An Interesting History of Decorative Concrete

When looking a little deeper into the history of stamped concrete, it is worth outlining the history of concrete itself. This material has been known since antiquity.

The first references to concrete date back to 200 BC. Its original use was mainly as a material for permanently bonding stones together. Although its composition differed significantly from what we know today, since it was originally a mixture of sand and small stones with lime mortar, its properties were similar to the material used today.

Once the stage of using concrete solely as an adhesive mortar had passed, larger structures began to be made with it, such as foundations and the first prefabricated building elements. Concrete itself became a substitute for stone.

Today this material is still doing very well. Entire buildings are constructed with it, and it is used wherever it possibly can be.

Perhaps one of the most basic elements made of concrete is flooring, including driveways and sidewalks. Concrete performs excellently in these applications. Its properties, such as longevity, abrasion resistance and a relatively simple execution technique, mean that it is still the most frequently chosen material in construction.

Something as commonly used as concrete, and with such a long history, made people grow accustomed to the material and, broadly speaking, it became ordinary.Here we move in time and space to the United States, to the end of the 19th century. It was then that the first documented attempts began to give concrete products a different character and a breath of freshness. Pigments and acids were tested, added directly to the mix to create new and interesting effects and to demystify the familiar gray concrete. In fact, the turn of the century, from 1890 to 1920, produced the greatest number of more and less successful attempts to find new ways of working with this material.

Everyone who tried to promote their own method of texturing or coloring concrete realized that the stakes were high. Material producers, tool manufacturers and contracting companies all played a part in the development of this increasingly popular sector.

New opportunities opened up, and almost everyone in the market wanted their piece of the pie. As history later proved, the value of the stamped concrete market in the United States alone had grown to USD 9.4 billion by 2018.

As the history of this branch of construction was being built, many innovators introduced new solutions. Some achieved spectacular success, while others have already been forgotten. It is certainly worth writing about four of them, because they helped popularize the technique of making textured concrete and made working with concrete itself easier. This led to the spread of the method and an increase in the number of subcontractors. And that set in motion a machine that still runs today, at ever increasing speed.

An early version of a form for imprinting paving-stone patterns. A hand tool for texturing a paving-stone pattern in concrete These were not particularly efficient methods by today's standards, but this is how stamped concrete was made in the years 1950-1970. Naturally, his tools evolved and he stopped using wooden elements in favor of steel and then aluminum castings.

Almost every contracting company at the time used his concrete texturing tools. It has to be admitted that some of his tools made an impressive impression. The most interesting form by far was a large cylinder rolled over fresh concrete to give it a paving-stone pattern.

However, the technique of making decorative concrete still needed refinement. The biggest problem installers encountered was giving texture to the concrete surface.

This material tends to stick to every surface. To create, for example, a stone pattern, the most sensible method was to use a form or a real stone to press its texture. The problem was that every time the stamp was removed, it pulled some concrete from the surface as well. This created unattractive pits and damage, which was unacceptable.

Contracting companies eagerly used both texture molds and steel stamps that cut a stone pattern into concrete.This was before the invention of polyurethane molds. Rubber molds did not cut the pattern into the concrete; they only gave it texture. Steel forms, on the other hand, cut only the pattern and did not add texture. Their service life was also short. For this reason, the process of working with concrete was still complicated.