Legacy Online Collections

Brass Rubbings Collection

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Sir Thomas de Braunstone (d.1401),
Constable of Wisbech Castle,
in armour. (detail)
Rubbing by T.E. Lawrence in 1905

The Ashmolean Museum currently holds some five thousand rubbings of monumental brasses and inscribed slabs, including ones made by the Oxford University Brass Rubbing Society in the 1890s, the Oxford University Archaeological Society in the 1940s, and M.H.R. Cook in the 1980s, as well as those from the major collection compiled by the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society between the 1840s and 1910s. Many of these rubbings are of brasses which have since been worn, damaged or lost, and provide an important record of how the brasses used to appear. Most of the rubbings in the collection are over a century old and are on large-format paper which is now extremely fragile. For preservation reasons the collection cannot be made available for consultation.