John Morgan surrounded by many of the stamped bricks he has collected througout the years. (photo by David Grace)
John Morgan, a retired geography professor from Emory & Henry College, has a rather unusual collection – stamped bricks. At present, he has 7,500 from the 48 contiguous states, Mexico, Canada, England and Scotland.
“About 1996, I found a stamped brick outside an abandoned house in Washington County, Virginia. The imprint on the brick read CHILOWIE BLOCK with the second H of Chilhowie missing. I had never seen a stamped brick before, but I immediately began to try to find out what I could about Chilhowie bricks. Soon thereafter I traveled to the North Carolina Outer Banks and along the way, I found a stamped brick used as a doorstop at an antique shop near Goldsboro, North Carolina. The brick imprint read SOUTHERN CLAY MFG. CO. (inside a diamond shape). The antique dealer told me that some people actually collected stamped bricks. I bought that brick for five dollars, and I suppose I became a brick collector at that point. I soon found out that brick yards were operating in Chilhowie from 1890 to about 1910. Southern Clay Mfg. Co. began operating there in 1902. Over time I collected 30 different marked bricks made in Chilhowie.
“I’m not sure why I started collecting stamped bricks, but it was certainly an outgrowth of activities that I was already pursuing. I was always interested in elements of the landscape such as log houses, traditional barns and outbuildings, fences and lime kilns, and I spent years traveling around in search of those features. I even published some works on them. Stamped bricks are also elements of the landscape, and I became fascinated with them, and when possible, started looking for more and different bricks. My collecting took on a new life in the year 2000, when I drove to a professional conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. An area of the city along the Allegheny River was being redeveloped at that time, and large piles of dirt with many marked bricks within were present. I spent a couple days digging in the dirt and recovering more than 100 stamped bricks. My obsession really grew after that brick coup,” Morgan says.
Most of today’s building bricks have holes in them for a reduction in weight. Very few have manufacturers’ brands imprinted on them.The majority of stamped building bricks come from a time before holes were put in them during their manufacture. Many stamped building bricks did have a recessed feature in them for weight loss. That indentation was called a “frog.” The brand imprint on those bricks was typically in the frog, sometimes with recessed letters and sometimes with raised letters. The size of those bricks is small and similar to those marketed as construction bricks today. Dimensions were typically about seven and a half to eight inches long, three and a half to four inches wide and two and a half inches deep. Some building bricks had the manufacturer’s stamp on the edge or side of the brick.
In addition to building bricks, manufacturers’ brands were imprinted on some fire bricks and paving bricks. Fire bricks were made to withstand heat and were used especially in the ovens and kilns of the iron and steel industry, brick kilns and lime kilns. Fire bricks made in the late 1800s and the first quarter of the 20th century often displayed a manufacturer’s brand imprint. Fire brick dimensions were about nine inches by four inches by two and a half inches.
There were two primary types of paving bricks: street pavers and sidewalk pavers. Street pavers tend to be about nine inches long, four inches tall and four inches deep. They are heavy, usually weighing from 9 to 11 pounds. Street pavers often had raised letters on them, although the majority had recessed or sunken letters. Sidewalk pavers are thinner and often wider than street pavers and weigh a few pounds less also. They usually have an intricate design pattern, such as the bullseye. A bullseye sidewalk paver was produced in large numbers in Chilhowie, and that brick can be seen on the sidewalks of numerous towns and cities of Virginia, including Abingdon, Marion and Lexington.
Morgan’s favorite brick is “one I don’t have. Seriously, I have about 25 co-favorite bricks. If I have to select one or two, I suppose I would pick the first two that I found, that is the CHILOWIE BLOCK and the SOUTHERN CLAY MFG. CO. (in diamond).
“There are dozens of bricks that I would really like to have, but I’ll mention a handful of them here.The EL PASO fire brickis super rare.Only a couple of collectors have it.It was made just outside El Paso, Texas, in Brickland, New Mexico, along the Rio Grande River. Another one that I greatly desire and one that should not be that hard to get is the KINGSPORT building brick. I have the rare KINGSPORT paver, but the building brick has eluded me for years. The YANKEE HILL building brick from Omaha, Nebraska, is another rare brick on almost every collector’s wish list. Lastly, I have on my bucket list a PUNXYTAWNEY BRICK CO building brick from Pennsylvania. Only one collector is known to have that brick, which has ornate trim around the edge of the brick.
“It is difficult to determine the age of many of my bricks, but a couple South Carolina bricks were made during the Civil War. The BATH FIRE BRICK WORKS BATH SC was the imprint on a fire brick made in 1862, when a pottery in Bath shifted to fire brick production to support the cause of the Confederacy. In a similar move, the nearby Southern Porcelain Manufacturing Company in Kaolin, South Carolina, began in 1862 to make fire bricks with the imprint SOUTHN PORCELAIN MANG CO - KAOLIN on the brick. Perhaps nearly as old were the fire bricks of the Aiken Fire and Ornamental Brick Co, located in Aiken, South Carolina. The imprint on those bricks reads A..F.. & O. B. CO. No 1 AIKEN, SC.,” he says. He has bricks which date from the 1880s to 1940.
Morgan is a member of the International Brick Collectors Association which was founded in 1983 by four men who became longtime members of the group. The rules of the association call for members to trade bricks but not sell them.Buying bricks from non-members is permitted, however. There are about 700 members of IBCA, but it is estimated that only a couple hundred members are very active collectors.IBCA sponsors three brick swaps annually (spring, summer and fall) and publishes a journal three times a year.
“I joined IBCA in 2010 and have attended 29 brick swaps since I joined the group. There were no swaps in 2020 because of COVID-19. My wife Sally accompanies me to some of the swaps. They provide us with opportunities to travel to interesting places that we might not have visited otherwise. We are now preparing to travel to the summer swap in Grand Marais, Minnesota, along the west side of Lake Superior and only a half hour from the Canadian border. The fall swap will be a little northwest of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Sally and I hosted swaps in 2014 and in 2019 and will do so again in August 2024. Other swaps in 2024 will be held in Fort Worth, Texas and Minden, Louisiana. One of the benefits of being an IBCA member and participating in brick swaps is meeting new people and developing friendships that we will always treasure.
“A swap is a Friday-Saturday affair, with Friday activities consisting of an afternoon reception at the home of the host(s) (with examination of host’s brick collection) and an evening dinner at a designated place. On early Saturday, collectors gather at the swap site (usually a parking lot) to display bricks and to participate in the swap which begins at 9 a.m. Vehicles are lined up in two rows and bricks are laid out in the rear of each vehicle. When the horn blows, collectors scramble to pick up coveted bricks. Almost all the bricks have been gobbled up in less than a half hour. After the swap, an auction of contributed items, mostly bricks, takes place on behalf of IBCA, which uses the funds to help defray costs of publishing its journal. Attendance at an IBCA swap usually totals between 50 and 100 collectors. Some members travel religiously to almost all the swaps, while just as many tend to frequent swaps that take place in their home areas,” Morgan says.
He displays his bricks on shelves in the basement and under and on a U-shaped porch, as well in old brick molds, on windowsills and on the fireplace hearth. As he ran out of space for displaying the bricks, he resorted to laying most of his Ohio and Pennsylvania pavers on the floor of parts of the basement.
Morgan sums up his hobby by saying, “Brick collecting sure is fun.”
