Page 69 - buvkeramika

69
ribs, the central part of winding staircases, cornices and friezes, clustered pillars, columns, semi-columns,
responds, and corbels.
The surface of ancient bricks seems smooth only for the first moment. Sometimes traces of a
wooden object can be seen resulting from smoothing out or levelling the clay mass with a board.
Occasionally, the master has left a fingerprint or light scratches on the brick surface. These are accidental
impressions testifying to handwork. Much more seldom are cases when parallel, shallow lines have
been intentionally made on the side surface of bricks – a hatching that imitates the surface of chiselled
stone. Such bricks have been laid in the arch over the entrance door of a 13th century building in Lübeck
(Holst 1999, 220).
Bricks intended for masonry of walls usually are not glazed, since glazing and repeated burning of
each baked item prolong and raise the cost of the production process. However, sometimes glazed bricks
or specially shaped bricks were made in small numbers, for decorative purposes. Most often only one or
two brick edges were covered with glaze – those which are seen in portal frames or in the wall frieze. In
Latvian medieval castles, including Turaida, no glazed bricks were found, but a few of them were applied
in some churches of Riga. In the vertical arches of the Dom Cathedral’s Gothic window of the northern
façade and in the window edgings of Riga St. Peter’s Church black glazed and non-glazed bricks are
interchanged (Zirnis 1984, 45). In the Western Tower of Cēsis Castle, in the 16th century Master’s room,
brown glazed specially shaped bricks were applied (Löwis of Menar 1890, 62).
Alongside red-brick building ceramics, also dark-burnt bricks were encountered in the Middle Ages.
These were created when bricks were situated in an especially hot place in the oven, with minimum oxygen
access, and their surface started to clump. Initially such bricks were considered as waste pieces and the
dark end was laid inside the masonry wall but later this was used as an effect to enliven the monotony of
the brick wall. In German countries dark bricks appeared in the early 13th century, to produce an effect
catching the eye in brick buildings. Variously-tinted red bricks and single laid dark headers or stretchers
were used for the wall of the ante-hall in Dom Church of Ratzeburg, built around 1210–1220, as well as
for apses in several other German and Danish churches and monasteries (Holst 2008, 175, 176). Later in
Prussia building masters of the castles of the Teutonic Order started to make ornaments using such over-
burnt bricks. One of the first examples is found in Marienburg (now Malbork, Poland) – in the northern
façade of the castle dated after 1280 dark bricks are distributed all over the wall creating a decorative
dotty ornament when looking from a distance (Torbus 1998, 325, 530).
In the façade of the Gniew Castle, Poland (previous Teutonic Order castle Mewe), built in late
13th century, there are diamond-shaped, zigzag and V-type ornaments made of dark bricks that have been
laid in slanting lines, but in Teutonic Order castle Rehden (now Radzýn Chelmiński, Poland) almost all
external walls and towers are covered with large panes made of black bricks, which creates an impressive
contrast of the red background and the regular black ornament (Torbus 1998, 325, Abb. 116, 224).
Possibly, this grid of dark bricks was supposed to resemble iron bars, thus bringing about the conception
of particular strength of the castle walls (Holst 2008, 188). Simple graphic ornaments of dark bricks,
mostly diamond-shaped, decorate also the façades of other castles of the Teutonic Order, and part of the
rural and urban churches of Prussia (Herrmann 2007, 100, 101). Bands of differing colours made of dark
or glazed bricks laid in the façade of a building highlighted the architectonic division, or augmented the
Ieva Ose. Building ceramics of Turaida Castle in the 13th–17th centuries