Why Rub Paper Over a Church Floor? Copying a Picture Nobody Can Photograph Well

The objects are memorial plates of engraved brass, set into stone slabs in the floors and walls of churches, commemorating individuals from roughly the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries. They show the dead person in the clothing and equipment of their rank, along with inscriptions, coats of arms and religious imagery, engraved as fine lines cut into a flat sheet. Those lines are shallow and the metal is polished, so the image is extremely difficult to see directly and nearly impossible to photograph well, since a flat reflective surface with fine incised lines defeats ordinary lighting. Rubbing converts the incised lines into a high-contrast image immediately.

The method requires no skill and considerable care:

• •Permission from whoever is responsible for the church, obtained in advance
• •The surface cleaned gently of dust and grit that would tear the paper
• •Paper laid over and secured so it cannot shift during the work
• •A wax or graphite block rubbed evenly over the whole area
• •Even pressure throughout, since variation shows as banding
• •Edges and detail worked last with the corner of the block

These plates are among the best evidence for how people of the period actually dressed and equipped themselves, because they were made to represent identifiable individuals and were expected to be recognisable. Armour is shown in enough detail that the development of plate armour across three centuries can be traced from them directly, which matters because very little actual armour survives. Civilian dress, academic and legal robes, ecclesiastical vestments and merchants' marks are all recorded. Inscriptions supply dates, names, relationships and occupations. The plates also record who could afford a memorial and how the fashion for them spread down the social scale over time, which is a social history in itself.

Only a small proportion of these memorials remain and the losses have specific causes. Brass was valuable and the plates were prised out and melted during the reformation, the civil war and periods of poverty, with the metal reused for domestic items and for later memorials. Reused plates are recognisable because an older engraving survives on the reverse, and several hundred such are known, engraved on both sides centuries apart. Floor plates were worn away by feet where they lay in a walked area. Church restoration in the nineteenth century lifted and relaid floors, losing many. Theft for scrap value continues. England retains by far the largest number of survivors, with several thousand, which is why the study of them is largely an English subject.

The activity became enormously popular from the 1960s, with school groups and clubs visiting churches in numbers, and the cumulative damage was substantial. Repeated rubbing wears the engraved lines, since even soft wax applied thousands of times removes metal from the raised surfaces between them. Grit trapped under the paper scratches. Plates were levered up and stolen. Most churches now refuse permission or charge a fee that limits numbers, and many require the work to be done only on replicas. Dedicated centres holding cast replicas of notable plates allow the activity without touching originals, and photogrammetry now produces better records than rubbing ever did without contact of any kind.

Engraved memorial plates carry fine shallow lines on polished metal, which are hard to see and nearly impossible to photograph, and rubbing converts them into a clear image at once. The plates record armour, dress, robes and inscriptions in detail that survives nowhere else. Popularity from the 1960s wore the engraving measurably, so most churches now refuse permission and replicas are used instead.