Brass from the Past

Brass made, used and traded from prehistoric times to 1800

Vanda Morton

• Publisher: Archaeopress Archaeology
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781789691566
• eBook ISBN: 9781789691573
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Brass from the Past is not only a history of the use and production of brass, but more broadly an insight into the journey of this important metal in the context of a changing and modernising world.
The book follows the evolution of brass from its earliest forms around 2500 BC through to industrialised production in the eighteenth century. The story is told in the context of the people, economies, cultures, trade and technologies that have themselves defined the alloy and its spread around the world. It explores innovations, such as the distillation of zinc, that have improved the quality and ease of production. From national or religious priorities to exhaustion of raw material supplies, the themes from the past are echoed in our own world today. In the later centuries, the book shines a light on some of the more personal aspects of people, businesses and relationships that have influenced industry and its progress.
Above all the book reflects the enthusiasm, not just of the author, but of all brass enthusiasts across the world. The search for information has involved scrambling down Bohemian ravines, stumbling over brass-works debris under trees, and studying pre-civil-war artefacts in Virginia. Academics and experts from across the world have provided information, from China to Qatar and the USA to the Czech Republic.
Brass is a strong and attractive metal, which has been used to create items of great beauty and utility. It is hoped that the reader will come to value the qualities of this material which has become a passion for so many people around the world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• List of Figures
• Chapter 1
• Experiment and emergence
• Figure 1. Diagram of temperatures during cementation
• Figure 2. Miniature brass helmet from a royal grave at Ur
• Figure 3. Dagger from Umm-an-Nar
• Figure 4. The Middle East to India, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 5. above, horse figurine, Kachbulag; below, brass arrowhead, Sary Tepe
• Figure 6. Brass bowl from Taxila
• Figure 7. Transcaucasian belt-clasp
• Figure 8. Map, early medieval European sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 9. Roman face-mask vizor sports helmet, Ribchester Roman fort
• Figure 10. Roman brooches, left Aucissa type fibula, c.10 BC-AD 50; right Hod Hill type, AD 44-80, Alchester Roman camp
• Medieval Europe and far beyond
• Figure 11. 8-10-century ewer, Khurasan
• Figure 12. Celestial attendant, Kashmir, tenth century, height 6.03 cm
• Figure 13. Padmapani, god of compassion, in sorrowful thought
• Figure 14. Talismanic plaques, Tibet: horses, AD 701-900; peacocks, AD 801-1000
• Figure 15. Middle East and Asia, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 16. Fatimid domestic vessels, early 11 century
• Figure 17. Europe, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 18. Beaded-rim bowl from Norway, 5 to 7 century AD
• Figure 19. Deer hunt engraved on the lock-plate of a late Roman casket, Bonn
• Figure 20. Rhine/Meuse area, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 21. Russian rivers, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 22. Comparative lengths of brass bars, left to right, Ma’den Iafen, Myrvälde, Kamanget, Hedeby, des Jarres
• Figure 23. Northern Africa, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 24. Koi Gourrey figurines: above, hornbill; centre, female crocodile; below, male crocodile
• The Sacred and the Salesmen
• Figure 25. Ewer, Western Iran, c.1220-40; right, detail showing a musician
• Figure 26. South-East Asia and India, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 27. Diagram showing Indian and Chinese distillation retorts
• Figure 28. Golden Hall temple, Wudang Mountain, China, 1416
• Figure 29. Brass market stall, Champeaux market, Paris, 1403-4
• Figure 30. Wool cards in use
• Figure 31. A batteur at work, after a woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568
• Figure 32. Europe, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 33. Peter Vischer the elder with his hammer, St Sebald tomb, Nuremberg
• Figure 34. Brass figure of Theodoric by Peter Vischer the younger, c.1519
• Figure 35. Veneto-Saracenic style ewer, c.1500
• Brass candlestick inlaid with gold, silver and a black substance, 1340s. The side shown is thought to depict Tashi Khatun, Mongolian regent and mother of Sheik Abu Ishak of Shiraz. She is being offered fruit and a book. Inv. 47632. © Museum of Islamic Art
• Age of Discovery
• Figure 36. Asia, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 37. Europe and northern Africa, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 38. Seventeenth-century brass pan with lizard decoration
• Figure 39. Austria, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 40. Astrolabe made and engraved in Nuremberg by Georg Hartmann, c.1540s
• Figure 41. Everyday products of the Nuremberg Twelve Brothers: hanging up, left: oil lamps, left to right. 1525, 1518, hanging up, right: key rings left to right: 1586 and 1528; foreground, left to right, 2 candlesticks 1526; ewer 1544; tankard 1518; two
• Figure 42. Map of England and Wales, showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 43. Isleworth mills and Brode’s (Monsieur le Broade’s) house, 1635
