The Art of Brass Rubbing

My sister emailed me a list of some things to do in London before we left for our trip. When I took a look at it, I stopped midway through when I read "Brass Rubbing." Brass Rubbing? What the heck was Brass Rubbing? A flash of possibilities went through my mind and I giggled at them all. I finally googled it to end the debates going on in my head.

So what is Brass Rubbing? It's a form of replication of brass portraits in the Medieval times and were usually placed in burial vaults; some of the brass also depict church events. The brass was mounted on granite or marble (tombs). Paper is then stretched over the brass and rubbing on it vigorously using wax cake that feels and looks like crayon. It was an interesting simple art that we all wanted to try so we headed to St Martin-in-the-Fields.


There are no classes offered but was simply a drop in. We just walked in and went through their little hallway full of brass mounted on granite chunks on both sides of the wall. The price range was based on the how big the brass was (from 4.50 GBP). You would find small ones about 5" in width to large ones as long as a table and prompted on the walls. It took us a while to choose what we wanted but we eventually chose our brass. We then chose the paper - either black or white. Seeing some of the examples on the walls, I chose white as it would especially work for the detailed brass that I have chosen. Michelle also did the same while Jenn decided to do it on black.

The first thing that needs to be done was to tape the paper onto the brass. After, the guy helping us used a piece of cloth to rub the paper on the brass so that we can see a bit of the impression and know what we are working on. As he demonstrated to us, the one thing we found out was that when you do brass rubbing on black paper, it gives some room to erase any errors you may have by putting a price of cardboard between that brass and the paper and using an eraser to erase. On the white paper, you pretty much have to live with any mistakes you've made or try to cover them up the best way you can. He provided us with pieces of cardboard to use to pull the paper while rubbing and chose our wax cakes. There were blue, gold, bronze, silver, red, and black waxing cakes to choose from. Then we went at it.

We were taught to use the straight end of the cake to do some light rubbing and then using the tip and rubbing it hard in one direction to bring out the brass artwork onto the paper. Who knew we would be sweating while doing brass rubbing?! Time flew by fast and I admit that it was quite zenful. It was neat to see the results as you work along. Overall, we were all pretty proud of what we did and enjoyed it very much.


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