9'1" x 12' Ziegler Peshawar Oriental Rug | Antique Ziegler Design | New, Never Used

Most rugs in this design are drawn small and safe. This one is not. The weaver has taken the Ziegler house style and scaled it up so that a single band of palmettes fills nearly a third of the field, which is exactly why the piece reads as a decorator rug rather than a pattern repeat. It is hand-knotted in fine wool on a cotton foundation, measures 9'1" x 12' and has never been on a floor: the pile is full, the ends are secure and the condition is perfect. Anyone shopping 9 x 12 hand-knotted rugs for a main room will recognise the proportion immediately. Every rug we ship carries a certificate of authenticity confirming the weave, the materials and the origin.

Design and Motifs

The field is an all-over design built from oversized palmettes, serrated leaves and thick rust vines that branch in mirrored pairs from the center axis. Three scales of motif are working at once: broad shield-shaped palmettes with stepped outlines, smaller octagonal rosettes centred on an 8 petal flower, and small blossoms and buds scattered into the black ground to keep it from going flat. The drawing is deliberately angular, with jagged leaf tips and squared-off stems rather than fine curved line, which is the correct handling for this style and reads well from standing height. A narrow reciprocating zigzag guard separates field from border on all 4 sides, and the wide main border alternates cartouche-like leaf forms, rosettes and hooked vine ends so no two repeats sit directly beside each other.

A Black Field With Rust, Ivory and Sage

The ground is a true black, deep and even, and it is what makes the rest of the palette behave. Against it the palmettes come forward in ivory, bone and a warm camel that shifts tone across the weave, so the large open motifs have movement instead of looking printed. The vinework and the wide main border are a soft rust that leans terracotta and picks up a salmon cast under daylight, while the guard stripes are a pale straw ivory. Sage and celadon green appear in measured doses, in the rosette centers, in a few leaf forms and in scattered border figures, with small accents of deep burgundy and dark brown outlining the drawing. It is a dark rug that still feels warm, and it will sit comfortably with walnut and oak floors, cream plaster walls, leather and aged brass.

Peshawar Weaving and the Ziegler Tradition

The Ziegler name comes from the Manchester trading house whose late 19th century commissions established this large-scale, open floral drawing for Western drawing rooms, and Peshawar is where the tradition has been carried on most seriously for the last 40 years. The city's workshops weave on cotton warps with a fine wool pile, clip the pile low enough to hold the outlines crisp, and finish with a hand-washed surface that softens the dyes from new. The back of this piece shows even rows, straight selvedges and hand-tied fringe, the marks of a controlled workshop rather than a rushed commercial run. If you are weighing this against other traditional work, our guide to what separates a Persian rug from a broader Oriental rug is the clearest place to start, and this Peshawar Ziegler sits firmly in the second group: modern in date, classical in drawing, made to be used.