Featured Artifact: Glazed Brick

If you are a complete history geek like me, you may find this featured artifact quite interesting.  Bricks became a common construction material during the Graeme period.  While the archaeology shows that the garden walls were primarily stone and mortar, it is possible that glazed bricks were used as a decorative component.  The walkways in the garden were made of brick, and because three types of brick have been collected from both the 1985 excavation and my current excavation (orange brick, red brick and glazed brick), it may also be that the walkways had patterns that utilized these three brick types.

Since May, I have collected various colors of this glazed brick.  Although I have found little information about this building material, I was able to find this passage from Hugh Morrison's Early American Architecture:

"But the first great building material of Georgian architecture was brick.  Brick manufacture has become common almost everywhere, the quality of hard-burned face brick had improved, and from the kilns came a great variety of colors and glazes, ranging from warm roses and salmon pinks through darker reds to purples and blue-blacks.  The latter were bricks from the arched vault of the kiln itself, where being laid radially the inner ends were burned in successive firings to a glass-like surface and deep color; when a new kiln was built, these were saved and used to enliven surfaces with patterns of glazed headers."

Below are some photos that show the breadth of colors that are at this site:

Dark gray, almost black; silver-gray

Red; mottled reddish-brown

Gray

Silver with white specks; reddish-brown; brown

Because the the Penrose family dismantled the garden walls and re-purposed the materials from the garden and other outbuildings, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly how these bricks were used in the garden.  The larger piece in the third photo was found against the garden wall in Unit 1.  Many of the other pieces were found in densely-packed levels of brick that could be part of the original walkways.  When combining the data from both garden excavations, it is safe to assume that glazed brick did play a prominent role in the construction and aesthetics of Elizabeth's formal garden--to what degree is yet to be seen.

My extensive searches for the use of glazed brick in historic sites has yielded little information.  Please feel free to contact me with any other information or resources you may have.  It would be greatly appreciated!