Мanufacturing building bricks and art hardly ever meet. But as you pass under the red clay arches leading to an assemblage of strange red and black creatures, deformed men and children, and labyrinths of bricks and broken moulds, you will find your disbelief suspended.

The premises are inconspicuous. You are in Cherven Bryag, a quiet industrial town of about 10,000 still reeling from the closure of its old industries, including a tank parts factory and the railway to Oryahovo on the Danube.

One of the industries that gave the town its name – Cherven Bryag translates as Red River Bank – is still here. For millennia, locals dug the thick red clay from the banks of the Zlatna Panega river to make bricks and pottery. The brick factory established under Communism is now a bustling private venture.

The old factory was modernised in the mid-2000s; a short newspaper article from 2006 elaborates on how the new production facility would increase production three-fold. It mentioned another significant change, although without elaborating: about 75 percent of workers would be laid off when the modernisation was over.

These circumstances are hardly unique in post-Communist Bulgaria. The story of privatised old factories whose new owners were unable or unwilling to manage them properly and closed them, laying off people en masse, was common in Bulgaria of the late 1990s and the 2000s.

The owner of Terra-2000 did something different. His factory keeps on turning clay into bricks, surviving the competitive market of local and imported building materials for the ever-growing construction business. And there is the open air gallery dedicated to ceramic sculpture.

The gallery was created right in the factory's garden in partnership with two local sculptors who work with clay. Yes, the factory does have its own park – a relic of Communism, when industrial facilities routinely kept a green recreation space where workers could take a cigarette break.

In 2006, a chapel was built in the garden too. In keeping with the art gallery around it, it boasts the only ceramic altar in Bulgaria.

As time went by, the sculptures multiplied, created during dedicated symposia for sculptors from Bulgaria and abroad. One of Bulgaria's best-known sculptors, Krum Damyanov, made a significant part of the artworks, including the three arches. A small museum dedicated to ancient pottery rounds off the experience.

Vagabond was one of the first publications to feature Cherven Bryag's unexpected art gallery, back in 2009. We learned about it from Geoffrey Keating, Ireland's first ambassador to Bulgaria. A man who travelled the length and breadth of the country and knew it better than many Bulgarians, before he departed for another posting abroad he wrote for Vagabond an article about his top 5 places in Bulgaria. Cherven Bryag was one of them.

Today the art gallery is bigger, richer and even more interesting than it was when we first visited, and on each return since. That alone makes it worth the trip – it has grown from one man's idea of turning clay into something else than profit into a vibrant organism that keeps on evolving. Everyone is welcome and admission is free.