Colonial Floor Cloths

They served the purpose of adding style and color to a room while protecting wooden floors.

Colonial floor cloths.

Weston colonial floorcloth 3 floor design from weston massachusetts. The painted canvas rugs also known as floorcloths or oylcloth were in wide use during most of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The earliest colonial floorcloths were hand painted with geometric designs or fancy patterns on canvas material. Midnight blue yellow ocher meadow green brown antique glaze price.

The tin bin sells early american colonial floor cloths that are hand painted with stencils in pennsylvania. Etsy uses cookies and similar technologies to give you a better experience enabling things like. Border stencil from south britain connecticut colors used. Venues such as colonial williamsburg and historic charleston have thousands of guests walk across our floor cloths each year.

The floorcloth was initially viewed as an affordable alternative to the grander woven carpets of the wealthy or as an imitation of marble tile and inlaid parquet but came to be valued for its own sake. During john wickham s lifetime 1763 1839 a floorcloth was a term that referred to a traditional rug or fitted carpet substitute made from treated or untreated wool linen or cotton. Floor cloths are considered one of the earliest forms of floor covering. More on floorcloth history.

Floor cloths were a traditional covering used in many homes in the early 18th century. Check out our floorcloths selection for the very best in unique or custom handmade pieces from our floor rugs shops. Referred to by most today as floorcloths only remnants of these cloths remain in historical collections including colonial williamsburg museums. In colonial times when people did not have the money to import a nice carpet they would make do by painting a floor cloth on canvas.

Here are some photos of floor cloths. Perhaps they used the remnant of a sail. Our unique designs are very traditional and are very durable and long lasting. What they needed was a piece of canvas and some paint and a brush.

We have created hundreds of cloths over the years for both private households and historic landmarks.