Imagine, you are a little girl. You are living in 1946, and the war has just finished. It is your Birthday today, and you know not to expect too much – after all things are still hard and rationing and shortages still apply. Still, you have the best present of all, Daddy is home! He says he has something special for you, which he made while he was away. When you open the little box, you find a simple ring, which fits your little fingers perfectly. Apparently, he made it from a piece of a crashed Japanese plane!
With so many important anniversaries happening recently, including the Fall of Singapore and the Bombing of Darwin, the children asked me to bring something related to the war to show them. I took this little ring, made from a piece of a Japanese aeroplane. The children were fascinated by the ring, and at the way it was all at once endearing and morbid. They loved the idea of a soldier carefully fashioning the ring for a beloved child (it is a little girl's ring, and very small) but were slightly disturbed to think that a Japanese aircraft had to crash, possibly killing the people on board, before it could be made.
Items like this ring are known as trench art. They are pieces of art, often household items or jewellery, made from recycled material (often metal) by soldiers during times of war. Yet the very name ‘trench art’ is misleading. This name evokes images of soldiers, cold and lonely in their trenches, working on pieces of jewellery or souvenirs to send home to loved ones, but this image is not entirely true. There are certainly some pieces of trench art which were made on the front lines by soldiers in trenches, but the majority of it was made in safer locations, even after the war.
The most common place for trench art to be made was in hospitals where it was actually encouraged. Making trench art pieces was thought to help the soldier to get better and distract them from pain and boredom. Some of these pieces would have been mailed home to loved ones or saved as gifts to be distributed after the war, but many were also sold. Skilled artists could sell their work to earn a little extra cash, and many soldiers were happy to buy well made pieces to keep as souvenirs or send home. Civilians also created 'trench art' from the refuse of war, often to sell to gain a little extra income. The most common pieces were made from shell or bullet casings, but these were strictly illegal – they were meant to be sent back home to be recycled. Some pieces are made out of tin cans which contained food, or even, like the ring I showed the children, out of the metal from enemy aircraft. If you would like to learn more about trench art, click here.
