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About this piece
This piece is intended primarily as textile wall art. If displayed on the floor, regular or heavy foot traffic is not recommended.
The rug in these photographs is a portrait of a real cat: a grey shorthair named Hruma, tufted from her owner’s photo. Laid next to the original picture, the two match closely enough that the first image reads as an optical illusion: half cat, half rug. This is what a custom pet rug from our studio is: not a printed mat, but a portrait of your dog or cat built up from yarn, one pass of colour at a time.
Every commission starts with the photograph you send. Ksenia Derr redraws it by hand into a colour-accurate mockup, matches yarn shades to your pet’s actual coat, and starts tufting only after you approve the design. The rug is tufted with acrylic yarn on a stretched textile base. After the adhesive backing has dried, the rug comes off the frame; we then level and shape the pile in stages so the fur markings stay crisp. A non-slip textile layer keeps it stable when displayed on the floor. If you would rather hang it as textile wall art, say so when ordering and we will add mounting loops to the reverse.
The portrait shown here is 84 × 84 cm and weighs about 2.4 kg: heavy enough to lie flat, light enough to hang. Because every design is drawn from scratch, any other size is possible; the price follows the area, starting from €310 for this format.
What photo works
A phone photo is enough. What matters is that the face is sharp and lit: daylight by a window beats a flash. Eyes in focus, the head filling a good part of the frame, and the coat readable against whatever is behind it. Send several pictures from different angles if you have them: the more of the animal we can see, the truer the drawing gets.
An old print or a film photograph works too, and this is where a studio differs from a print shop. The rug begins as Ksenia Derr’s drawing rather than as your file. She has painted for eighteen years, works the likeness up by hand and comes back to you with it, so anything the photograph does not show clearly gets settled between the two of you before a single strand of yarn is tufted.
If the only picture you have of a pet who has died is a poor one, say so when you write. It is a commission we take often, and it is the drawing stage that carries it.
A dark dog against a dark sofa is the one case where we usually ask for a second picture, because the drawing has to find the edge of the coat. Not sure whether yours will work? Send it, and we will tell you before you pay anything.
Which animals we tuft
Dogs, cats and horses are what people ask for most, and they are the portraits shown here. The process does not depend on the species though: any pet can be tufted, because the rug starts as a drawing rather than as a print. A rabbit, a bird, a goat, something less usual: send the photograph and we will tell you what the drawing can do with it.
You choose the framing at the start: the face alone, or the whole animal with tail and paws.
Two pets on one rug is the one request we answer with a question. At 84 × 84 cm two animals do not fit as a proper portrait, so we suggest a larger format and quote it from the area rather than squeezing both into the standard square.
The animal need not arrive alone either. A favourite toy, a collar, a bowl, an object that belonged to it can be drawn in beside it. Almost nobody thinks to ask. It costs nothing to say so when you send the photograph, and it adds nothing to the making time.
Sizes and prices
Portraits start at €310. The price follows the area, so the real question is how much of the animal you want in the frame.
| Size | What fits | Price |
|---|---|---|
| 84 × 84 cm | One pet, head and shoulders | from €310 |
| 150 × 82 cm | One animal, head to paws | from €410 |
| Any other size | Two pets, or a big dog | On request |
These are prices of pieces we have actually made, not estimates. Every design is drawn from scratch rather than fitted to a template, so any size is possible and you always see the quote before any work begins.
How long it takes
Four working days in the studio, then five to ten days in transit, tracked and free across the EU.
The clock starts when you approve the mockup, not when you send the photo. Before that there is a short exchange: we redraw your photograph by hand into a colour mockup, match yarn shades to the actual coat, and send it over. Changes happen at that stage and only there; once tufting starts, the design is fixed.
Before the parcel leaves the studio you receive photographs and video of the finished rug.
To watch a commission run from the first photograph to the finished piece, one is documented step by step in how a pet portrait rug is made from a photo, with clips filmed at the frame.
Tufted, not printed
A printed pet rug is a photograph on fabric. This is not that.
Every shade here is a separate strand of acrylic yarn, driven through a stretched textile base with a hand-held gun, one pass of colour at a time. The pile is then sheared in stages: levelled first, then shaped detail by detail, down to the rim of an eye. That is what makes fur read as fur instead of a flat picture of it, and why the surface has depth you can feel.
If you are comparing offers, price is the quickest way to tell the two apart. A pet rug sold for under €90 is a printed one. At that price the piece cannot have been tufted by hand: the drawing, the tufting and the shearing take days of work before any material is counted.
It is also why a hand-tufted piece can be repaired years later. The same hands that made it can re-tuft a patch, and the mockup stays in the studio, so the design can be worked again.
The full case, backing against backing and edge against edge, is set out in hand-tufted or printed: how to tell a real pet rug.
Tufting is routinely confused with punch needle, a hand tool rather than a motorised one, which leaves a different surface behind. The two are compared side by side in tufting vs punch needle.
