Exhibitions: English Brass Rubbings, Assembled From the Collection of Herman Williams by Rockefeller Internes

December 6, 1935: An exhibition of monumental English brass rubbings has been assembled from t collection of Mr. Herman Warner Williams, Jr. and has been placed on exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, exhibition to run through January 28. The installation and cataloguing of this collection is entirely the work of the Interns, who came to the Museum the first of October when the system of internship was initiated. The interns are Howard Henry Alger, A. D. MacDonald, Donald A. Shelley, John Davis Skilton, Jr., Arthur J. Tobler and Hermann Warner Williams, Jr.

Monumental brasses as tomb decorations were made throughout Europe from the XIIIth Century until nearly the end of the XVIIth century. While those made on the continent have been largely destroyed because of religious and political wars, English brasses have suffered but slightly in contrast. The monuments from which the rubbings now on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum were taken are distributed through six counties of England: Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Kent, Lancashire, Oxfordshire and Middlesex. In making monumental brasses, the effigy wins cut in silhouette, engraved, and the part gouged out filled with black and colored substances. It was then inlayed in the slab of stone which had been prepared by being hollowed out to contain the brass. This was laid in pitch wind secured by rivets. The brasses exhibit great skill of draughtsmanship as well as mastery of line and shading. They are of practical value to students as they indicate a knowledge of the essentials of the art of engraving on metal plates as early as the XIIIth Century.

Rubbings from the examples of brasses left to us today offer a concrete means by which a study of these important documents can be made. They provide valuable material for the history of costume: Ecclesiastical, academic, civil, and military. The strong black and white designs which result from this process are extremely decorative.

The materials used in rubbing brasses which usually lie horizontally on pavements or on altar-tombs, are heelball (a composition of beeswax and lamp-black), and a roll of white wallpaper. Before rubbing, the surface of the brass is carefully cleaned; then the white paper is spread over the brass and weighted at the four corners, for it must not be moved when once in position. The next step is the actual rubbing which is done with equal pressure and with heavy and rapid strokes across the lines incised in the brass. It is the same process as is used in rubbing a coin with a soft pencil.

Though the process of making copies in the form of rubbings of decorations in incised line or low relief has been in use for a long time and many museums possess important materials of this character the current exhibition is thought to be the first American exhibition of English Brass Rubbings.

Brooklyn Museum Archives. Records of the Department of Public Information. Press releases, 1931 - 1936. 10-12_1935, 120-1. View Original 1 . View Original 2