author
Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co.
A late-19th- and early-20th-century brick company turned its trade catalogs into surprisingly vivid design books, filled with fireplace and mantel ideas for homeowners, builders, and decorators. Its sketchbooks offer a glimpse of how everyday building materials were marketed with style, precision, and a strong sense of taste.
1 Audiobook
Sketchbook of the Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co.
by Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co.
About the author
Published as a company rather than by a single named writer, Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co. is credited as the creator of Sketchbook of the Philadelphia & Boston Face Brick Co. Project Gutenberg lists the company as the book's creator and identifies the 1904 edition as the original publication.
The surviving records suggest the company produced a series of illustrated trade catalogs over multiple years. Internet Archive copies show editions from 1895, 1896, 1904, and 1917, all centered on brickwork, fireplaces, and domestic architectural design. These books combined product marketing with practical guidance, giving readers measured designs, prices, and visual examples of ornamental brick mantels.
That makes this “author” a little unusual: not a person with a life story, but a business using print to shape taste in American interiors. Today, the company’s sketchbooks are valued less as sales material than as rich snapshots of design history, showing how manufacturers once presented craftsmanship, color, and home decoration to the public.