The Accidental Charm of Clinker Bricks
Once considered trash, clinkers were one of several early 20th-century bricks whose nonconformity was part of their appeal.
We think of bricks as models of consistency, modular building units about 2 x 4 x 8 and relatively identical in color. By the early 1900s, though, the distorted shapes and intense hues of clinker bricks, the manufacturing accidents that had long been the bane of brick makers, became a boon to creative builders and architects who found visual energy and natural beauty in the bricks’ irregularity.
What Are Clinker Bricks?
Named for the distinctive sound they make when banged together, clinker bricks are the result of wet bricks placed too close to the fire. The intense heat created a hard, durable brick that often twisted into volcanic shapes and textures. Over baking produced rich, warm colors as well that ran the gamut from reds, yellows, and oranges to deep, flash-burned browns, purples, and blacks.
No two clinker bricks were alike, rendering them trash to brick manufacturers who prized uniformity; but they became treasure during the Arts & Crafts era when avant-garde home builders and architects started building houses with them precisely because they were so unusual.
Who made them?
From approximately 1906 to 1940 the Shaffer Brickyard (located where the stadium is today) made and sold them to home builders throughout Western Washington. The Shaffer family also built many homes in Glacier View. Jerry Shaffer and his family live in a clinker house that was built by his great-grandfather on 45th & Hoyt Ave.
Where can you find them?
You can find homes built of them throughout Everett and in Central Park alone I’ve counted eight built by the Shaffer’s.
Scarce Resource
Clinkers are still available through a few salvage companies that reclaim and rescue bricks from demolition sites or discard piles. When demand for clinkers increased John Gavin of Gavin Historical Bricks & Stone began manufacturing them using a painstaking process, which is somewhat ironic given that the originals were created by mistake.
