Brass rubbing

Brass rubbing was originally a British mania for reproducing "brasses" -- embossed brass reliefs from the 14th and 15th centuries -- onto paper. The concept of recording textures of things is more generally called making a rubbing. What distinguishes rubbings from frottage is that rubbings are meant to reproduce the form of something being transferred, whereas frottage just desires to use rubbing to grab a random texture.