Rugsville Afghan Chobi Vegetable dyes Wool Carpet 9' x 12'

The Afghan Chobi is a contemporary reading of the older Ziegler vocabulary, with the same open palmette field but a tighter rendering and a more disciplined palette drawn from the natural earths of central Asia. The name attaches to the dye process rather than to a place. Chobi means wood, the reference being to the long mineral wash that mellows the wool toward the patina of an antique. This rug carries the lineage with a measured all-over field that reads as already lived with.

Four weavers worked the vertical loom for around six months. The pile is hand-spun, lanolin-rich wool laid on a cotton foundation and tied in Persian asymmetric knots row by row. The dye baths were prepared from madder root, indigo, walnut hull, oak gall, and pomegranate rind, each one matured in copper vessels over two to three weeks before the wool was lowered. After clipping, the rug spent four days in sun and a long mineral wash that pulled the saturation back into antique register.

The composition

An open ground worked over with palmette, vine, and rosette in a continuous all-over reading. The dominant values are warm madder rust and a deep indigo that reads charcoal in shadow, set against a pomegranate-washed cream ground. Faint horizontal abrash bands cross the field where neighbouring dye lots sit side by side, the natural fingerprint of plant-dye work. The colour will mature for ten years before it settles, and then it holds for a century.

What you are buying

Antique Persian carpets in this lineage and scale carry estimates of forty to ninety thousand US dollars at international auction. This piece is woven on the same vertical loom, in the same Persian knot, in long-staple hand-spun wool, with the same plant-dye discipline. At one and a half lac it is priced against domestic furniture rather than against the auction comparable, and unlike furniture it appreciates with use rather than depreciating.

The piece in a room

9' x 12' (274 x 366 cm) is the working drawing-room scale. The all-over field welcomes asymmetric furniture placement; the rug calibrates to the room rather than asking the room to centre on it. The palette pairs with walnut, brass, raw linen, terracotta plaster, and a single large work above the sofa.

Conservation

Rotate the rug a half turn each spring and autumn. Vacuum weekly with the beater bar disengaged. Blot spills at once with clean cotton, never rub. Hand-wash by a trained wool conservator every six years. With this care the piece runs ninety years in regular use.

Reference

• Medium: hand-knotted hand-spun wool on cotton foundation
• Dimensions: 274 x 366 cm (9' x 12')
• Construction: Persian asymmetric knot
• Hands: 4 weavers, ~6 months
• Pile: hand-spun lanolin-rich wool
• Dye: vegetable (madder, indigo, walnut, oak gall, pomegranate)
• Origin: India

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