Construction History Vol 38, No 2, 2023
Construction History (Vol 38, No 2, 2023) has two particularly instructive papers on brick. The first, an illustrated 14-page paper by Linnéa Rollenhagen Tilly, discusses coated brick as an ersatz for limestone. Tilly compares architectural works in Toulouse and Stockholm as the culmination of over 20 years of Franco-Swedish research in the field of construction history, where parallels between the two cities in the use of coated brick had attracted the author’s attention. Given the infrequently encountered nature of this material, this paper may be of interest to construction historians, researchers and practitioners.
The second paper is a 25-page review of brickwork by Catherine Rangel Cobos, Felix Lasheras Marino and Javier Pinilla-Mellow. It considers running bond and face bond in the construction of solid-faced brickwork walls, using a historical evaluation of English and American technical texts published up to the 1930s. The authors discuss the acceptance of the word ‘bond’ (as the coordinated and concerted arrangement of bricks in each course), such that the overlapping and interlocking arrangement would work as a strong, single structural unit. This is assisted by some very helpful detailed drawings of how the bonds work.
The paper discusses face bond and running bond, the latter addressing bonding courses with square-faced bricks, bonding courses with cut-face bricks, bonding courses paired with face-brick headers and bonding courses with metal ties. From the heritage construction perspective, the article aims to assist in recognising an unfamiliar masonry solution and provides ways to allow for correct identification on site.
This article originally in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 179, published in March 2024. It was written by Bob Kindred MBE.
--Institute of Historic Building Conservation
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