It took a long time to make bricks. First, the clay was piled up in piles and frozen. Then it was treated by adding sand or gravel, and then mixed and kneaded like a dough. After these stages, it was possible to start shaping bricks, which was done by the brickmaker. On the so-called he was placing a rectangular form on the attic counter sprinkled with sand, into which he manually imposed clay. He pulled off the excess clay by hand or with a lath – hence the name loft. About 500-800 bricks could be made per day, and one cube of clay per brick weighed about 6-8 kg. The clay mass was soft – this is evidenced by the imprints we encountered on the surface of the bricks. Often you can find prints of hands, fingers and even children’s feet, but also traces of dogs and cats’ paws.
Once the brick was formed, the lumberjack’s assistant carried it under the roof to dry, which took four to six weeks. After drying, there was a firing process. At a time, it was possible to burn from a dozen to tens of thousands of bricks, and their firing took about 14 days. To decorate the facade, bricks of different degrees of burnout were used: butts, poorly burned, cherry, strongly burned, intensely red, mounds – sooty during firing and overburnt to the glass transition limit, shiny and dark, and also more durable. Colored friezes were often made of bricks covered with glaze, and geometric patterns and compositions on external facades were made of zendrówka (overburnt) bricks. The so-called stone fitting – specially profiled bricks were most often cut and pressed from a template.