Floor Coverings
Many people tend towards carpets which, though period, was very expensive and can still be today unless you're lucky and find a great deal on something that looks period. One problem with carpets, however, is that they were not strewn about on floors as commonly as they are today. The very wealthy could use them to walk on, though it was not uncommon to see them on tables rather than floors. Of course, it would make for an amazing show to have visible table carpets set up while on tables while not in use.
Of course, this is not to say "don't use carpets" because they certainly can look much nicer than bare cement or vinyl flooring.
Another option I recently looked at was making a floor cloth, but not with the idea of making floor cloths but on mimicking tile flooring, after all, it's a bit tricky to take one's tile floor with them.
To do this, I took some duck-cloth and stretched it out on a frame. Unfortunately it was dry before I stretched it and a few wrinkles remained in the fabric. Stretching should really be done while the fabric is still wet. The same method for making this was used within the SCA period to create banners, though I'm using modern materials.
The next step involved preparing a ground on the fabric for whatever design you are planning to apply. Normally a gesso would be used and when preparing the fabric for a banner, that could mean using glues, egg whites and gums. In this case I used an acrylic base.
Now it's time to transfer the pattern which was created for each tile. In this case I drew it out in pencil and drew again over the tracing paper to transfer it. The majority of the designs came from extant English tiles using one of the tiles as my guide for size for the rest (I believe it was just under 6" square).
For the paints, I tried to keep with brick colours in both reds, browns and blacks and kept the white somewhat yellowish. I have not determined how to tackle the look of the grout, but in order to make them look somewhat newer, the grout lines should not be too thick as the original tiles were designed to allow them to be placed fairly close together.
A fair bit had been added since, but here is an older photo of the work in progress:
What you might notice in the picture is that each tile, even though the finished ones in this picture are using the same design, are painted slightly differently. I did this to try and re-create the look of individual tiles from slightly different batches of clay or even possible replacements (though replacements could have easily been done in a completely different tile pattern). The actual medieval tiles would have been created in one clay in a mould and the other clay filled in to create the design. Some times were even made with different textures.
