'Machine made' bricks are being sold as 'Handmade' bricks

There are so called 'handmade' bricks in the building market which are not 'handmade'. A handmade brick is made by a handmoulder chucking a clot of clay into a mould thus forming the brick. Each brick is therefore unique and very different to the next one as they have rough and smooth bits as well as folds and bends that make a handmade brick so distinctive and quite franky expensive. See the York Handmade Brick web site for pictures. The use of genuine handmade bricks can make any boring, mundane design of a building look good and welcoming and stylish. A machine made handmade brick however does not, they are flat, boring in texture and would give a handmade brick a bad name if allowed to get away with it. One brick importer All About Bricks is doing just this, their cheap Dutch machine made bricks are being labelled on their web site and in their merchants, such as Travis Perkins, as handmade. Despite their Managing Director Alan Young admitting to Tim Bristow of Brick Directory they are not 'handmade' but actually 'machine made' they seem to have made no effort to re label the bricks as 'simulated handmade' or similar. The Brick Development Association CEO Simon Hay takes a very dim view and would like to broadcast the message to all importers, factors and merchants that if their brick is not handmade ie actually made by hand, it should not be labelled as such.