Mennonite Floor Art

Look at those beautiful floors!  When I toured the Friesen heritage house in the southern Manitoba village of Neubergthal with friends  I took the photo below of one of the floors in the home. It intrigued me. 

I saw that same pattern when I visited the gift shop at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. It was displaying Neubergthal artist Margruite Krahn’s show Resurfacing: Mennonite Floor Patterns. Margruite has been involved in the restoration of Neubergthal since 2001.  Neubergthal is a Mennonite street village founded in 1876 and a national historic site.  Margruite became fascinated with the beautiful patterns found hand-painted on the wooden floors of some of the oldest homes in the village.

Upstairs Bedroom by Margruite Krahn

These hand-painted floor patterns were created by Mennonite women often during the long winter months.  Floor painting is an art Margruite believes they brought over with them from Prussia when they migrated to Canada in the 1870s. Margruite decided to try to recreate some of the designs herself on cotton canvas.  The results are beautiful but also completely practical.  Although at the WAG gift shop the floor cloths are hung on the wall they are extremely durable and can be placed on the floor and used in a functional way.

Canvas carpet created in 2005

Margruite says some of her canvas floor clothes were made already in 2005 and still look great after more than a decade of foot traffic. Not all of Margruite’s canvases were inspired by floor patterns.  This one was found on a trap door in the Klippenstein home in Neubergthal. 

Margruite travelled to other Mennonite villages as well looking for painted floorboards and found them sometimes under layers of carpet and linoleum.  This pattern was discovered in a house in Grunthal Manitoba owned by a Driedger family.  I wonder if they could be relatives of mine? Margruite says that while the petals on the flowers in floral patterns were usually painted with a brush the centre circle was stamped using potatoes or some other vegetable. 

Margruite based this artwork on a geometric floor pattern she found in a Gerbrandt house in Sommerfeld Manitoba. She has discovered some 26 different patterns so far.

777 Boxes of Grace by Margruite Krahn from the Herdsman House in Neubergthal

  You can find out more about Margruite on her website and read more about her work with floor patterns there too.  

Other posts…………

The T-4s Go Mennonite in Neubergthal

The Brommtop and Cross Dressing Mennonites

By Design