Brass rubbing was originally a British mania for reproducing brasses -- commemorative embossed brass reliefs found in church memorials from the 14th and 15th centuries -- onto paper. The concept of recording textures of things is more generally called making a rubbing. What distinguishes rubbings from frottage is that rubbings are meant to reproduce the form of something being transferred, whereas frottage just desires to use rubbing to grab a random texture.

Brass rubbings are created by laying a sheet of paper on top of a brass and rubbing the paper with graphite, wax, or chalk.

References

• Monumental Brasses as Art and History ed. Jerome Bertram, published by Alan Sutton.

External links

• Monumental Brass Society
• History.uk.com's guide to brass rubbing

There are approximately 8,000 monumental brasses in churches around the UK. It is easy to make your own lasting copies of these wonderful memorials and this comprehensive guide shows you how to do it.

Artistic techniques

Brass rubbing