In Praise of Parquet

I hope you all had a happy Easter. We are having a busy time here. It is our 20th wedding anniversary tomorrow and my twins turn thirteen the day after. We will have 4 teenagers under one roof - interesting times ahead!

 

 Onto today's post .... when I was a student at UCT, I lived with a few other students in a communal house. The house was a typical suburban box with absolutely no redeeming features except the occupants :)  It did have parquet floors, but they were the type of small little blocks made from wood veneer in a reddish brown colour, that were truly ugly. Something like this.....

 

As a result, I was not a fan of parquet floors, until more recently when I came across much prettier examples. I decided to do some research into the origins of these floors.

 

 Parquet floors have actually been around since the late 1600's and have illustrious origins. Around this time, the homes of the wealthy and royalty consisted of marble slabs. This marble required constant washing which quickly lead to the rotting of the wooden joints underneath. Then in 1684, a new type of flooring was introduced in Versailles, France. This flooring was made by hand cutting small pieces of various colored hardwoods into geometric shapes using squares, triangles, and lozenges.
Glued to the concrete floor these hand cut pieces of wood were then scraped, scrubbed, sanded and polished. The designs created by installing the wooden floors this way was called Parquet and they were works of arts which took much time and skill to lay. This made these floors extremely expensive and they appeared only in the homes of the most affluent and royal families.

So feast your eyes on these lovely floors...

 

So what do you think ... are you a fan of parquet?

Till next time

Sharon x

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