9'2" x 12' Chobi Peshawar Rug | Light Blue Ziegler Medallion Design | Hand-Knotted Wool

This is a quiet rug that does a lot of work. The whole 9'2" x 12' field is a soft, chalky light blue, and every motif on it is drawn in ivory and warm cream, so the pattern reads as tone on tone rather than contrast. It is hand-knotted in hand-spun wool on a cotton foundation in the Chobi tradition of Peshawar, a modern Oriental rug style built on 19th century Ziegler and Oushak drawing. The pile is low and dense, the wool has a natural sheen that shifts as you walk around it, and the condition is excellent with no wear and no repairs. Among 9x12 area rugs this is one of the easiest to live with, because nothing in it fights the furniture. Every rug we ship includes a certificate of authenticity confirming the hand-knotted construction, materials, size and origin.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a large round medallion built from an 8 point star inside a ring of small scrolling leaves and buds, with a tiny rosette at the very middle. Above and below it, long ivory vine lines sweep out and curve back to form big open cartouches, each one filled with broad palmettes and flat open blossoms. Fan shaped half palmettes sit against the left and right edges of the field, and small 4 petal flower sprigs and serrated leaves fill the spaces between the larger forms, so the drawing stays balanced without ever becoming busy. One slim guard stripe separates field from border, and the main border is a repeating row of upright flowering plants, each rising from a small stepped base, marked off by narrow vertical dividers like a procession of little trees. The corners resolve cleanly, and the design is drawn with a relaxed, slightly softened line that is characteristic of Chobi work rather than the tight precision of a city workshop.

A Study in Light Blue and Ivory

The field is a pale powder blue with the faint horizontal striation, or abrash, that hand-spun wool gives when dye takes slightly differently from batch to batch; in the close-up photographs you can see it drift from a cool grey blue near the border to a softer sky tone across the middle. Against that, the ivory of the medallion and vines is not a flat white. Some blossoms read bone and cream, others carry a gentle buff or pale gold wash, and a few of the palmettes pick up a light sand tone that warms the whole surface. The border holds a slightly deeper blue ground than the field, which quietly frames the pattern, and the flowering plants inside it alternate between cream and a greyer ivory. It is a genuinely two color rug, so it sits well with white walls, oak, linen, pale marble and most blue grey schemes. If you are shopping a palette, this one belongs with the softest pieces in our blue Persian and Oriental rugs.

Peshawar Weaving and the Chobi Tradition

Chobi rugs are woven in and around Peshawar in northern Pakistan, largely by weaving families working in an Afghan tradition, and the name refers to the muted, wood toned palette these looms are known for. The wool is hand-spun rather than machine spun, which is exactly why the field shows that subtle striation and why the pile reflects light unevenly in a way a uniform modern rug never does. The back photograph shows a tidy, even weave with straight rows and well set knots across the full 110" width, the kind of consistency that keeps a 12' long rug lying flat. Selvedges are intact, the ends are secured with a short natural fringe, and the low pile makes this practical for a busy room as well as a formal one. Hand-knotted at this scale, a rug like this takes months on the loom, and it will outlast any tufted or machine made piece in the same size by decades.