Some of Ian Sherman's collection of refractory bricks from Newcastle industries.
The brick collector
It all started in 1971 when Ian Sherman bought a house that had a lot of concrete all around it. Ian hated concrete. So he hit on the idea of gradually replacing the despised concrete with bricks, and as he rode around on his motorbike he'd pick them up in ones and twos from demolition sites. Already a bottle collector, Ian was predisposed to find something collectible about bricks and sure enough, when he noticed that many of them sported imprinted designs of various kinds his marvellous obsession began. Ian now has 6000 bricks in his…