Adobe
Description
1) A handmade, sun-dried brick typically made from wet mud and straw. Adobe may also contain Sand, Clay, dung, Grass, chaff, and/or Blood. It is porous, wettable and susceptible to wet-dry cycle degradation. Adobe was used as early as 7000 BCE for houses, buildings and pyramids. It is commonly found as a construction material in arid climates, such as Mesopotamia, Persia, Palestine, India, China and in pre-Columbian Americas. Adobe walls are typically built using mud mortar between the brick layers followed with a mud Stucco finish layer. Adobe provides good heat insulation.
2) A silt or soil containing a high proportion of clay.
Synonyms and Related Terms
mudbrick; unfired brick; unburnt brick, sun-dried brick; sun-baked brick; Adobe (Deut.); adobe (Esp., Fr., Port.);
Resources and Citations
- N.Agnew, J.Druzik, T.Caperton, M.Taylor, "Adobe: The Earliest Composite Material" ICOM Preprints, Sydney 1987, p.439-446.
- J.Clifton, "Adobe Building Materials: Properties, Problems & Preservation" Technology & Conservation, 1/77, p.30-34.
- G.S.Brady, Materials Handbook, McGraw-Hill Book Co., New York, 1971 Comment: p. 118
- Dictionary of Building Preservation, Ward Bucher, ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York City, 1996
- Robert Fournier, Illustrated Dictionary of Practical Pottery, Chilton Book Company, Radnor, PA, 1992
- The Dictionary of Art, Grove's Dictionaries Inc., New York, 1996 Comment: "Bricks"
- Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe (Accessed Mar. 1, 2006)
- Random House, Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, Grammercy Book, New York, 1997
- The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998
- Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000