Hand Crafted Bricks, yesteryear & today.
- YESTERYEAR: Dating back many centuries, the art form and then brick maker become an essential part of any town or city developing into a major city to be reckoned with as well to be sen in or live in!
Originally made from straw and clay and mixed with water and then placed in handcrafted ( made out of four blocks of wood ) brick mold and laid out in the sun to dry, sometimes for days on end depending on the river clay and also the temperature of the area.
The Egyptians quickly became very famous and important for their efforts because of their temperament weather and exported a lot to Rome for the building of homes and local cheap dwellings, as the more expensive and richer dwellings like palaces and religious places were usually maybe of marble.
But even these were crafted using hand tools and took many, many slaves to complete just one structure.
The more these handcrafted bricks became famous the bigger the industry got until finally the industrial revolution arrived and took over the industry leaving these poor slave laborers without work and an increase in production because of the revolution and its production increase. So that was the end of that era, or so we thought!
- TODAY:
- 1 – RURAL AREAS: in certain rural areas like in Thailand they still make clay bricks by hand and build small dwellings in the forests and some bushmen in the desert areas in Africa still practice this form of art but as a necessity not as an art form or for luxury.
- 2 – ART AND DECOR: today’s modern world has created a new nuance of “the in thing”. Having a new and modern home with all the modern technologies but with certain parts made the century-aged ways or new styles of doing those ways (like glass bricks)
Glass bricks are made by hand for specific customers in special ways in different shapes and size to suit certain tastes and is now known as ” avant-garde of modern creations ”
Most of these new artists and creators do not even know the origins of the art form but do their own thing and unlike the original century-old ways and techniques, they get paid millions for their creations whereas before it was just to survive and work on barter systems
