8' x 9'9" Chobi Peshawar Rug | Dark Brown All-Over Floral Field | Ivory Border, Excellent Condition

This is a hand-knotted Chobi Peshawar in a room size that sells faster than any other: 8' x 9'9", wide enough to carry a seating group and short enough to leave a clean margin of floor on a 10 by 12 room. The drawing is a quiet, confident all over floral on a dark chocolate brown ground, framed by a broad wheat beige border, and the pile is wool on a cotton foundation with a low, even clip that shows every outline cleanly. Condition is excellent and the rug has never been used, with full pile, straight sides and a tidy brown selvage, as the ruler shot of the back confirms. It ships with a certificate of authenticity documenting the hand-knotted construction, materials and origin. If you are shopping the 8x10 Oriental rugs range for something neutral that is not another beige rug, this one solves it with brown.

Design and Motifs

The field carries an all over floral design built on a vertical vine that runs the full length of the rug. Along that spine sit four large cream palmettes, each one opening like a shield with a row of small rosettes inside it, and at the center of the field two big 16 petal rosettes face each other across a small lobed flower head. Around them the weaver filled the ground with curling serrated leaves, split arabesque tendrils and scattered 8 point star flowers, so the brown field never reads empty but also never crowds. The border is where the detail concentrates: a wide main band of jagged edged palmettes alternating with leafy sprays, bracketed by narrow guard stripes of repeating hook and comma motifs, then a plain dark brown outer edge that finishes the rug like a frame. A thin cream guard line separates field from border and keeps the two tones from bleeding into each other visually. There is no central medallion, which is exactly why this design is easy to furnish over: a sofa or a dining table can sit anywhere on it without cutting the composition in half.

Dark Brown Field with Beige, Gold and Cream

The main color is a deep chocolate brown, and it is not flat: horizontal striation runs through the ground where the hand spun wool shifts from coffee to a warmer walnut, the natural abrash that gives a handmade piece its depth under lamplight. Against it the ornament is cream and ivory at the brightest points, softening into wheat gold and tan through the leaves and tendrils, with fine rust outlining inside the big rosettes and on a handful of border flowers. The wide border reads pale beige with a greenish gold cast, cooler than the field, and its motifs are drawn in deep brown and a faint blue gray that only shows in close inspection, visible in the corner detail photograph. The outer stripe returns to the same dark brown as the field, and the selvage matches. The overall effect sits firmly among brown area rugs rather than the usual ivory and blue formula, which makes it unusually forgiving with walnut and oak floors, leather seating, bronze and brass metals, and warm white or greige walls.

Chobi Weaving in Peshawar, Pakistan

Peshawar, in northwest Pakistan, became one of the great weaving centers of the last few decades, and the Chobi style is its signature: muted wood toned palettes, hand spun wool, and classical floral drawing borrowed from the 19th century Ziegler and Sultanabad workshop tradition. Every knot here is tied by hand on a cotton warp, row by row, with the pile then shorn low so the fine outlines around each palmette stay legible, which is why the back of this rug shows such a clean, regular grid. Peshawar work is prized for exactly this combination of soft, lustrous wool and restrained color, and a well made Chobi like this one is a true Oriental rug in the full sense of the term, hand knotted, wool piled and built to be walked on for generations. The weave is dense enough for a dining room or a busy living room, and the dark ground hides far more daily traffic than a light field ever will.