Underfoot [antikvár]

INTRODUCTIONA BRIEF HISTORY OF FLOORSWay back in 1880, in a lecture delivered to the Society of Arts in London, the architect Robert W. Edis declaimed on the subject of fitted carpets: TJ.Î is a matter of astonishment to me that there are still a large number of people who are content to keep this exceedingly bad arrangement of floor covering, and who object altogether to having a certain amount of plain floor space all around the sides of the room. In the first place, this covering of the whole surface is unhealthy; in the second place, it is dirty; and, in the third place, the cost of the carpet is infinitely more than the cost of painting or staining the edges of the rooms.He could have been talking in 1980, with more intense decorative despair, when he would still have encountered fitted carpets everywhere although they would have been less filthy as a result of the invention of the vacuum cleaner. Today, however, tastes are beginning to swing back to an interest in carpetless floors, to the types of hard coverings perfected in continental Europe and those used extensively in Britain and America 150 years ago and more bare boards, tiles, stone, mosaics. And as global warming hots up, surely a preference for cosy carpets will be further overtaken by a desire for some-; 1 fA return to the flooring of the past: a modern interpretation of a traditional parquet floor, using timber as a veneer.