parquet

Parquet comes from Old French parchet, a diminutive of parc (an enclosed area). The original parquet was not a floor but a railed-off section of a courtroom where judges and lawyers stood. The floor within that enclosure was made of decorative wood — and the floor inherited the word. By the seventeenth century, parquet meant the wooden floor itself, regardless of whether a railing enclosed it.

Parquetry — the decorative woodwork technique — became the signature flooring of French palaces under Louis XIV. The Galerie des Glaces at Versailles, completed in 1684, had parquet floors of oak in geometric patterns. The Versailles parquet was so famous that the pattern became known as parquet de Versailles — a square panel of diagonal strips bordered by a frame. The pattern is still manufactured and sold under that name today. A courtroom enclosure became a palace floor became a product category.

Parquetry differs from marquetry in application but shares the principle: pieces of wood in different colors and grains are assembled into geometric patterns. Parquetry patterns are always geometric — herringbone, chevron, basket weave, Versailles panel. Marquetry patterns are pictorial — flowers, landscapes, still lifes. The line between them blurs when geometric patterns become complex enough to look pictorial.

Modern parquet flooring is typically engineered: a thin wood veneer on a plywood core, machine-cut to geometric shapes. The word parquet now covers everything from hand-cut oak panels in historic palaces to click-together laminate tiles in apartment renovations. The courtroom enclosure has been opened to everyone.