Artistic expression and wood flooring meld at Meadowbank Estate, a winery in Cambridge, Australia, on the island of Tasmania. Meadowbank's proprietors wanted to visually convey to visitors Tasmania's viticultural history, which is the oldest in Australia. Local artist Tom Samek was commissioned to create a timber mosaic on the winery's art gallery floor accompanied by a quirky historical poem written by Samek's friend Graeme Phillips. The installation was named "A Flawed History," an offbeat reference to the work's vibrancy and humor; it was first published in Australia's Timber Floors magazine. "Ideas, sketches and puns were bounced around, discarded, retrieved, tweaked and lubricated," Phillips wrote of the creative process. "Timber and words were chopped, chronicles and dates checked, portraits composed. Simple words were jig-sawed to fit." To install the floor, Samek first made a template of the entire area out of heavy-duty brown paper, onto which he drew the design. This template was cut into manageable pieces and the design then traced onto 5-mm plywood. The plywood was next used as a backing for all the pieces of wood flooring, which were fastened with screws from the plywood's backside. These panels were then secured on top of the existing gallery floor using hidden screws. The floor was pre-painted and pre-stained, and after it was in place it was re-painted and then varnished. Of the artwork's impact on Meadowbank's visitors, Phillips says, "We hope it will floor them."
