A Guide to the Best of Southern California : HANDMADE : Floor Cloths: Walking on Art

ROSEMARY COTNOIR throws her best art pieces on the floor for people to walk on. A talented maker of decorative floor cloths, she has mastered the art of transforming heavy raw cotton duck into paintings for the floor. Most of her themes borrow from Russian, Egyptian, Babylonian and Abyssinian usages of ornamentation, but some cloths possess a touch of whimsy--one, for instance, is painted to resemble a set of 3-D shelves holding a nautilus shell.

In the late 1700s, the New England settlers produced a similar type of floor covering, but Cotnoir has an advantage: the availability of modern materials to make her floor cloths far more durable. With her designs, she first applies four coats of wall primer to the front and two coats to the back. (“People are surprised that my cloths are heavy, and that they don’t buckle,” she says.) Next, she cuts corners, folds under the edges and glues them in place, before sanding the front surface and covering it with white oil-based paint. Then the artist takes over. Working from a thumbnail sketch, Cotnoir applies her color design with acrylic paints, and when these are dry, she covers the cloth with five to six coats of polyurethane on the front and two coats on the back. The entire process takes about four days, and she prices her pieces, generally 3x5 feet, between $400 and $600.

Cotnoir is not stingy with her secrets: “Don’t use polyurethane out of the can,” she warns. “Dilute it--one part paint thinner, three parts polyurethane, and stir it well to mix it.”

Studio Cotnoir, by appointment only, (714) 631-8370.