Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 1.djvu/225

Rh more sightly, and more durable, the paper employed being of stronger quality, although the operation requires much longer time and greater pains than are expended when the method just described is adopted.

As regards the selection of paper for making rubbings of brasses, great convenience is necessarily found in the use of sheets of sufficiently large dimension to comprise the whole brass, with all the accessory ornaments, and the inscription. It is not perhaps generally known that all machine-made papers may be procured to order in sheets of almost any desired length; a very serviceable kind of paper, manufactured for the envelopes of newspapers, of moderate strength, and not too much sized, is supplied to order in long sheets by Messrs. Richards and Wilson, in St. Martin's Court. Most persons will give the preference to a stouter and rather more expensive quality of paper, manufactured specially for the purpose of taking rubbings of brasses by Mr. Limbird, 143, Strand. It is of unlimited length, like a roll of cloth; the widest kind, which is calculated to comprise on one single sheet of paper brasses of the largest dimension, measures 4 feet 7 inches wide; the narrower quality measures 3 feet 11 inches wide. It is scarcely requisite to remind the collector of brasses, that he should never sally forth unprovided with some pointed tool, to clear out such lines as may be filled up, the most serviceable implement being a blunt etching-needle, and also a small brush, moderately stiff, which is very useful in cleaning the plate, an operation which ought always to be carefully performed, previously to the paper being laid down.

It has been affirmed, on insufficient grounds, that many of the sepulchral brasses which exist in England were imported from Flanders, the only fact which might seem to give probability to such a conclusion being this, that memorials of this description are most abundant in the eastern counties, Kent, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire, which from their position maintained more frequent commercial intercourse with the Low Countries, than any other parts of England. It does not however appear that many Flemish brasses exist in England; the examples which, as there is good reason to suppose, were imported from Flanders, are the memorials of Abbot de la Mare, at St. Alban's; of Robert Braunche, Adam de Walsokne, and their wives, at Lynn; Adam Fleming, at Newark; the beautiful little figure of an ecclesiastic, at North Mimms,