Leather Flooring

Leather is one of those materials that "fits" steampunk very well -- it has vibes of the Victorian American West, is a softer counterpart to too much metal, yet is tough enough to be used by the gentleman explorer. Outside of upholstery or accessories, however, it's hard to incorporate into your home -- until now!


Jaimie left a comment about these leather floor mats from Ting made from recycled belts, and I'm loving how they look.


There are some ideas on how to make your own, here.

More Penny Tiles

You liked the floor of the Standard enough that I have to do a follow up post...

Amanda pointed out this Apartment Therapy post with instruction on how to do it yourself. This particular floor used about $35 worth of pennies -- cheap from a materials point of view, if not for labor. Scroll down to a long comment by "teeze" for the how-to.

And Cheetah Velour sent this from the New York Times of a bar covered completely in pennies.

Copper Flooring

Can you tell what this floor is made of?



That's right. Pennies!

How awesome is that? This is the floor of the Standard Grill, in the Standard Hotel in New York. And why does it not surprise me that it's by my favorite designers in the world Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch at Roman and Williams?

via NotCot

Escher on the Floor

Yesterday's library had a floor inspired by M.C. Escher, which made me wonder what else was out there modeled on Escher's work (even if he was too late to be steampunk).

The fundamental mathematics that make Escher's work suitable for floors (or walls) is that they are tessellations -- interlocking shapes that fill a plane. The easiest, and most popular, seems to be the cube tessellation that we saw yesterday. I found it done in concrete, in carpet, in parquet, and in stone tile.

concrete stain by Tom Ralston Concrete

Carpet at the Morgan's Hotel in NYC. Here's a similar rug.

Parquet at the Hotel Palomar

A quick review of the Sunshine City floor in Tokyo, above, makes it easy to see how to constuct this tessellation from simple squares. You need three colors. Four squares of the lightest makes up the top of the cube, and then each side is made up of one whole square with two half squares finishing it up. It's all done on a grid, so while you might get dizzy installing it, it wouldn't be too hard.

Tomorrow: even more Escher for the home.

On Fantasy Libraries and Herringbone Floors

I'll be done with the library theme pretty soon, but I just ran across this "fantasy" library on Journal 703. It's lovely. He has the most romantic flooring discussion:

The floor I'd choose would be a floor I fell in love with as a fifteen year old boy in one of my friend's house. His parents had a beautiful federal style two story Colonial Revival home. Later, they added a traditional den/library to the back of the house. I've never forgotten the floor. It was brick; very smooth brick from an old street that was dug up and replaced in town. These bricks were reddish brown and very smooth. It had a sealed appearance that was very smooth. I later found out how they managed it. The brick was set, and sealed and coated with gloss polyurethane. On top of that were many coats of oxblood wax.

I'm a big fan of herringbone floors -- it's a unique way to use a standard rectangular shape, which means you can create a particularly unique floor pattern using off the shelf components. I'm building an addition to my house, and for the new upstairs bathroom, I'm going to use standard stock American Olean 3"x6" Subway tile ($.22/piece) laid in a herringbone pattern with a dark grout. I'm hoping it ends up looking like this:

image from Greenwood Marble and Tile.

Tile or brick not appealling? Wood floors are the most traditional herringbone flooring.


The herringbone floor pattern dates back to Roman times, which is long enough ago that I think it qualifies as "timeless."

Hexagon Tile in a Kitchen

I'm enamored of black and white floors. This one is a pattern I've seen in plenty of bathrooms, but rarely in the kitchen.
This sort of hexagon tile was widely used in the earliest indoor bathrooms. According to some things I've read, white tile was popular in early bathrooms because it gave an antiseptic feel to the room. With that in mind, this kitchen has echoes of a Victorian surgery -- stainless steel countertops, the tile, the iron table, and adjustable stools.

If you like the Victorian doctor look, don't forget Dr. Kim's "Office."

(p.s. If you happen to live close to Carrollton, TX, you can snag the table pictured here for only $75 and the stools for $10! Only at the Wisteria outlet, and let me know if you are planning on making the trip!)

Cement Tiles make a Black and White Kitchen

I ran across this kitchen a couple months ago in Vogue. It's someplace in France... I like the combination of industrial (those lights!) and the old fashioned floors. These are antique French cement tiles.

Cement tiles have a nice matte finish, and originated in France at the end of the 19th century, although they are currently made and used in both Morocco and Mexico (and perhaps others).
Want to see more? Provence Retrovee has a number of antique cement tile patterns. Exquisite Surfaces has both antique and reproduction styles.

Decorative Imaging prints Traditional Wood Marquetry

The summer edition of O At Home has an article on a New York company called Decorative Images who generates extremely traditional decorative surfaces by printing them onto wood veneer with a large format digital printer.

The men choose wood from the the thousands of high-resolution textures in their digital library. "We have scans of 600 different sheets of oak," Kusek says. "It's like having a lumberyard in your computer." To simulate a patina, they add layers of computerized grime.

Before

After

There is also an article about the firm online at the Wide Format Imaging website.

In addition to custom work for decorators, they are debuting a line of tiles, borders, and medallions that the rest of us could use in our decorating.



They are worth a look, and then at least an hour of draydreaming on how you could hack traditional design motifs to make them steampunk, if you only had access to a large format printer. (Or what you could do at home on your laser printer with a small piece of wood veneer. Perhaps a case for a obscure scientific device?)