In the Middle Ages, up until the end of the sixteenth century, the castle inhabitants, along with some off their more familiar animals, occupied the rooms along with their owners. Obviously, this made it imperative that they be able to wash the floors down with water. This did not make parquetry or any wood floor a viable option. Furthermore, the large arched rooms of the castles were generally made of stone, so stone it was.

The wood floors, then, were reserved for estrades or footboards. These were placed under the chairs of honor, under the beds, under the seats and the tables of the winter feasts, or used to mark social status. They were often covered with a shaggy carpet.

Beauty was not as important as functionality.

Then, gradually, terra cotta tiling was used as flooring for the higher quality homes and the wealthy. These floors were made up of juxtaposed boards with sharp joints, or rabbets to hold the tiles in place. The planks were 5 to 7 inches wide and fixed to the beams by forged nails.

It wasn't until the 16th and 17th centuries that floors began to be assembled with a tongue and groove configuration, with planks 3 to 4 inches wide. Around the beginning of seventeenth century,

there were two general ways of positioning a parquet floor as follows:

1. Floors were formed of panels 5 to 6 feet long. A single plank was then placed in the contrary direction (engraving Les vierges folles de le Blond à Paris, 1640, British Museum).

2. Hungarian point was made up of various planks of the same dimensions, end cut at a 45-60 degree angle. The thickness was usually 22mm or 14mm. Tongue and groove assembly is generally used for parquets nailed onto backing strips.

By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the apartment floors were made of panels of square parquet flooring. The compartments were positioned either complimentary to the square or in a diagonal formation, with or without a plank.

Another technique often employed with parquet flooring was "marquetry", or parquet floor in mosaic. Marquetry may be composed of star patterns, as with the Château de Maisons located in Maison Laffite, near Paris. In this castle there remains a parquet floor of wood marquetry in report/ratio in the Cabinet of the Mirrors. Parquet floors in mosaic continued gaining popularity. In 1672, the Mercure Galant, a French gazette and literary magazine founded by Jean Donneau de Visé in 1672, expressed popular opinion by stating that people no longer wanted rugs, due to the amount of dirt they collected, but rather parquet floors in various colors and styles.

Many recognized craftsmen have had an impact on the evolution of parquet. They created new techniques, introduced new materials and made lasting contributions to the history of parquet. Important notables, aristocrats, lords and large property owners all over France were required to spend time, sometimes a lot of time, at court in Versailles. When these new innovations in technique and fashion first showed up at court, they rushed home to have similar floors put in their country châteaux. Being out of fashion was simply not acceptable. This meant that the flooring quickly spread out around France.

A prominent engraver in the first part of the 17th century, Abraham Bosse provides us with examples of taille-douce engraving, or copperplate engraving. On an engraving of the King's room at Fontainebleau in 1645, Bosserovides us with a parquet floor made up of floor squares and decorated with report/ratio lily flowers.

While nothing remains of the invaluable wood mosaics of Jean Macé, they decorated the estradas and certain floors of the cabinets of the Louvre, the cabinet of the Queen Mother in 1665, the cabinets of Tileries, Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau and Versailles.

Andre-Charles Boulle was a cabinetmaker for Louis XVI from 1642 - 1732. Boulle began as a decorator and woodcarver at the Gobelins. A marquetry technique popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, Boulle marquetry, would come to bear his name. This technique utilized a brass veneer set in tortoiseshell. He is most known for the marquetry floors in the Dauphin's apartments at Versailles.

A former employee of Boulle, Pierre Poitou, did the flooring of the Le Cabinet des médailles, the medal cabinet, in 1685. He would eventually become the King's marquetry craftsman in 1683. He specialized in marquetry parquet, utilizing ebony and brass or ebony with brass and pewter.

Alexandre-Jean Oppenordt was a gifted cabinetmaker employed by Louis XIV. He is known for his hard stone or brass and tortoise shell marquetry furniture. He is also known for his