Matchboard by definition is "a board with a groove cut along one edge and a tongue along the other so as to fit snugly with the edges of similarly cut boards."
Matchboarding can be used both internally and externally, and can be layered in many different styles including: square edge, feather edge,
ship lap and
tongue and groove.
Matchboard was most popular in the late
Victorian period
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian ...
, when woodworking machinery had developed that could cut the edge joints quickly and cheaply. In the 1930s, further developments in glues and veneer-cutting machinery made
plywood
Plywood is a material manufactured from thin layers or "plies" of wood veneer that are glued together with adjacent layers having their wood grain rotated up to 90 degrees to one another. It is an engineered wood from the family of manufactured ...
affordable. This also gave a cleanly smooth-surfaced
Modernist look that suited the taste for new styles. Matchboard then became much less popular. In the 1970s there was a resurgence of interest in the style as a
retro feature, but this was usually provided, for cost reasons, as a faux matchboard effect pressed into the surface of a plywood board.
References
Wood products
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