I’m preparing to paint the brickwork on a Hungarian farmhouse and am findin conflicting colors – it seems bricks are available in Hungary in both the traditional red colors, AND the yellow ones. Which would be cheaper, and therefore the choice of a farmer building his house outside Budapest circa 1880?
I’m leaning toward the yellow, just because red is so commonly seen.
Input, please?
To quote one of my favorite movies (Trading Places): “can’t we have both?”
Steve
I’d go with red, because if that’s “what’s most commonly seen”, then you’re going to have people saying “Well, bricks in Hungary are usually red…”
Right? [;)]
Who says a farmer would have chosen the cheapest? If you were building a house, would you choose the cheapest materials?
[:)]
Cheapest in the sense of “most affordable.” Of course anyone would build his house the best he could afford to … but if yellow bricks were the same strength and had the same durability as red, but were less expensive, and you were on a budget (and needed a LOT of bricks, that would be covered with plaster anyway), wouldn’t you get the less expensive?
I’m using ModelMaster Afrika Braun as the base color. And attempting to make extra bricks for rubble out of spackle rolled flat. This is tedious! Does anyone make 1/48th brick rubble?? I bet they do, but I myself am on a strict budget these days!
Easily cut up with a razor saw.
Despite all the speculation about the farmer’s financial status and architctural prowess, I feel the answer to the question comes down to a simple matter of geography. Does he live in an area where red clays are predominant or yellow clays?
I doubt that bricks and other building materials were transported very far in Europe the 1800’s and it would therefore be logical that most houses in one area would have been built from whatever was available locally, whether it be red bricks, yellow bricks or zebra-striped bricks!
Whilst there was a fledgling railway network in Hungary in the 1800’s, there were no heavy transport vehilces, so I’d assume that carriage of building materials would only have been done for such noble structures such as castles, chateax, cathedrals and administrative buildings.
The structural properties of bricks cannot be determined by colour. It depends upon the chemical composition of the clay used (eg. silica or iron content), so it would be impossible for a farmer to choose the quality of his building materials on that basis. That said, I suppose there may have been a common belief that one colour was “better” than another. Anyone familiar with 19th century geomechanics???
That’s exactly what I was wondering and thinking, Geomodeler. I imagine the local farmer would have bought his bricks locally, which had been made locally of local clays. So what’s most common in the area?