Standing on History

History lessons at school were mostly a bore. I did enjoy learning about how the Romans made straight roads and Hypocausts in hilly chilly Britain. But now the internet is my friend I do enjoy historical detective work to find the origins of things around me. Admittedly it's more the world according to the Antiques Roadshow than Darwin.

Me & Mrs P are in the process of laying an old wooden parquet floor in our new kitchen. Once the cacky bitumen used to hold the blocks in place in olden times was scraped off the bottom, the words 'DIP. Đurđenovac - Made in Yugoslavia' were just visible embossed into the wood.

It turns out that he red-brick parquet factory founded in 1909 is still standing.

The whole town (now eastern Croatia) was dedicated to the processing oak from local forests (but I think ours may be Beech). Our blocks were made some time in the '50s.

I made a custom scraper with male and female teeth to clean the edges of tongue-and-groove blocks.

Once we have glued them down herring bone style, they will be professionally sanded flat. We have excess blocks to experiment with stains and wax finishes. BP