looking for grasscloth

[Susan12]

I am looking for a grasscloth on what looks to be a fabric-backed vinyl. A customer has brought me a sample of grasscloth she brought from Florida, but she has no idea where she got it. I am a designer in Virginia who owns a paint & decorating store in a small town - and none of my books of natural grasscloths & woven papers have anything like this sample. It has a nice, heavy, and pliable feel. The front looks like many of my samples from Hunter, Seabrook, Kenneth James, Thibaut, etc. It has very small open spaces between the weaving that show a shiny same-colored surface beneath the grass. I can - with some difficulty - peel the backing off of the grass, and the backing is a tough latex-like beige substrate with a fabric back for stability. The shiny part could come from the adhesive (looks almost like hot glue) I don't specialize in grasscloth, but have sold it for years and I've never seen this kind. Do you have any idea where to get this? It looks ideal for commercial use (or high end residential) Thanks for any help.

[K.L. Conner]

If I remember right that is a Hinson and Company 48" wide

K.L.

[Jeff Evans]

I really like the look of Madagascar cloth, and it goes up really nice too. This is a good opportunity, I hope, to get an answer to an issue that came up on a 200+ yard MC job I had last summer. Most of the MC I've seen and installed has come through Hinson, but this batch was from another distributor and it was backed scrim side in. The backing was slick, and the adhesive beaded up on the surface. That made me very nervous, as I felt like in stress areas, like outside corners, and a rounded stairwell wall, I'd get splitting seams due to poor adhesion.

The representative told me they changed to that method of backing because the shiny side in method led to delamination of the backing and raffia. I told him that was great for them, but they caused a new problem if the adhesive wont adhere to the backing. He told me I should be pasting the wall, and not the material, but when i asked him how the paste was going to adhere any better to the backing like that he could not answer me. In the end, since we got no satisfactory answer the designer sent the goods back and changed to a company with a different backing.

My question for Steven is, do you have experience with MC with that same backing scenario, and if so, have there been any problems resulting from poor adhesion?

Jeff