Spread of the Craft in Antiquity
From the Euphrates, brickcraft spread eastward to Persia, India, and China, and westward to Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Romans, who were the great builders of ancient times, made very extensive use of brick in their immense building operations, wherever good clay could be found. From the numerous monuments of Roman brickwork that still remain, the brick are seen to be of an excellent hard-burned quality, and generally of a large, flat, thin rectangular or triangular form.
Brickwork in the Middle Ages
When the nations of Europe took form out of the ruins of the Roman Empire, they inherited among other arts that of making brick, and subsequently carried it to a higher state of development, especially in countries such as Northern Italy, Southern France, the Netherlands, and Northern Germany, where the absence of good building stone gave a natural impulse to brickmaking. In the great Gothic epoch of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, brick enjoyed a wide vogue and was freely and effectively used in the best types of building such as city halls, great churches, palaces, and mansions of the wealthy.
Fig. 1. Man returning after carrying the bricks.
Figs. 7, 9, 11, 13. Digging and mixing the clay or mud.
Fig. 16. Fetching water from tank (h).
Figs. 3, 6. Taskmasters.