"We could learn from the brick. As small the brick that we created is as indispensable it is in our lives. What a great logic is hidden behind the joints, the shapes and the structure of the bricks! How beautiful can be a simple brick surface - and still it is always dominated by order!"/Mies van der Rohe, 1938./
The Romans were the first to produce brick in the territory of Hungary. The name 'tégla' also originates from the Latin word "tegula" . The Romans built the vertical walls of their buildings of stone, but the roof, the floor tiles and the special building elements like hypocaustum (heating brick), and the elements of the aqueduct were made of burnt clay products.
Brick kilns are found in many places in the vicinity of their major cities and most important roads. The first brick marks were also inherited from the Romans - they stamped the legion number into the still wet product, that is, they draw a circle, a cross or other symbols made up of simple forms. It was a frequent occurrence during the drying of the clay products that house animals ran across them: thus, we also inherited a number of dog and cat footprints from the Roman age on some beautiful pieces.
The Magyars began to burn bricks in the Early Arpad age (about 1,000 years ago). Restoration of our early Gothic temples from the Romanesque age revealed a couple of beautiful stamped bricks in the walls. In the western part of Hungary we have brick kilns from the middle age at Őriszentpéter.
It is a Hungarian peculiarity that the customer or the manufacturer had its initials, the date, or a baron's, earl's or duke's coronet or a combination of these engraved into the bottom of the mould or had the brick stamped by a "brand", or had some adages inscribed on it for improving its appearance or maybe to advertise the product.
Brickmakers of towns and villages stamped the name of the place into their bricks while the ecclesiastic leaders marked their bricks with the initials of Jesus, the symbol of their order or the initials of the abbey.
Stamped bricks found in Hungary are displayed in the collection of the Hungarian Museum of the Building Trade in Veszpr�m. They are catalogued according to their colour, shape, size and marking. Each of these bricks could tell a tale of floods, fires, wars, family happiness and things that happened to the building that accommodated them. This is why this collection is so special and why there are a lot of visitors, especially children. They can still pass the messages from the past of the brick to the future generations.
The museum's collection of 4000 types of stamped bricks continues to expand - the rebuilding of a town and old houses, or on many occasions, the examination of collapsed buildings may prove to be a treasury of findings.
In addition to the collection of stamped bricks and inscribed roofing tiles the Hungarian Museum of Building Trade holds the tools and the old machines of brick making, as well as the written memories of brick factories which can still be found.
The brick is a simple and logical building material. It is a product of hard working people's difficult manual labour.
The brick is a manifest of the everyday art."
Address: Veszprém, Vár u. 29.
Phone: 88/406-767
22.08.2007