Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 5, 1994                   TAG: 9410050104
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG                                LENGTH: Short

WHITE HOUSE MEMORIAL TO USE VA.-MADE BRICKS

Rex Scouten, White House curator, said the bricks were chosen because they match pathways of Colonial Williamsburg bricks laid down at the White House in 1964.

``Rather than get too many varieties, we'd prefer to maintain a relationship with Colonial Williamsburg,'' Scouten said. ``We're very pleased to use the brick from Colonial Williamsburg. I think they'll survive for many, many years.''

Neither the White House nor Colonial Williamsburg would say how much the bricks cost.

Artisans using 18th-century techniques made thousands of bricks in the 1930s and 1940s for the restoration of the Colonial village, but those efforts dwindled in the 1960s.

Bill Weldon, Colonial Williamsburg manager of historic building trades, revived the craft in 1988 after spending a year interviewing geologists and ceramic engineers and sifting through 18th-century documents.

Now Weldon and his crew spend each summer mixing clay in a pit with their bare feet and forming bricks. Each fall they fire those bricks in 2,000-degree heat at a kiln in the re-created village.