Trench Art Reflects Humanity’s Transformation Through World War I
Turning shrapnel to masterpieces and explaining history through meaningful objects
“People make objects, but objects make people too, and endure far longer than flesh and blood.”
— Pearl’s Treasure: The trench art collection of an Australian Sapper, Nicholas J. Saunders
When I was a child, people would tell me items are material things that can be easily replaced. They’re inanimate and don’t have a soul like we do.
I know now that’s not always true.
I can look at items today that my mom and dad owned when they were alive; these “soulless” things are imbued with their presence. There’s a life to them beyond words and the physical objects they are. They’ve transformed.
This also applies to historical objects. They can take on tragedies, triumphs, and characteristics of the specific world around them, transforming far beyond the material object they once were.
For instance, in World War I, many church bells were melted into artillery pieces. The transformation of these objects from tools of peace and goodwill into weapons of destruction reflects the greater world of the time.
But it’s only one such instance.
Throughout World War I, soldiers, civilians, and others affected by the conflict transformed the tools of war into art. These pieces, called “trench art,” were made for many reasons.
They alleviated the boredom in the lulls between actions.
The pieces became souvenirs and remembrances.
The art could be traded for other things of value.
They turned emotional experiences, which were hard to convey, into physical things that were part of the world.
The transformation of these items also reflects a transformation of the greater world caused by World War I itself. Essentially, it was a time of significant change. The art plays this out through its materials, construction, procurement methods, and the multi-layered meaning it purveys.
Unlike art we’re familiar with, it didn’t involve canvases, paint, or clay but things acquired from the battlefield. Perhaps the best place to start is with a random Australian soldier named Stanley Keith Pearl and his creations. They serve as stellar guides.
Trench Art And An Australian Sapper
University of Bristol Professor of Anthropology and Archeology Nicholas Saunders, in his previously mentioned paper, describes trench art as the following:
“Any item made by soldiers, prisoners of war and civilians, from war materiel directly, or any other material, as long as it and they are associated temporally and/or spatially with armed conflict or its consequences.”
Saunders says one of the first acclaimed examples of trench art of WWI occurred when the Grand Duchess of Baden presented wounded German soldiers with bullets pulled from their bodies, placed in silver displays. Not long after, jewelers copied the art pieces and sold their versions.
However, most pieces were created by unknown artists with unknown intentions, except for Stanley Keith Pearl. This Australian soldier was unique because he kept notes about the pieces he made and eventually brought many home with him.
Pearl served as a sapper in the 5th Field Company of Australian Engineers. This type of soldier specialized in trenches, whether making or undermining them. The idea of a trench permeated the nature of WWI and gave the art of the conflict its name.
Not that the art was necessarily created in trenches. Soldiers rotated in and out of fighting positions and had lulls between combat, which many of these artists used to procure materials by trade or sleight of hand. However, certain materials, like shell casings, were easy to come by.
NPR estimates about 1.5 billion shells were fired across the Western front during the war. The number itself is hard to comprehend. Just to make it a bit more digestible, CNN explains during the ten months of the Battle of Verdun alone, nearly 60 million shells were fired.
But don’t get too caught up in this single component; the collection of overall material used to create trench art can tell us much about the world’s transformation during WWI. Pearl’s notes make this clear.
Trench Art’s Materials Reflect The Changing World
Pearl’s inkstand is an interesting mix. The base is made of oak cut from a table within a German trench and polished with boot polish. The bowl is constructed with remnants from a Vickers airplane. The endcaps are fuses from German anti-aircraft shells, while the brass bands are part of an 18-pound shell. French buttons on the base were traded for cigarettes.
Saunders points out that this shows a blend of different technology sets from three armies (British, French, and German). It’s a reminder that new industrial nation-states like Germany now challenged old powerhouses like France and Britain.
It’s also a display of how the nature of technology had changed. War took place not only on land but in the skies and below the earth. The Wright Brother’s first engine-powered plane lifted in 1903, and by 1917, they became weapons of war.
Pearl’s clock is a demonstration of an internal change for the time.
Its casing is made from two brass 4.5-inch shells picked up on Christmas day in 1917. The cap is from an American 18-pound shell, while the arms are part of detonators. The Rising Sun badge up top belonged to a friend of Pearl killed at Noreuil. While a German bullet tip crowns it all.
Saunders explains this wasn’t the only personal example of death within the art. Pearl also used buttons from a dead German’s coat on another piece. It’s a strange statement of what became normal at that time.
Saunders says:
“What emerges from these examples is how the extraordinary and the terrible have been made almost routine by war: how on the one hand men could be desensitized to killing, yet retain their humanity by creating things from the same debris of destruction.”
But this extends even further with the most prevalent form of trench art for the time — the flower vase.
Flower vases were relatively easy to make due to their plentiful nature and the shape of a shell casing. This also gives us some things to consider. Remember I mentioned earlier the amazing number of shells fired in a single battle? Well, who was producing them if so many men were at war?
The National WWI Museum says that by 1917, almost a third of German munitions workers at arms producer Krupp were women, and 1.4 million were employed in their labor force. By the same year, 4.7 million women were employed in Britain. They were nicknamed the Munitionettes or Canary Girls.
Although it led to another instance of the extraordinary and terrible being made routine in the women’s newfound freedom, according to Saunders:
“These objects encapsulated the changing gender roles of wartime, freeing women from service below stairs, giving them economic independence and allowing them to contribute to the war effort, yet simultaneously creating weapons to kill the sons of other mothers on the Western Front and beyond.”
Some remnants of these shells were turned into trench art and often purchased by war widows. These souvenirs stood in place of missing partners, bringing back their memories with each glance. So, you can see how trench art might transform from a mere object into something more significant.
This transformation also gives us another way to view history.
A Different Way To Explain A Time Of Great Tragedy
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, over half of the mobilized forces with the Allied Powers became casualties. For their opponents, the Central Powers, it was over sixty percent. Together, that nearly equates to 40 million men dead, wounded, or taken prisoner.
It’s horrendous to think of. Inevitably, if you lived anywhere near the war zone, the staggering number of casualties guaranteed either you were affected, or you knew someone who was.
How could you put something like this into words or even express it in a piece of writing that someone could understand? Well, it might be better described by transforming a symbol of that war into something else. Trench art did just this.
It expressed the great technological and social changes of the time.
The art also encapsulated how “the extraordinary and terrible” could be made so routine by war.
These pieces also expressed the feelings of the people living through the tragedy in a physical form.
While “pictures say a thousand words” might be trite and overused, trench art forms a multi-layered meaning device, expressing countless things in a single object. It’s like my parent’s leftover items but extended to an entire war community affected by a single tragedy.
In many ways, this art reflected humanity's transformation through WWI and the technology that followed it. The pieces also give us another way to view history—through objects with all the profound meaning they take on—not just words.
-Originally posted on Medium 4/8/24