This publication contains an essay on a classical relief in the British Museum ('The Apotheosis of Homer') written by the eminent German archaeologist, August Emil Braun (1809-56). The original sculptural relief is a 3rd-century, marble depicting gods, muses, Homeric characters and worshippers honouring the poet, who was venerated as a hero in classical Greece. It was published by the pioneering metal manufacturers, Elkington & Co. of Birmingham and London. Inside the back cover is a copper electrotype reduction of the relief made using Elkington's pioneering electroforming technology. The publication is dated 1849, two years before Elkington's electrotypes caused a sensation at the Great Exhibition of 1851 making the relief an early and rare example of the technology.

A note in pencil on the title page - 'Mrs Ashton from the author' - suggests the book was not only a gift from Braun, but that most likely recipient was Elizabeth Gair Ashton (1831-1914), wife of Thomas Ashton (1818-1898), Manchester cotton mill owner, philanthropist, educationalist, art collector, social reformer and politician. He was on the Executive Committee of the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857 and gave £1000 towards it. He studied chemistry and printing techniques at the University of Heidelberg in the 1830s giving the production of a publication with an electrotype reproduction inside the back cover a particular resonance. Elizabeth was the daughter of Samuel Stillman Gair (1789-1847), originally of Boston, Massachusetts, who was also involved in both the cotton trade and banking. He founded the branch of Baring's Bank in Liverpool. The social, political and industrial milieu from which this publication emerges therefore sits at the intersection of art education, archaeology, science, manufacturing, new patronage, social reform and exhibition. Ashton had a reputation among his workers for fair treatment and of offering strong support for their educational and moral welfare. Like many civic figures in the 19th century, he presents a complex mix. Underpinning this wealth was also cotton from American slave plantations.

Emil Braun travelled throughout Europe collecting artworks and in 1849 became Secretary to the Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut in Rome. In 1854 he published The Ruins and Museums of Rome which was dedicated, 'To the English Visitors in Rome.' One of those had been Prince Albert (1819-61) in 1838. When Albert toured Rome, Braun acted as his guide and had a strong influence developing Albert's interest in art and architecture.

Braun supplied a number of artists and metalworkers with plaster moulds taken from classical reliefs and Renaissance artworks throughout the 1840s, including Elkington who published this volume. The Elkington business archive, which is in the V&A's Archive of Art and Design, contains a ledger listing the models he supplied them including this subject ('61. The Apotheosis of Homer reduced from the marble in British Museum, 18 shillings'). Much of Elkington's stand at the 1849 Birmingham Exhibition, and later in the Great Exhibition, was made up of early electro-deposits from moulds supplied by Braun. Contemporaries recognised Elkington's electrotypes for 'the important position they promise to take in the progress of Art-education' (Robert Hunt, 'The British Association Meeting at Birmingham, and the Exhibition of Manufactures and Art', The Art-Journal, Vol.11 (1849), pp 335-6).

The original sculptural relief is a 3rd-century, marble depicting gods, muses, Homeric characters and worshippers honouring the poet, who was venerated as a hero in classical Greece. This reproduction is a good reminder of the remaining prevalence of classicism in art education in the mid-19th-century, something often overlooked given the attention afforded to the Gothic and Renaissance revivals. The first electro-deposits were largely classically inspired and it really only from after 1851 that their outlook diversifies. So this volume and its electrotype relief capture a moment in art history where change is about to occur: the relief depicts the prevailing orthodoxy of art education but its method of production signals that a whole range of other sources is about to be made available to the art world, led to a great extent by the South Kensington Museum, where numerous electrotypes entered the collections, for public display as well as student study, and were also offered for sale.