What Are Monumental Brasses?

Monumental brasses are flat metal plants that are engraved with a figure and an inscription. Usually they are fixed to the floor or wall of a church or tomb as a memorial to a dead person. They were commonly used for wealthy and notable people in the Middle Ages and Medieval times and a few still survive today. They were also used in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries.

Medieval brasses were not actually made of brass but were an alloy of copper, 75 to 85 per cent, and zinc, 15 to 20 per cent with a small amount of lead and tin. This material was known as latten or cuivre blanc, which means white copper.

The people who worked on brasses as engravers were known as marblers possibly because they had previously worked on marble engraving for monumental stone slabs. It is likely that the same workshops that cut out the slabs for tombs also branched out to engraving the memorial metal plaques that were to be fixed on them.