Horse Brass Rails

I’ve been collecting old horse brasses for years. There is just something about them. You see them in pubs and cottages on British TV all the time, and they have an old-world, old-time feel about them that I love. While they originally hung from horse saddles and included many decorative designs, lots of mine commemorate locations or events, and remind me of places I’ve seen or want to see.

They aren’t always easy to find on this side of the pond. I once found a flea market stall in Oxford selling them for one pound each and bought a bunch. When I flew home, I worried they were too heavy for my checked bag and the customs agent asked why I had thirty beer openers in my carry-on. I tried to explain what they were, but he still thought I was weird. Another time, when I was vacationing in France, I went to Guernsey for the weekend and arranged to have a couple of boxes of brasses shipped to my hotel (lots of British eBay sellers don’t ship outside the UK).

I wanted to hang them all around my great room, so I bought eight long pine boards. Dad helped me cut them to the correct angle to fit against the ceiling, and I routed the bottom edge and stained them to match my woodwork. I used small clavos at each edge to give the feel of old construction, and found some decorative nails from which to hang the brasses.

With Marcus on one ladder and me on another, we used a brad gun to hang them on each wall. It turns out that each of my walls is a slightly different length, so I had to account for that when figuring out spacing between the nails.

The boards are mitered in the corners and really frame the room well. I wanted some sort of half-timbering somewhere on the cottage, and this is probably as close as I will get.

On my birthday, my sister Allie sat on top of a ladder and hung all of these brasses for me while I chose the patterns from below.

I only used every other nail, because I have another fifty something hanging at Mom’s house which she doesn’t want to let go of yet, and of course there will be other vacations and perhaps more confused customs agents in the future!