8' x 10' Chobi Oriental Rug | Charcoal Black Field with Gold Floral Border | Vegetable Dyed Wool, Made in India

This is a brand new, hand-knotted Chobi in the classic proportions buyers ask for most, a charcoal black field wrapped in a wide antique gold border, woven in India on a cotton foundation with a wool pile clipped to roughly 3/8 of an inch. The low clip is deliberate: it keeps the drawing sharp, lets chairs slide without catching, and gives the rug a flat, tailored lie that you can see in the showroom photographs. Nothing has been used or walked on here, the fringe is full and even, the selvedges are tight, and the vegetable dyed colors are exactly as they came off the loom. Every rug we sell ships with a certificate of authenticity, and in a room-size format this one lands squarely in the most practical range we stock, which is why 8x10 hand-knotted rugs are the first thing most buyers come looking for.

Design and Motifs

The field carries an all over floral design built on a lattice of thin arabesque vines that curve, split and rejoin across the whole surface, with no medallion to anchor it. Hung on that lattice are large lotus palmettes, 8 petal rosettes, fan-shaped blossoms and long serrated leaves that bend like scimitars, all drawn in outline so the pale motifs read clearly against the dark ground. The close-up photograph shows how much small work is packed between the big flowers: tiny buds, 3 lobed leaflets and paired tendrils fill the gaps so the field never looks empty. The main border repeats a rose palmette and leafy spray in alternation, flanked by 2 narrow guard stripes of small flowerheads on a meandering vine, and the weaver turned the pattern cleanly at all 4 corners rather than cutting it off, which is a sign of a drawn cartoon followed properly rather than improvised.

A Vegetable Dyed Palette of Charcoal Black and Antique Gold

The ground is a deep charcoal black with a faint brown cast where the light crosses the pile, the kind of soft, slightly uneven black that only comes from natural dye rather than a flat chemical saturation. Against it the border reads as antique gold, warm and sandy at the center and lighter toward the guard stripes, so the rug frames itself without a hard colour break. The flowers work through ivory, buttery cream, wheat and pale honey, lifted by coral and terracotta red in the petal centers, olive and sage green in the leaves, and a soft blue grey that appears in the larger palmettes and the corner blossoms. There are small touches of charcoal outlining in the border flowers that tie the two halves of the palette together. Nothing is bright, nothing is bleached, and the overall effect is a dark rug that still feels warm, which makes it unusually easy to place over oak, walnut or a pale stone floor.

Woven in India in the Chobi Tradition

Chobi takes its name from the word for wood, a reference to the muted, plant-dyed palette the style is known for, and today India is where most of the world's best contemporary hand-knotted weaving of this type is done. The looms there have the trained workforce, the good handspun wool and the natural dye houses to produce a classical floral Oriental rug at a knot count and finish that hold up to close inspection, and we buy direct from those workshops. Turn this one over, as in the last photograph, and the knotting is even and tightly packed with no loose rows or wandering lines, the wefts are straight, and the rug lies flat without the waves and curling edges that give away rushed work. The wool is dense enough underfoot to take real traffic for decades, and at 8' x 10' it is a serious floor rug rather than a decorative piece.