Show Brick makers use ancient methods production of today varies little from practice of chaldea new york the brick found la the homes of our best people in america Is the handmade descendant of the bricks that were made in the days when the five nations still held un disputed sovereignty over the upper reaches of the hudson and when a few dutch burgomasters burg placidly smoking their long stemmed pipes on the waterfront of new amsterdam were all that represented the new or der of things coming in from old eu rope the new order arrived and brought with it conquest colonization and later the industrial revolution machinery supplanted hands and elec supplanted steam but the aels of the world of brick Is still the water struck handmade of the ancients brick and the making of bricks has a history almost coeval with that of civilization in nezzar built babylon of brick cen aurles before that remote day the egyptians were shaping the mud of the nile into handmade brick re bently brick veneered vene ered buildings were unearthed in central chaldea that were erected about two hundred years before the dawn of christianity thousands of chinese coolies were laboring on the wall around china twelve hundred and fifty miles long it Is still one of the outstanding examples of the historical use of brick from new york to chaldea it Is a far cry from the days when english was not understood on the streets of new york to the present when it Is more often misunderstood but it Is an almost infinitely further cry to the days of chaldea when the flat lands of holland gave refuge to a few families of stone nordica and europe was a savage wilderness trembling on the verge of the bronze age but since that day when the ere muscular pus cular light of civilization was flam ing feebly on the southern horizon of europe to this sophisticated day when american and european civilization has superseded the artistic greatness of the vanished races the lineage of handmade brick has come down through the ages unpolluted for the handmade brick of 1920 A D 1 the same as the handmade brick of chaldea china and cairo brick making by machinery has been elevated to a science but brick making by hand Is even more than that foat still retains its heritage of art a heritage upon which all science are founded there have been some advances made in the preparation of the material and the baking of the raw brick but fundamentally the of today does did his forerunner of years ago use surface clay surface clay Is used this Is first plowed then harrowed and broken into small bits to make easier its working for in order to obtain the desired results the mud at molding time must be soft and pliable the molds before being filled are dipped into water this allows the molded brick to slip out easily and prevents sticking molds treated in this manner are called water struck from which the name water struck brick 1 derived molds ordinarily have a capacity for six bricks the molds are then carried to the sanded drying yard a level space where the bricks are turned out of the molds and left to dry in the sun shine the final drying takes place in the hacking shed where they are oiled after the hacking shed comes th drying kiln where the brick Is baking the bricca Is slow and work and it Is a work that skill almost amounting to intuition the men who do this are few and la great demand in the old dagg it o 0 an art that was handed down aroa father to son and it Is only throng ti vast patience and unswerving appicci alon that a kiln man becomes a good baker the firing Is done slowly and UK heat Is gradually increased until i temperature of 2000 degrees b reached this temperature must o 0 uniform for from ten to fourteen baji this method of making and burn lii brick differs very little from the ani tice of the early pilgrims in their first brickyard it varies but little more from the manner in which th first chaldean made brick |