What is a papensteen brick?
A papensteen is a regularly shaped, strong brick measuring roughly 18 × 8.5 × 4.5 cm, produced both red and grey-flashed, and used by preference for facades. The brick is best known from the Belgian and southern Netherlandish brickmaking tradition.
Name and origin
The name refers to the clergy — paap meaning priest: Cistercian monks began clay extraction and brick production at their abbeys in present-day Belgium in the thirteenth century. Monasteries were the driving force behind the reintroduction of brick in the Low Countries in that period — the same background that gave the “monastery brick” (kloostermop) its name.
The blue-grey variety is the best known. That colour comes from flashing or smoking: at the end of the firing, the oxygen supply to the kiln is shut off, so the iron in the clay is reduced rather than oxidised. The result is a grey to blue-black surface, often with variation from brick to brick.
Properties and use
- Format: about 18 × 8.5 × 4.5 cm — smaller than a monastery brick, larger and thicker than a modern standard brick.
- Strength: hard fired and denser than soft handmade bricks, so it weathers well.
- Colour: red or grey flashed.
- Use: facing and decorative brickwork. The regular size allows a tight bond with thin joints.
- Manufacture: both handmade and press-moulded.
Points for restoration
- Match on size, not just colour. A different brick size disturbs the gauge of the existing brickwork and is visible from a distance; a slight colour difference will weather in.
- Match the mortar to the brick. With a hard, dense brick a cement mortar may be acceptable, but in historic work a lime-based mortar is almost always the safer choice: it is softer than the brick, so damage occurs in the joint rather than in the masonry.
- Reclaimed bricks are worth seeking out. Flashed bricks are hard to reproduce exactly; salvaged bricks from the same region often give a better result than new production.
- Clean cautiously. The flashed surface is a thin skin; aggressive blasting removes it and leaves the brick porous and prone to soiling.
Related terms
- Brick
- Brick formats
- Facing brick
- Monastery brick
- Masonry
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