THE search has ended. After six decades, the Hunter Valley's 'brick man' has called it a day.
For Ian Sherman, the region's best-loved collector of bricks, clay pipes, pavers, roof tiles and ornamental terracotta garden edges has retired from the hunt, rather reluctantly.
"What I've collected is known in places all over the world, but I had two bad falls at my old (Edgeworth) house," the 81-year-old said from his Wallsend retirement home.
"In one fall I smashed my face and now my legs are weak. I just wanted to keep going, but I've had to stop active collecting.
"I had a yard full of bricks. I had to stop sometime, I guess.
"My house was sold and I gave away bricks to anyone who wanted them. I just wanted someone to have them.
"Each brick has got a (lost) history. That's why I started collecting."
His vast collection was also the more amazing as most bricks were gathered up one at a time, by trundling around with just a little shopping trolley, or with a wheelbarrow, or using his motorbike.
The largest recipient of Sherman's extraordinary collection has been the recently refurbished Beach Hotel at Merewether. Reopened only last December, it now has a silver plaque on the wall inside honouring his generosity.
The special tribute comprises two main counters prominently featuring many of his unusual bricks in an imaginative nod to the past.
The plaque nearby is dedicated to 'Ian Sherman - The Brickman' and reads:
"The bricks used in our pizza servery and bar have been kindly donated for preservation by historian Ian Sherman.
"Ian's brick collection represents 60 years of painstaking diligence in searching construction sites, brick by brick, for each rare and unique item.
"Each brick you see here represents a memory of the various brickyards that flourished in Merewether and around the Newcastle region over the last 100 years.
"This is only a small sample of the nearly 6000 bricks he has collected over his lifetime.
"We thank Ian for the incredible donation of his life's work and for preserving this important part of Novocastrian history," the plaque says.
The colourful bricks are laid on their sides, facing outward revealing the names of the brickmakers, or distinctive patterns, or the individual 'frog' or brick stamp/manufacturer's mark.
Such shapes can vary from a diamond to a fingerprint, a rising sun, a star, to a crucifix (from a church, naturally), to a kangaroo, a tiny heart, a crescent moon, names, mystery initials and numbers, convict made arrows, to a little baby's foot and horseshoes.
"Oh, these Hunter brickyards were once absolutely everywhere. From Waratah to Thornton. There were seven around Glebe and Burwood (Merewether) alone in the 1870s. Now they're all gone," Sherman said later.
"I think I gave about 3000 bricks to the Beach Hotel.
"I was told that by donating them they would be kept there forever for people to see and appreciate, so I said 'righto'."
Sherman said when people looked at the feature walls they might recognise many local brickmaker names, like Hughes, Gulliver and Bowtell, because their homes might be built out of similar bricks.
"The lady from the Beach Hotel was good to me. But she wanted only Newcastle area bricks for their display," he said.
"Meanwhile, a lady from the National Trust who was doing up an historic Merewether home took 200 bricks.
"Another lady, another Trust member, took 200 to 300 bricks also for the house she's renovating in Hamilton.
"I might really have had 7000 bricks salvaged from old brickyards and demolition sites.
"I couldn't help myself. I also had a brass brick stamp.
"I once paid $100 for something special, my rare Wittsluck brick from Tea Gardens.
"That brickyard was only in business for five years."
Another very rare brick he found was marked 'Ruttley' and came from an old two-storey house above a mine on today's St Pius X school site at Adamstown. That only took him 30 years to track down.
Sherman co-authored five reference books on bricks and said he'd been everywhere in his obsessive search of bricks, including America and England.
"I've also been to Sydney, Melbourne and two trips over to Western Australia," he said.
"I didn't want any bricks from San Francisco in America because I'd got all I wanted here at our Stockton.
"That's where a lot of their 1906 'quake rubble ended up being dumped (by sailing ships after being used as ballast to sail to Newcastle for coal cargoes)."
Sherman said he was also thwarted in London when he tried to buy a special fire brick for $10 in an antique shop.
"But they wouldn't sell it to me because it would leave the country," he said.
"Surprised, I replied, 'I only want one' but it didn't matter.
"Over there, I was also told to go home, stop collecting and not to come back.
"Their attitude was, sort of, we can't spare any bricks for you, so I said, 'Well, just stop building then'.
"I was originally into bottle collecting but then got interested in the history of bricks and their yards.
"My family thought I was mad."
One of the oddest things Sherman discovered was the history behind the criss-cross pattern of old Hughes bricks still found everywhere in Newcastle's old pavements.
"They were designed to be laid outside shopfronts of classy shops," he said.
"But ladies wearing high heel shoes kept being caught in them, so the bricks were tarred over.
"The (Wangi) artist Sir William Dobell designed these bricks, I believe."
Among his other memories today are waiting at night in the rain for hours outside the Delany Hotel for council workmen to get out of a work hole so he could souvenir what he felt was a rare hidden brick down there.
"I also had more early (refractory) brick types than they have in Scotland. Up to 1870, these furnace firebricks were imported to Australia from Scotland," he said.
"BHP Steelworks later then dumped their old, used ones by the riverside where I found them."
Sherman said his late wife had once shared his thrill of new 'unknown brick' finds, but times change.
"It would be a lot of work to keep them all. And I didn't want to have them all broken up."
Sherman said he'd always sought the solid clay bricks from old yards to collect as they wouldn't break, unlike some modern, lighter bricks.
Once a popular guest speaker on the Hunter talk circuit, Sherman has since dipped his toe into the water again at his new home.
"I gave a talk here, but on bottles I once collected as a hobby, and the crowd seemed quite excited about it. I couldn't believe it," he said.
But collecting bricks and associated memorabilia remains his true, if now subdued, passion.
"There's so much fascinating history involved with bricks. I just wanted it to be recorded," Sherman said.
