Pet portrait rugs

The rugs on this page are hand-tufted portraits of real animals: Hruma the grey cat, Lucian at full length and Prince the horse. Each began with an ordinary photograph sent by the owner and became a likeness built from yarn rather than printed on fabric. They are intended primarily as textile wall art. If placed on the floor, they can be used as decorative rugs, but regular or heavy foot traffic is not recommended.

A commission works the same way for any pet. You send a clear photo of your dog, cat or other animal. Ksenia Derr redraws it by hand into a colour-accurate mockup and matches yarn shades to the actual coat; tufting starts only after you approve the design. A hand-held tufting gun drives acrylic yarn through a stretched textile base, one pass of colour at a time. After the adhesive backing has dried, the rug comes off the frame and the pile is levelled and shaped in stages. Before the parcel leaves the studio you receive photographs and video of the finished piece.

Open each portrait to browse its product gallery, where the finished rug is shown from several angles. The galleries for Hruma’s colourful portrait, Lucian and Prince also include a split comparison: one half shows the original pet photograph and the other the finished portrait rug. Every portrait product page includes its own short video of the making process and finished piece. Explore the gallery and video to assess the likeness, workmanship and finish for yourself.

What you choose

Every rug on this page is the same commission, put together differently. Five things are settled before the drawing starts, and you settle them.

Which animal. Dogs, cats and horses are what people ask for most, but the rug begins as a drawing rather than a print, so the species is not a constraint. Prince is a horse, photographed with his tongue out; that is not a stock pose, it is how his owner caught him.

How much of it. Head and shoulders suits the square 84 × 84 cm. A full-length portrait needs an elongated format instead: Lucian runs 150 × 82 cm, well past life size.

The colour of the coat. True to the animal, as in Hruma’s portrait, or a bold painterly palette, as in the impressionist version of the same cat.

What sits behind. A plain ground, or fields of colour chosen from a palette we send you. Prince stands on blue, yellow and pink.

What else is in the frame. A favourite toy, a collar, something that belonged to that animal. Most people never think to ask. Say so when you send the photograph and it is drawn in with everything else, without lengthening the making time.

None of this is a menu of upgrades. It is the conversation that happens before any yarn is cut, and the mockup comes back to you with your answers already in it.

The standard format is 84 × 84 cm; any other size can be ordered, with the price quoted before work begins. The standard square is four working days on the frame, and about two weeks from the order to your door once transit is counted. The mockup waits on your approval in between, and a full studio adds to it, so the date is confirmed when you order. Every portrait ships free across the EU and to the US with a tracking number.

Pet memorial rugs: when the animal is no longer here

A fair share of these portraits are commissioned after the fact, and those requests nearly always come with one photograph, whichever happened to be the last. That is enough. A printed mat needs a clean file; a drawing does not, because the animal is rebuilt by hand from whatever the frame gives up: the structure of the head, the set of the ears, the light that caught the eyes. Send the blurred one. Send a photograph of a print lying on the kitchen table. Say which it is when you write, and no one will ask you for a better picture, because there is no better picture. This is also where the fifth choice stops being decoration: the collar, the toy, the object that was his is drawn in beside him.