Casgliadau Arlein

Wire-cut red brick, uninscribed, with no frog or holes. A process sample from the first kiln chamber at Aberdare brickworks to be fired using oil rather than coal. This brick came from the first layer of bricks inside the wicket and was of excellent quality. However, the centre of the kiln proved to be over-fired and unsaleable – it took a number of firings to adjust fuel supply and firing times during the conversion from coal to oil. The brickworks had produced bricks with a frog inscribed ‘ABC’ (Aberdare Brick Co) but had, around the 1960s, installed a machine for making wire-cut bricks, each pierced by three holes and lacking a frog or inscription. The rods for piercing the holes kept snapping prior to the correct lubrication regime being evolved by the depositor, so this brick is one of a number of years’ output without holes. The texture of upper and lower surfaces of the brick are characteristic of the wire-cut process in which a rectangular mass of clay is endless extruded and cut into brick-size pieces by travelling wires.