Have you ever seen those street performers whose specialty is chalk drawings? These intrepid souls spend hours crafting visual trickery upon the most horizontal-and least forgiving-of canvases. The more talented among them produce compelling three-dimensional illusions: the waiting jaws of a great white emerging from the depths, an endless fall into the endless dark of a water well, the shimmering blue of a swimming pool. Given the constraints of the public venue, these creations are typically short-lived, but if you desire a similar yet more permanent brand of art for your floor, look to Italy's Pulkra. The floor division's line of colored and painted vitrified surfaces gives your floors all the hip appeal of contemporary art.

Floor Division. Designed by Pulkra.

There's a bit of verbal baggage that needs unpacking with regard to this product. First, the firm's name derives from the Latin "pulcher," meaning "something uncontaminated, transparent, something so pure, fine and exemplary as to reflect those facets to be found within each and every one of us, which fascinate, seduce and excel." Then there's the somewhat ominous sounding "vitrified," which refers to conversion into a transparent form, whether through glass or, in this case, resin. All floors in the line are first custom painted-whether this means a conventional landscape, a hip cityscape a la Basquiat, or a surrealist exploration of color is up to you. Next, the artwork is framed and sealed in a thick platform of perfectly transparent resin.

The vitrification deeds the image a distinctive aesthetic. As with any display in which distance and demarcation loom large, Pulkra's painted floors achieve separation without becoming rarified. The product gives you a functional surface that you'll trod on everyday, yet maintains the art in a space all its own: "The floor, embellished by the resin and the decoration, attracts attention and becomes a surface to which you can commit your own stories and emotions... Walking on Pulkra resin floors is like an ethereal journey on solid bases."

Via FurFin.