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Brass Rubbing for Design Inspiration

Ancient Burial Monuments Can Inspire Modern Design

A brief introduction to 500 years of memorial brass design and to brass rubbing as an inspiration for modern design.

When my family lived in Sheffield, England back in 1975, we used to visit a different church nearly every weekend to see the local countryside, sample each village’s fish and chips (YES!) and make brass rubbings.

Alianora de Bohun
Duchess of Gloucester
Westminster Abbey, London
Died 1399

Ensuring the Flow of Prayers

Memorials to the deceased in England and in continental Europe began to be made in brass during the 13th century. The practice blossomed into a real art form over several hundred years, before gradually fading from use sometime in the 18th century. According to the Monumental Brass Society:

The main reason why brasses and incised slabs were laid in the middle ages was to elicit the intercession of the faithful. In Catholic theology it was held that the sufferings of the soul in Purgatory could be eased, and the soul’s passage speeded, by the prayers of the living. Thus a brass or slab served in some sense as an obit: as a way of ensuring the flow of prayers. A passer-by, seeing the figure of the commemorated, would be prompted to say a prayer or two on his or her behalf. Increasingly, the point was reinforced by an appeal for prayers on the inscription, but early on the inscription was of limited value because relatively few could read. Sight of the praying figure was what mattered.

Design Into Art

One of the great brasses from Westminster Abbey in London (both in size and in quality) is shown at left, a life-size figure of Alianora de Bohun, Duchess of Gloucester, who died in 1399. My dad and I rubbed this brass one weekend while we were in London (actually, he did most of the work because most of the day I was busy rubbing the brass of Sir John Harpedon, died 1438, also in the Abbey). The general procedure is that you lay down a long piece of special paper from a roll and rub a special type of wax onto the paper where the brass lies underneath, thus taking an imprint of the brass — just like using a pencil and paper to make a copy of a coin.

I sometimes like to look at different, lesser-known types of “artwork” to keep my design eyes alive and fresh. Brass rubbings are beautiful works of art in themselves, even apart from their original spiritual intentions, and to me are just another example of an art form that can inform your design intuition. The Alianora de Bohun brass rubbing displayed here gives insight into the dress and architecture of the time, even the dress and demeanor of the subject (a woman as opposed to a man, which at that time would very likely have been clad in armor), as well as the relative importance of figure compared to text and the specific style of typography used in that time. A fine example of medieval design.

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