Excerpt from Architect and Engineer, Vol. 145: April, 1941

Making good profits. Of course, a ways comes first; but next to that there is probab y nothing a venerable business house enioys more than inscribing on its stationery and in its advertising. Established or founded so ano-so. Naming a year which antedates the working days of the present oldest employee. In Europe these complacent retrospects sometimes reach back into the eighteenth century. California is less indulgent to historical pride: our oldest concerns could hardly claim to have been founded before the third quarter of the nineteenth century. But if you consider a generalized industrial activity rather than a specific business entity. Our brick and tile manufacturers might boast that they still prosecute an enterprise which was founded many thousands of years b.c. In fact. It is far and away the oldest line of fabricated building material on the market.

Mankind has habitually used for building what came most readily to hand. Forested regions prompted timber architectures: regions with available stone developed stone architec tures: and these materials required only dressing and forming for use. In those regions where nothing came to hand in its natural state. There was always the earth itself; but it necessitated some sort of fabrication. The remotest times of which evidence exists utilized the earth in three fabricated forms - and the order is doubtless that of actual chrono ogical development - (i) sun-dried bricks; (2) burned bricks and tiles: (3) burned bricks and tiles with surface glazes Advancing down the road toward historic times. We encounter another form of burned earth. Namely. (4) modeled terra cotta. Both unglazed and glazed. Then the material was fashioned into overlapping units for (5) roofing tiles. These same five forms persist to the present day but with a difference. From prehistoric times down to the last quarter century they went their steady but uneventful way: in one time and place more skilled craftsmanship would emerge in another greater artistic insight; but in principe they remained substantially unchanged. For a time it even looked as if the oldest building material was to be passed unnoticed by the unprecedented expansion of technical resources which began to transform building along the latter part of the nineteenth century. But here also mechanica ingenuity began to intro duce new mechanical processes. And in less than a quarter century the clay products industry has made technical advances which, predicted even in our own youth. Would have been dismissed as fantastic.

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