“Brass Images: Medieval Lives” by Carol T Gallagher, with contributions by Susan B Gallagher
A memorial brass is an engraved two-dimensional likeness of an individual. From approximately 1100 to 1700, memorial brasses were popular in England and Europe.
Typically, brasses were set within a stone frame or matrix into the floor of a church, often in front of the main altar. Sometimes the brass was set into the top surface of a raised tomb vault, called an altar or table tomb. Brasses may be in an institutional setting such as an almshouse (home for the aged poor) or set into a church wall.
Between 1969 and 1970, Carol T. Gallagher and her daughter, Susie, traveled throughout England sharpening an already written text by together finding, choosing, and creating brass rubbings best expressing exactly what they wanted the text to show.
This book was originally published in 1980, and contains a visual collection of the brass rubbings Carol and Susan gathered, as well as the history, description and translation of each memorial brass. It has been revised in this edition to include an index and updated information as it was made known.
