Contested Objects: Curating Soldier Art

• Main Authors: Holly Furneaux, Sue Prichard
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of Leicester 2015-11-01
• Series: Museum & Society
• Online Access: https://journals.le.ac.uk/ojs1/index.php/mas/article/view/346

Joseph 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.