Fired Brick

Fired brick is a manufactured masonry unit made by shaping clay and firing it in a kiln at high temperature, distinct from unfired sun-dried adobe in the strength and weather resistance the firing process confers. Firing dates to at least the third millennium BCE in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, and fired brick became a dominant building material across regions lacking easily quarried stone, from Roman construction through the great brick cathedrals and civic buildings of northern Europe. Its color, most often red to brown from iron content in the clay, and its texture vary with the clay source and firing temperature, and its modular size allows rapid, standardized construction of both load-bearing walls and, since the twentieth century, non-structural veneer.