12' x 15' Chobi Peshawar Oriental Rug | Ziegler Serapi Medallion | Ivory & Gold, New

A rug this wide is usually bought for one room and kept for a generation, and this 12' x 15' Chobi Peshawar is built for exactly that job: 100% hand-knotted wool on a cotton foundation, a 5/16" pile with real body underfoot, and a full 180" of unbroken length so it reads as one floor rather than two. It is brand new and never used, with the tight, even handle and clean ivory selvedges of a piece straight off the loom. The drawing is the classic Serapi medallion set in the Ziegler manner, which is why it carries the weight to anchor oversize hand-knotted rugs territory without looking busy. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity confirming the weave, materials and origin.

Design and Motifs

The center holds an elongated 8 lobed medallion in antique gold, its edge feathered with small serrated leaf tips, and at its heart a near-black star cartouche filled with a tiny latticework of red, cream and pale blue squares. Above and below it hang two matching gold pendant palmettes on a thin stem, a device that stretches the composition lengthwise and suits the 15' run. The ivory field around them is drawn sparsely on purpose: thin vine tracery, single rosettes, split leaves and little 4 petal blossoms placed with air between them, so the eye reads the medallion first. Four brick red spandrels cut into the field with bold sawtooth edges and carry large curling leaves and star rosettes, with soft sage green insets tucked into the 4 corners behind them. The main border is the strongest element after the medallion: a deep near-black ground carrying alternating red vase-like palmettes, large cream and gold rosettes and long hooked gold tendrils, framed on both sides by narrow reciprocal guard stripes in ivory and sage.

The Ivory, Brick Red and Antique Gold Palette

The field is a warm ivory with the faintest natural variation from strand to strand, the kind of gentle movement you only get from hand spun, hand dyed wool, and it makes this one of the easier ivory and beige rugs to live with in a light room. Against it the spandrels read brick red, a slightly dusty tomato rather than a bright crimson, and the medallion sits in an antique gold that shifts toward honey where the pile catches light. The main border is a deep blue-black, nearly ink, which gives the whole rug its frame and its formality. Inside that dark ground the accents do the work: buttery gold tendrils, cream rosettes, muted rose, and a soft sage green that repeats in the corner insets and the minor borders. Small notes of pale blue appear in the leaf tips and inside the medallion core, cooling the reds just enough. Nothing here is harsh or high-contrast; the palette is aged in feel and reads as ivory, red and gold from across the room.

Woven in Peshawar: The Chobi Ziegler Tradition

This piece was hand-knotted in Pakistan, in the Peshawar weaving belt that has become the best source in the world for large-format Chobi work. Chobi refers to the wood and plant dye tradition those workshops use, and it is the reason the reds and golds here look softened rather than new. The design vocabulary comes out of the Ziegler and Company pattern archives of the late 19th century, spacious field drawing with a strong medallion and a heavy palmette border, paired with the angular Serapi medallion that decorators keep asking for. The weave itself is village-scale rather than city-fine, and that is the point: a substantial 5/16" wool pile on a cotton foundation, a firm even knot across all 144" of width, and flat-lying selvedges and a clean fringe, as the back photograph shows. If you are weighing this against a Persian original, our guide on the difference between a Persian and an Oriental rug explains where the two traditions part company, and the wider selection of Oriental rugs is worth comparing side by side.