Abstract
‘Qin brick and Han tile’ has a great worldwide reputation in the architectural history of China. According to the former archaeological materials, the big hollow brick is usually one meter long and thirty to forty centimeters wide, while the solid brick is generally much smaller. But in 1995, large scale vestiges and structures were unearthed at the center of Guangzhou’s old district, from the relic of Nanyue Kingdom Palace, which was built some 2000 years ago during the Western-Han Dynasty. A great number of earthen structural members were discovered, especially the solid glazed bricks in various beautiful patterns with an astonishing thickness and size. Some of them are one meter square, more than 20 centimeters thick, and weight half a ton, which are named ‘Brick No.1 in the world’ by excavators. People have shown great interest in how to make these huge glazed bricks at the ancient technical conditions, because it is very difficult to manufacture such huge bricks even with the modern technology. At the request of Guangdong Nanyue Kingdom Palace Museum, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics carried out systematical measurements and analysis on these bricks and studied the physical and chemical forming mechanisms from their chemical compositions, structure, and physical characteristics. Here the technical characteristics of the bricks are also discussed.
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Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 50432010, 50572117)
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Wu, J., Wu, J., Wang, H. et al. The technical research on the huge glazed brick from the relic of Nanyue Kingdom Palace. Sci. China Ser. E-Technol. Sci. 51, 16–24 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-007-0063-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-007-0063-8