Hello! i am always happy to learn more about things and honestly I would love to gather some surface level knowledge about Bricks from your lovely blog. Are big brick manufacturers International, is that even feasible? Are the brick enthusiast resources regarding logging and identification helpful in identifying bricks from different countries or are there less documented countries?
Hi :) thanks so much for your enthusiasm!
I mostly know about midwest US brick manufacturers, but I can tell you that some of the biggest manufacturers here sometimes import from Europe! Imported brick, mainly because of the weight, is prohibitively expensive for most projects. Sometimes, though, the impact of a backsplash or accent wall of imported thin brick, for example, is worth the cost.
Glen-Gery has 8 manufacturing plants in the US and their inventory portal includes Plant 9, which is all the international options. Their Feldhaus thin brick is apparently made in Germany and their glass brick are apparently Venetian! Their "San Selmo Corso", super long thin brick, are part of the International line but the mobile site doesn't say where they're from. I know the Piave Raw sample I ordered one time took forever to arrive in the mail, so it may have come from abroad. Their La Paloma line says "Spanish-inspired" so idk, but there's only two options, so that does sound imported.
Belden Brick has their Mora Ceramics line that comes from Illescas, Spain.
Before BrickCraft bought Brampton Brick's USamerican plant in Indiana, Brampton was an international company because they had one plant in the US and one in Canada. They still import a ton (well, thousands of tons) of products to the US (brick, cement products, manufactured stone, and natural stone).
If I could afford to spend a year abroad in a university studying something that doesn't have a guaranteed career (not that I can afford university as is, or afford to go abroad), I would want to move to Iran and study architecture there. Iranian architects are on another level and the things they're doing with brick are genuinely amazing. If I didn't believe that participating in the US military for even a moment is morally indefensible, I'd join up so they would fly me to that part of the world, and I could defect immediately and study bricks.
