The Beauty of Brick

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18545, 3 November 1934, Page 10

The Beauty of Brick

T H E Victorians seem to have had a passion for covering up, says a writer in the London Daily Telegraph. They covered up their social shortcomings with subterfuges, their persons with innumerable layers of underclothes, their polished mahogany with tablecloths, and their perfectly good bricks with stucco. Only to-day, just as we are beginning to substitute concrete slabs for brickwork, are we coming into the realisation of the beauty of bare bricks both for interior and exterior decoration. The brick fireplace lias become a standardised fitment that can be bought over the counter like a yard of cretonne. For the most part it is admirable both in design and proportions; its pntteniings are worked out herring-bone fashion or with alternate groups of the bricks, inserted ends-on, in some .simple, pleasant manner. It lia.s its hearth of bricks, and, in accordance with the prevailing mode, an apology., for a mantel-shelf, just wide enough 10 take the cigarette box. It represents a notable advance on the fireplace of painted iron or of too ,-Vdninesquo enamelled wood. In the adaptation of the Victorian house to modern views, diisl-encour-aging banisters to the staircase are being exchanged for n solid side of brick, left naked and unashamed. Jts color is chosen to aeeord with the general scheme —a warm lerrn-'-otta, a mellow brown with perhaps it purplish tinge, a soft beige, or some subtle shade in between the three. What, more friendly for the entrance hall than a brick floor, as an alternative In the. übiquitous, polishabsorbing. labor-exacting parquet? Spread with a few rugs, it. will demand beyond its daily sweeping merely an occasional rub with a brick from its own consignment, that it may retain its color unimpaired. On a facade of shabby brick, wonders can be wrought by means of a "olor-w'nsli in conjunction with nn emphasising of the cement pointing with lines of cream. The fan-shaped groups of bricks above windows and doors, if treated in contrast, in black and cream, will help in the development, of a distinguished exterior out of erstwhile insignificance.