A Conversation With the Last Brickmaker

The kiln has been in the same valley for four generations. We spoke beside it, in the heat, while a fresh load cured.

You have made bricks for forty years. What has changed?

Everything and nothing. The clay is the clay. But people used to want a brick that would weather — that would look better wet, darker with age. Now they want one colour, forever. They are afraid of time showing.

And what would you tell a young architect?

Specify a material that is allowed to grow old. A building that cannot age has nowhere to go but downhill. Let it patina. Let the rain write on it.