Coffee Time: Floor Coverings Before 1850 by Nina Fletcher 

This is what I learned in 22 years of doing Am. Rev War Living History reenacting in the Great Lakes region: I personally guess the majority of those floor coverings you're seeing in the book are painted floor cloths replicating more expensive real materials - what we call oilcloth today [well, oilcloth today is actually man-made vinyl coated cheap stuff, not the oil cloth that was several layers of oil paint on canvas which is what floor cloths were made of in the late 17th-18th century +] Faux painting was all the rage in the 1700's. If you couldn't install real marble floors like the top-level aristocrats because you couldn't afford it, you could have an itinerant/local painter use oil paint on woven canvas to fake it (canvas duck to us now, like the cotton drop cloths we use only it was probably 100% linen back then because linen was cheaper than cotton) and give your home the look of a marble floor at much lower cost. And your walls and ceilings could be painted to look like expensive marble or wood or bas relief or what-have-you, Oil paint was inexpensive-ish and imagination allowed you to make it fake anything in your home you wanted it to. 1:04:00 That floor covering could very possibly have been trompe l'oeil faux painting faking a more expensive rattan rug at that time? Thats my quess [artistic license can never be ruled out in portrait painting though. Perhaps the real people didnt have anything on their floor at all and the artist added it.] Painted floor cloths = canvas, a base coat of 'primer' oil paint both front and back, let dry completely, one to two more coats of base paint again front and back to give canvas some thickness for wear/longevity; the base color of the design painted with more expensive pigmented oil paint only on top side, then the design painted in vivid pigments on top side; then a varnish coat or two of some sort to protect the pigmented paint from getting worn off too soon. Then when the painter came through your local area again, you would have him touch up the floor cloth (it was very likely showing signs of wear by then) OR have him paint an entirely new design over the old one so you could keep up with the trends/redecorated interiors. Very often painted floor cloths were placed in areas that needed surface protection, so tabletops were fair game to be covered by one too. I suspect they placed them in areas such as under dining tables to keep the chairs from scuffing the actual wood floors/catch food & wine spills/etc. Painted floor cloths are somewhat stiff and 'crunchy' when finished with the amount of paint layers they have, but they wear well and are like modern vinyl oilcloth in that they repel liquids and are easily cleaned. They improved with age since you were always adding additional paint layers to it when you had it 'refreshed', making it tougher the older it got. Very affordable and trendy floor covering. 18th century terms are tricky and should be looked up in Johnson's dictionary as opposed to assuming they mean what we call them nowadays... to make sure you know what Enlightenment peoples are referring to. I learned that the hard way reenacting. i.e. 18c purses = 20c wallets, 18c wallets = 20c shoulder-strap purses/'book' bags, 18c rugs = 20c bed or lap quilts/blankets, 18c watercolor pencil = 20c watercolor brush, 18c carpet = 20c woven cloth floorcovering, not necessarily rug/carpet, etc. ----- 18 C women's/girl's (4 years old+up) expected clothing layers: shift/chemise [that was your underwear, didn't wear panties back then], stockings, shoes, boned stays [corset], several petticoats, bed jacket/short gown/sack back gown, kerchief/fischu for shoulder neck, cap/head covering. The elbows, legs, and head/hair should always be covered if in company/out in public or you would look very uncivilized/racy. What you did with your cleavage was up to you [French just let theirs run amok], they didn't care about that nearly as much as exposing the elbows/uncovered head. So weird, but that was their modesty thing. I don't recall women not being required to wear stays/corsets for the last several centuries except for a small aberration in the early 1870s and then in the 1920s+. Was there another time 16C-20C where they didn't have to? I'm interested! lol In the 19thC, they glued painted oilcloth to the ceiling or walls to cover cracks in the horsehair plaster, then painted elaborate 'carpet-like' designs on it to make it look pretty. I know this because I helped to restore/recreate two of them in Rochelle IL. I'm hoping it's still there cuz it took me two months to complete it. lol Well, that's what I think I know about these subjects. I'm likely incorrect, but I don't think so. Do correct me if I've got it all wrong, I want to improve myself. 💚💚💚