Trench art

This object is produced from a shell casing and two bullets (fig. 1, 2), which immediately links it to the Great War, as WWI is known in Europe. In the Battle of the Marne alone, an average of 240,000 shells and tens of millions of bullets were fired in a single day. A British infantry division typically consumed 20 truckloads of ammunition a month. As a result, the battlefield was littered with these brass casings (fig.3). Those involved in the war therefore used the discarded materials for artistic expressions while waiting for battle in the trenches.

The long and brutal trench warfare forced millions of soldiers to spend their days in the trenches. The lack of practical means of entertainment was a pain, and books and other paper reading materials soon became damp in the trenches. The unprecedented industrialization of war produced a massive amount of war trash.

Making trench art from this trash was the soldiers' only and quite popular pastime. The scope of trench art is vast. Trench art simply refers to any artwork made from war trash commonly found in or near the trenches. In a broader sense, it refers to objects and symbols created by men involved in the war that embody their memories of war (fig. 4). This is also the context of how this jug came into existence: Sapper Southgate, a Royal Engineer working behind the frontline about whom little else is known, produced the jug while repairing underground telephone lines in the Ypres area.