Chats on Old Copper and Brass

by Fred. W. Burgess

It may be contended that tombs and monuments cannot be collected, but those who visit such places may fill their notebooks with interesting data, and they may carry away with them accurate records and rubbings of the monumental tablets and the brasses on the tombs (for instructions how to take rubbings, see Wrinkles, [p. 393]). Such rubbings of old brasses can be kept in a portfolio or mounted and hung upon walls. They form a record, too, of the engraver's art, which was modified and altered to suit the change which went on in architectural design and to some extent in social and religious customs. The variety of brasses is seen when a good collection of rubbings is classified and arranged according to style, period, or locality. Some districts yield prolific returns. Throughout the counties of Gloucester, Somerset, and Norfolk many may be obtained, the more interesting specimens being secured from tombs dating from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. From such a series armorial representation as it became less real and of smaller importance can be traced. The costumes of the period, too, are very clearly shown, for in such a collection of brasses the value of armour in war is seen to change. In the earlier examples there is the chain mail of the cross-legged knights as seen on the early brasses of the Crusaders, the mediæval armour of the Middle Ages when it had reached its strength, and the brasses of the Stuart days when the ornamental armour of that period had to a large extent lost its utility.

The ecclesiastical brasses on the tombs of bishops and other church dignitaries show the change which took place very gradually in the vestments worn, and indicate the alteration in ecclesiastical ritual in the cathedrals and churches at the time of the Reformation. The dissolution of the monasteries and the sacrilege which took place in the dismantled churches and religious houses caused valuable relics to be sold for old metal, and it was then that many old monuments and tombs lost their brasses. The influence of book knowledge and the change which came about in the style of script after the introduction of the printing-press is seen in the evolution of the lettering on church brasses. Indeed, in some of the older ones the form of the letters is the only indication left of the date of their engraving.

FIG. 22.—THE COPPER-GILT CROSS ON ST. PAUL'S CATHEDRAL.

The engraver's art progressed with the art of the period in which he lived, and in a collection of rubbings may be seen the gradual training of the eye and hand until from meaningless pictures without background or perspective the artist was able to engrave on metal a beautifully realistic picture of the subject he had chosen. As a guide to a few indications of the period to which brasses belong, it may be mentioned that the decorative canopies on monumental brasses belong chiefly to the ornate period of art. The embattled canopies and the change to the decorative Gothic tell of the progress in ecclesiastical architecture until it reached its height between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, later brasses telling of its gradual decadence. Of the variety of subject it would be impossible to refer, for at all ages there have been many who would fit into niches between the extremes of the early fighting men amidst the nobles and knights who fell in battle, and those who apparently lived all their lives in the peaceful rural surroundings of some quiet English village, dying within sight of the old church where they had worshipped, and where they were eventually buried.

"When some proud son of man returns to earth,

Unknown to glory, but upheld by birth,