, loosely drawn vine system rather than a strict repeat. Down the centre runs a vertical spine of 3 shield-shaped palmette cartouches, each filled with a small sage and gold blossom, and between them rise rows of arching stems hung with 4 petal clover rosettes in deep burgundy. Broad serrated leaves and curled cloud-band tendrils sweep across the corners of the field, anchored by large pale sage shield palmettes that read almost as spandrels. Two tiny framed cartouches sit on the mid line of each long side, a small signature touch of this drawing style. The main coral rust border alternates big ivory and gold palmettes with rosette clusters on a continuous vine, held between a sage green inner guard of leaf meander and a plain gold outer stripe. The ends finish in a narrow flatwoven kilim with ivory cotton fringe, visible in the corner photographs.

A Palette of Beige, Gold, Coral Rust and Sage

The ground is a warm beige and ivory that lifts to wheat gold where the silk in the pile catches light, which is why the close-up photographs look brighter from one direction than the other. Over it the vine work is drawn in old gold and soft apricot, the leaves and palmette centres in a muted sage green, and the small rosettes in a deep burgundy that is nearly aubergine where the dye sits heaviest. The border is the one strong colour statement, a coral rust that shades towards brick along its length with the gentle abrash natural dyes give, and the ivory palmettes on it keep that band from reading heavy. Nothing here is saturated or glossy. It is a neutral, warm scheme that works on oak and walnut floors and against cream, camel, olive and charcoal upholstery.

Peshawar Weaving and the Ziegler Tradition

Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, has become the centre for this kind of hand-knotted work, and the Chobi Ziegler group is its best known product: hand-spun wool, natural dye palettes, and the large-scale open floral drawing first developed by 19th century workshop producers for Western rooms. This piece is the better end of that production. The back photograph shows a straight, evenly packed knotting with no pulling at the selvedges, the wool is dense and springy underfoot, and the silk is used sparingly in the highlights so the sheen reads as light rather than shine. The pile is long enough to wear for decades and the cotton foundation keeps the rug flat and square, which matters at this length. Brand new and never used, it has the full life of the wool still ahead of it.