::Stone Fruit Floors ::: old world charm without the old world hassles

Peach pip floors fill a unique corner in South African architectural history.

South African "volksboukuns" (vernacular architecture) is the unique result of pioneers building in indegenous styles, constractued from locally available materials and following traditional building practice and patterns.

The ready availability of stone fruit pips from the first orchards established by European settlers in the Cape made this durable material an obvious choice to use in flooring.    Various different techniques are told to have been used to install peach pip floors, including:

• Pips set in a daggha or cement-like paste of ox blood and cow dung.
• Pips set in clay and covered with aloe sap (Source:  Michael Baraitser & Anton Obholzer, Cape Country Furniture 2nd revised ed., STRUIK 1978)
• A more modern approach saw pips set in bees wax, with added artificial colouring, and sealed with a blow torch. (Source: Joubert House in Montagu)

Peach pip floors were used as full floors, or to create feet-wiping-areas at entrances or other places which carried a lot of traffic.  It is told that the floor area inlaid with pips expanded every year, as farmers add ed the latest harvest's pips to the mix.

The humble peach pip floor has even been honoured in literature.  Afrikaans poet Ronnie Belcher refers to peach pip floors in his collection My hart sing sewe moppies (Tafelberg, 1996):

          'n Vloer van perskepit

          eers blink aan 'n boom gesit

         gebore om a boord te word

         nou dit

Loosely translated this could be : 

         A floor of peachy pips

         once in a tree did sit 

        'twas born to be an orchard

         now this 

Stone Fruit Floors (Pty) Ltd is proud to celebrate this vernacular heritage in a unique, durable and modern flooring product.

Old world charm without the old world hassle.