Contested Objects: Curating Soldier Art

Abstract

all of six years on and off to make the quilt from different uniforms, more than a few pieces from poor fellows that fought hard for their country and fell in the struggle.' Rawdon, British soldier in India, 1872 Letter to Mr Bootland of Bradford, quoted by Rae and Tucker 1995: 177. Joseph AbstractJoseph Rawdon's account of his making of a military quilt incorporates an emotional object biography of a kind typically attached to this kind of material. He recalls the long period of production, an investment of physical and emotional labour of a different, but related, order to the effort of his dead colleagues, those 'poor fellows that fought hard for their country and fell in the struggle', and whose then surplus uniforms contribute to the fabric of the patchwork. In this co-authored article we draw upon objects like that produced by Rawdon, and the narratives that accompany them, to explore the value and challenges of curating objects produced by soldiers in wartime. Focusing on patchwork produced by Victorian military men, we seek to extend the understanding of trench art, in terms of chronology and form.

Making the Memory Book: War-Time Loss and Memorialization through Ephemera

“…The red would quickly fade to white-but to the men of the 21st, the color patch remained recognizable-evoking the comradeship of men who fought and died and were laid to rest side by side. 4 In time, most of these 'numinous objects' imbued (as Lutyens noted) with their own spiritual force would vanish from the battlefields (Greenblatt 1990;Furneaux and Prichard 2015). Replacing them would be the vast cities of the dead Lutyens and his colleagues on the Imperial War Graves Commission (IWGC) would devise.…”

Stitching masculinities, stitching stories: Men’s quiltmaking experiences 1970-2020

“…Today's military uniforms are khaki, but 19th century uniforms were more colorful, and quiltmakers used the range of colors such as red, gold, green, blue, white, and black to their advantage in creating intricate intarsia patterns (Prichard, 2010). While it is possible much of the military uniform fabric was actually surplus fabric, the potential for the use of worn military uniforms in these quilts adds layers of meaning and transforms them into objects that honor those who served and those who died (Furneaux & Prichard, 2015).…”

“…Although most of the names of military quiltmakers are unknown, the provenance of a few quilts attributes them to specific makers (Furneaux & Prichard, 2015). William Fist completed two tours in India and began making a quilt in 1869 from the uniforms of each regiment in which he served, and this quilt was accompanied by a note entitled Soldier as Seamstress that explained Fist alone had made it from over 5,500 half-inch pieces of military uniforms (Gero, 2015).…”