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Dutch brick is a type of brick made in the Netherlands, or similar brick, and an architectural style of building with brick developed by the Dutch. The brick, made from clay dug from river banks or dredged from river beds and fired over a long period of time, was known for its durability and appearance. Traditional Dutch brick architecture is characterized by rounded or stepped gables. The brick was imported as ballast into Great Britain and the colonies in the east of America. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, founded in 1591, was originally built of red Dutch brick. Dutch brickmakers emigrated to New Netherland in America, where they built kilns for firing bricks locally. Bricks were being burned in New Amsterdam (New York) by 1628, but the imported bricks were of better quality. At first the bricks were used only for chimneys, but they were later used to face the lower story of the house, and then the entire house. Most of the surviving "Dutch Colonial" houses in New York do not in fact follow Dutch architectural practices, but there are several examples in Albany County which do. Bricks were also exported by the Dutch for major buildings in their colonies in the east and around the world. The Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town, South Africa, was built in 1666, and its entrance was made of the small yellow bricks called ''ijselstene'' (IJssel stones). Christ Church in Malacca, Malaysia, the oldest Dutch Church building outside the Netherlands, was made of Dutch bricks that had been brought as ballast in ships from the Netherlands, coated with Chinese plaster. ==Background and manufacture== The word "brick" may be of Dutch origin. A 1901 dictionary of architecture defines "brick" as "a regularly shaped piece of clay hardened in the sun or by the heat of a kiln and intended for building; commonly one of very many pieces of uniform size." The "Dutch Brick" is described as "a hard, light-coloured brick originally made in Holland () and used in England for pavements; hence a similar brick made in England". Until well into the twentieth century the manufacture of brick in the Netherlands (and elsewhere) used manual labor mostly, and the low-paid workers involved in the industry were as marginal socially as the manufacturing industry geographically—the raw materials were gathered on river banks, and the firing of the bricks took place well away from towns and farms to lessen any nuisance caused by fire and smoke. Workers, as was noted in municipal reports, often already belonged to the lower levels of society and were frequently simply let go at the end of the season, adding to the municipal burdens: "As the number of brick kilns increases, so does poverty", according to the 1873 report of the Ubbergen municipality, near Nijmegen, on the Waal river. The clay for the bricks was dug from river banks (of the Waal, Rhine, and IJssel rivers) and other open-air locations, and was left outside (in a mound called the ''kleibult'') through the winter so that any organic material could decay; the weather (rain, frost, drought) helped make the clay more manageable. At the end of this period the clay was mixed with sand and other materials, a process done by foot, by workers stomping on the clay. It was then molded into the proper shape by an artisan, the ''tichelaar'' ("brickmaker"). Children handed the brickmaker the raw material and removed the shaped bricks. Child labor was common in the industry: until well into the nineteenth century children eight years old and younger worked 16 hours per day, and children four years old stacked and carried bricks for hours at a stretch. Molds were moistened with water and strewn with sand to enable the shaped brick to be more easily removed. The "raw" or "green" stones were laid out in long rows to dry and when they were dry enough they were stood up on their side so the bottom could dry; this work was often done by women and children. Often it was the women who did the much heavier labor of moving the dried bricks to the ovens, hauling wheelbarrows with loads of up to 80 kilograms, and stacking and preparing the ovens and tending to the fire (which burned peat or coal). Ovens came in two types—a single-use construction of the kind used in the production of charcoal, and a more permanent type, basically consisting of two walls one meter and a half thick. Ovens could hold up to a million bricks. Masonry bricks were fired between and , klinkers between and C. Typically, bricks were baked at low heat for two weeks to remove all remaining moisture from the clay, and then for four weeks at a higher temperature, followed by two weeks of cooling down. Since the klinker was partially vitrified by being fired at a higher temperature it was harder than the standard. Klinkers were imported into England for use as paving. Small, yellow Dutch bricks used to be imported into the United States, and as of 1840 there were still old buildings in New York faced in these bricks. They were considered superior in appearance and in durability. An 1888 report noted that "in New York and other Atlantic cities we find houses built of brick brought from Holland () fully two hundred years ago, without a flaw or sign of decay, and apparently as firm and sound as when first laid in the wall." 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Dutch brick」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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