brasses

brasses, monumental, or sepulchral brasses, memorials to the dead, in use in churches on the Continent and in England in the 13th cent. and for several centuries following. They are usually set in the pavement but occasionally are placed upright against a wall or stand free upon a plinth. Some, called palimpsests, are incised on brasses that have been used before on the opposite face. The engraving usually presents a figure of the deceased. Historical interest centers around the contemporary costumes, armor, heraldic designs, genealogy, and paleography revealed. Such brasses still exist in Belgium, especially in Bruges; in the Netherlands; and in Germany, where there are some exceptional 13th-century examples. In England the churches of Ipswich, Norwich, London, Bristol, and elsewhere disclose more than 7,000 examples covering the different periods of their use. Tens of thousands of brasses were destroyed during the Tudor dissolution of the monasteries. The majority of those that remain are of native design and craftsmanship and of the inset type; incised examples usually indicate Flemish origin. A few brasses are in Glasgow and Edinburgh churches. The image of the brass can be transferred to paper by rubbing with a black gum called cobbler's heel-ball or with crayon. Rubbing brasses has been a popular activity in England for many decades.

brasses, ornamental. Brass, a copper-zinc alloy produced since imperial Roman times, is closely associated in art with bronze, a copper-tin alloy (see bronze sculpture). Brass was generally fashioned into utilitarian objects such as bowls, pots, and jugs. In the Middle East, China, and Japan, brass was beaten and hollow-cast, and in India an excellent decorated brass known as Benares ware is still produced. In Europe, the Meuse valley became the center of ornamental work in copper and its alloys during the 11th cent. Although production spread to most of Western Europe, the work was known well into the 16th cent. as dinanderie, after Dinant, a Belgian town long the leader in this work. Early dinanderie included ecclesiastical objects such as fonts, tabernacles, and lecterns, and domestic articles such as the distinctive aquamanile, a vessel, often in the form of an animal, used for pouring water. The brass chandeliers of Norway, Sweden, and Holland were widely exported. In the 17th and 18th cent. small objects for domestic use, such as candlesticks, utensils, and hearth equipment were produced. Ormolu, a gilded or varnished brass or bronze, was often used in the fashioning of these objects and later for covering the wooden parts of furniture. Machine production killed the brass and bronze art industries in the late 19th cent.

See Monumental brass|Monumental Brass