Windsor Castle

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This is the marquetry floor in the Crimson Drawing Room at Windsor Castle which, along with the decorative parquet in the Green Drawing Room and the parquet and boards in the Grand Reception Room, David Gunton and his team of craftsmen recreated and restored after the great fire. For this work we were awarded; The Worshipful Company of Carpenters Special Award in Recognition of Outstanding Achievement in the Restoration, Re-Creation, New Design and Quality of Craftsmanship at Windsor Castle. The Royal Household has put up some wonderful pages with some particularly stunning and technically very clever panorama photographs. One of these is of the Crimson Drawing Room where you can see the floor in its furnished context. http://www.royal.gov.uk/virtualtours/Flash%20Panoramas/flash_003.html The page can take some time to open because the file must be huge. Once it opens, in the bottom right corner are some controls. Before scrolling around, click on the + sign to enlarge - you then get a better view od the detail.

This is what we started with! The floor in this room was burned around the edges but otherwise it was effectively boiled for three days as the fire burned and the firemen poured water into the flames. From these remains David Gunton had to identify the original woods used, make detailed measurements to enable redrawing and then recreation of the pattern exactly as made originally in 1854.

This picture on the right shows the difficulties the original makers experienced. The floor was made off-site in a workshop. 2 to 3mm thick veneer was applied to Honduras mahogany carpentary panels which were intended to join together very accurately on site. Unfortunately, probably because the panels changed moisture content during manufacture and fitting and so changed shape, when they came to be fitted they would not close up properly. The Greek key pattern was at least half an inch out of straight in the middle of the length of the floor. The carpenters had to cut the veneers off the panels and refit them all by hand on site. They used a brace and bit in order not damage other areas of the veneer work by accident. You can see the evidence if you look carefully a the blow up picture. It must have been a nightmare of a job, but they persisted and made a fine job of the finished floor. One has to remeber that in the 1850's this was a completely novel and groundbreaking piece of work, particularly in the UK. It is not easy to do today, even with the sophisticated machinery available to us.   If you would like to see other pictures of the damaged room please click here.