Inspired by art history and domestic traditions, Patricia Dreher takes the traditional floor cloth to a whole new aesthetic level.
Her rugs are made of strong canvas, sized on both sides with gesso and sanded smooth before it’s painted with the highest-quality artist’s acrylics and protected by several coats of non-yellowing industrial finish. “So durable are Dreher’s rugs,” says Guild.com, where Dreher’s canvas floorcloths are featured, “that several have been around for 20 years and are still in excellent shape today.”
Practical art, indeed! The real challenge is to decide which of Dreher’s floorcloth designs is the most interesting and attractive.
Patricia, if the “crystaline clear finish on your floorcloths is not a trade secret, would you mind sharing it with me? The floorcloths that I design are decorated with a fabric decoupage technique.
They’re a lot of fun and if you ever get lazy, you might enjoy this technique.
My bug-a-boo is the fragility of the polyacrylic finish that I’m currently using. It will crack if rolled for a long time or if unrolled quickly in cold weather.
If this is not an inappropriate request, I’d love to know how you avoid this problem.
Ellen Highsmith Silver
(author: FLOORQUILTS)