Brick

...the kilnmaster had to make sure that the temperature inside the kiln stayed at a level that caused the clay to shimmer with the colour of molten gold or silver. He also had to know when to quench the kiln with water so as to produce the surface glaze. To anonymous labourers fell the less skilled stages of brick production: mixing clay and water, driving oxen over the mixture to trample it into a thick paste, scooping the paste into standardised wooden frames (to produce a brick roughly 42 cm long, 20 cm wide, and 10 cm thick), smoothing the surfaces with a wire-strung bow, removing them from the frames, printing the fronts and backs with stamps that indicated where the bricks came from and who made them, loading the kilns with fuel (likelier wood than coal), stacking the bricks in the kiln, removing them to cool while the kilns were still hot, and bundling them into pallets for transportation. It was hot, filthy work.Ishtar Gate of Babylon in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin, GermanyRoman opus reticulatum on Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, Italy (2nd century)Frauenkirche, Munich, Germany, erected 1468–1488, looking up at the towersEastern gable of church of St. James in Toruń (14th century)Decorative pattern made of strongly fired bricks in Radzyń Castle (14th century)Mudéjar brick church tower in Teruel, Spain, (14th century)Brick sculpting on Thornbury Castle, Thornbury, near Bristol, England. The chimneys were erected in 1514A typical brick house in the Netherlands.A typical Dutch farmhouse near Wageningen, NetherlandsDecorative bricks in St Michael and All Angels Church, Blantyre, MalawiVirgilio Barco Public Library, Bogotá, ColombiaFES Building, Cali, ColombiaA brick kiln, Tamil Nadu, IndiaBrick sidewalk paving in Portland, OregonBrick sidewalk in Cambridge, MassachusettsPorotherm style clay block brickMoulding bricks, PolandBrick made as a byproduct of ironstone mining Normanby – UKFired, clay bricks in Hainan, China