We are working with a collection of bricks from a late eighteenth
century structure, and we have come up with a very interesting brick.
Most of the bricks in the structure are smooth, without any glaze, a
uniform orange color, but hard. They clearly were fired or selected
to avoid any glazing or other fire marking. One brick, however, was a
shocker. It is fully glazed on both large surfaces. The glaze
extends, from both faces, back about three-quarters of an inch onto
the sides. As a result, both sides are glazed, with an unglazed strip
about a half inch wide down the middle.

Typically the bricks facing a fire channel will be glazed on the
surfaces that faced the fire. Here we have such glazing on two sides,
clearly from different firings.

Were there "sacrificial" bricks that were used to line the fire
channels in face brick manufacture?


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Ned Heite and Baby the Land Rover
[log in to unmask]
Heite Consulting, archaeologists and historians

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