9'1" x 11'7" Ziegler Chobi Peshawar Rug | Teal Blue All Over Floral | New Hand-Knotted Wool

This 9'1" x 11'7" Ziegler Chobi was hand-knotted in Peshawar, Pakistan, with a hand-spun natural wool pile clipped low to 1/4" over a cotton foundation. The field is a quiet teal blue, the wide main border a soft ivory, and the drawing throughout is done in wheat gold, camel and honey with only thin lines of brick red used to outline the small cartouches. It is a true 9x12 room size piece, big enough to hold a sofa group or a 10 seat table with chairs pulled back, and it is brand new, never walked on, with no repairs and no restoration. A certificate of authenticity is issued with the rug confirming that it is fully hand-knotted and 100% wool pile.

Design and Motifs

There is no central medallion here. The field carries a classic all over floral design built from split palmettes, 8 petal rosettes and long serrated lanceolate leaves, all linked by a slow leafy vine that runs corner to corner so the pattern keeps reading even with furniture standing on it. Scattered through the field are small lobed and hexagonal cartouches, each one traced with a single line of brick red that acts as the only sharp accent in the whole rug. The main ivory border alternates larger shield shaped cartouches with a scrolling vine of palmettes and cypress-like leaf sprays, and it is framed on both sides by narrow camel guard stripes of tiny 4 petal blossoms. The corners are drawn properly rather than cut off, with the border pattern turning cleanly at all 4 corners, which is the first thing to look at when judging this kind of workshop drawing.

Color Palette

The field is a soft, dusty teal blue that leans grey-green in raking light and cooler blue under a lamp, with gentle abrash banding from the hand-spun wool taking dye unevenly, visible as faint horizontal shifts across the ground. Over that sit the drawing colors: wheat gold and honey in the palmettes, warm camel in the leaves, and a chalky cream that highlights the larger blossoms. The main border shifts from ivory to light beige with olive-tinted leaves and pale blue-grey flecks picked up from the field, while the guard stripes are a deeper camel. Brick red appears only as outline, never as a mass, which keeps the whole rug in the muted, faded pastel register that decorators use with greige walls, oak and walnut floors, linen upholstery and brass. Photographed on the grey plank floor the palette reads cool and calm; against a warm wood floor the gold and camel come forward.

Peshawar Weaving and Quality

Peshawar in northwest Pakistan is the workshop center for Ziegler and Chobi weaving, and it is where most of the world's best muted, plant-dyed hand-knotted work is produced today. Chobi means wood, a reference to the plant and vegetable dye tradition these workshops follow, and the Ziegler drawing style revives the large scale, softly colored all over patterns first commissioned for Western rooms in the late 19th century. The wool is hand-spun highland fleece, which is why the pile has that slightly irregular, lustrous handle seen in the rolled and folded photographs rather than the flat uniformity of machine-spun yarn. The weave is even and firm on a cotton foundation, the selvages are hand-wrapped, and the pile is shorn short at 1/4" so the fine drawing stays legible instead of blurring. Anyone comparing this to other traditions will find the differences set out in our guide to Persian rugs vs Oriental rugs, and the tag stitched to the back of this piece states plainly what it is: hand made, 100% wool pile, made in Pakistan.