• Figure 44. Ratzeburg and its lake in 1586, looking north (Bäk is at the top left corner)
• Figure 45. Stockholm Castle interior, 1616, with brass and copper floor tiles. The king is receiving the Dutch ambassador
• Merchants and migrants
• Figure 46. Asia, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 47. Chandelier by Winant Nacken, 1633, in Skultuna church
• Figure 48. Sweden, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 49. Map of Ratzeburg lake area, showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 50. Figure of a Portuguese soldier, 15 to 16 century
• Figure 51. Examples of kuduos, top right: kuduo, royal grave, Kumasi, Ghana; lower left and right: Ashanti kuduos from the Gold Coast
• Figure 52. Taynton field names, including Brass Mill Field
• Figure 53. Diagram of a reverberatory furnace
• Figure 54. Map of the Bohemia area showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 55. Lienz brass battery works in ruins after the fire of 8 April 1609
• Continuity and conflict in Europe
• Figure 56. Map of Asia, showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 57. Chinese imperial palace, equatorial sphere: diameter c.1m. 1669-1688
• Figure 58. Bidri pandan inlaid with brass leaves and silver flowers, Bidar, 17 century
• Figure 59. Islamic brass; background, eighteenth-century brass alams held in the royal Shi’a house of mourning, Hyderabad; foreground, cast-brass calligraphic dragon’s head finial, 1650-1750 (10.7cm wide)
• Figure 60. Map of England and Wales, showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 61. Manillas from the three corners of the slave trade. left: manilla excavated at King Street, Bristol; centre: manilla excavated beside the former slave market site, Nevis, Caribbean; right: manillas from the kingdom of Benin
• Figure 62. Drawer handles, top left tear-drop handle with key-plate c.1690; top right bat-wing plate c.1720; lower left bat-wi g style, later mid-1700s; bottom right loop handle with disc plates
• Figure 63. Ember brass mill interior, 1689-91, after a drawing by Eric Odelstierna
• Figure 64. Musical instruments; author’s drawings, top, bass trombone, 1612, Isaac Ehe, Nuremberg; below, left French horn in F, 1700-25, Christian Bennet, London; upper right basset horn, late 18 century, Johan Heinrich Grendel, Dresden; lower right natu
• Figure 65. Part of Holstein, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 66. Bettenhausen brass works, west façade, 1679, 50 metres wide
• Figure 67. Horse and rider, cast brass, Achenrain brass works c.1650-60, 43.5 cm. high
• Trade and technology
• Figure 68. Oba Ewuakpe with attendants, Benin
• Figure 69. West Africa, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 70. Kitchen wares: top left three-footed English cauldron, top right skimmer; centre domestic pan; lower left ‘frying pan’ or skillet; lower right pestle and mortar
• Figure 71. Plan of Baptist Mills, based on a plan by de Wilstar, 1750
• Figure 72. Brass candlesticks, left to right, Netherlands type with tulip-shaped cup, 1680; Spanish type, c.1650; English type 1700-1720
• Figure 73. Cherub spandrels, on an eighteenth-century long-case clock, Richard Rooker
• Figure 74. Brass flat-iron, cast at Skultuna, with decorative dolphin features, 1726
• Figure 75. Plan of Hegermühle brass works, Finow-Eberswalde, Brandenburg 1784
• Figure 76. Surviving Hegermühle buildings: above, remains of the 1739 furnace-house walls below, 1724 workers’ housing.
• Figure 77. Europe, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 78. Battery hammers, late 18 century: back, forging strips for wire-drawing, centre, hollowing out cauldrons, near, fla tening plate brass for shaping into drinking vessels. Encyclopaedia 21, 330
• Figure 79. Reichraming brass mill, 1763: 1 furnace house; 2 calamine mill; 3 wire-drawing; 4 brass battery; 5 smelting; 6 charcoal; 7 stables; 8 manager’s mansion; 9 workers’ dormitories; 10 channel supplying water to mill wheels.
• Figure 80. Sweden, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Byzantine or Coptic low-zinc, leaded brass bowl, probably made in Egypt in the 5th-6th century, one of several high-status burial goods in a solo, pagan Anglo-Saxon burial dating to the 6th-7th century. This elite burial was recently found by chance near
• Figure 81. British naval brass equipment: left, late eighteenth-century sextant; centre, barrel-spigot (tap) with bucket-hook, 1780-1815; right, careening block, c.1809, with central reinforcing sheave (plate) and brass coak lining the rope-groove
• The turning tide
• Figure 82. Ancestral masks from Temne, Sierra Leone, with applied brass strips
• Figure 83. Decorated bowl or container from Borneo, thought to be Dayak
• Figure 84. Eighteenth-century brass harness bosses from Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia
• Figure 85. The restored Geddy Foundry, Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia
• Figure 86. England and Wales, map showing some sites mentioned in the text
• Figure 87. Candlesticks: right, late eighteenth century square-based candlestick: left, Georgian petal-based type candlesticks, c. 1780 and c. 1760
• Figure 88. Greenfield Mills, Holywell, Flintshire, north-east Wales
• Figure 89. Turner’s Brass House, Birmingham, 1753
• Figure 90. Plan of Norrköping brass works, based on a plan by Pontelius, 1751
• Figure 91. Brass keyhole plate cast at Norrköping c.1780
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Metallurgical tables relevant to individual chapters
• Index