Art is often born out of hardship, adversity and suffering, and this is nowhere more true than in the field of armed conflict. From the Spanish Armada to Vietnam, from the BoerWar to Bosnia, across more than two centuries and five continents, the most amazing collection of artefacts of all kinds – much of it masonic - has come into being as a result of war.
    Trench Art is the name given to objects - be they of metal, cloth, wood, bone, stone or any other material - made by soldiers, prisoners-of-war, civilians and internees alike. It takes its name, and is best known, from the Great War of 1914- 18, the world’s first global industrialised conflict. Trench Art is a term as evocative as it is misleading. Its astonishing variety reveals the human skills and fortitude which emerge under the pressures of combat, imprisonment and displacement. Furthermore, of the millions of pieces made over the last two hundred years, each is unique.
    All Trench Art objects were once familiar to every soldier and family of the war generation which produced them. Yet until recently, most examples have been ignored by museums and historians. This is particularly true of Great War Trench Art. Only now, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, are these objects being reassessed as unique and valuable historical items, testaments to the extremes of human behaviour represented by war. The main problem with Trench Art has always been how to uncover the human stories that have lain hidden in their strange and unusual shapes, sometimes for hundreds of years. It can be very fruitful to establish the historical significance of such art by investigating the human circumstances of production: who made what, and where, and when and why?
    Yet it is the items typically made by and for Freemasons which add a new dimension to the study of Trench Art. In such an art-form defined by its diversity, the imagery of masonic symbolism cuts across time, place, and raw materials.

Masonic Art

In the endeavour to recover the ‘lost worlds’ of Trench Art, these objects made by Freemasons offer a unique perspective. While every Trench Art object ever made is a one-off, many masonic items, particularly of the twentieth century, share a single set of shapes and a common purpose. Whatever material they are made from, they are often fashioned into the shapes of masonic ceremonial instruments, paraphernalia and symbols: the gavel and block, mauls, squares and compasses, Master’s emblems, the allseeing eye, and aprons. Of course, there exist many spectacular examples and exceptions to this rule-of-thumb. There is the maul made from the timber of a Spanish Armada ship wrecked in Scotland in 1588, and the many marquetry boxes and carved-bone galleons made by French Freemason prisoners-of-war during Napoleonic times.
    The latter are as much Trench Art as are items fashioned by soldiers in the First World War; here we have a rich seam of masonic Trench Art to explore. These items were produced during the wars with France from the early 1790s to 1815. The jewels followed the pattern of the plate and pierced jewels on sale in England for masonic wear, but in common with other prisoner-of-war work they were constructed from easily available materials such as card, bone and human hair. They varied greatly in size and can be found mounted for wear as lodge jewels or as cravat pins, rings and cufflinks. Snuffboxes carved from bone with painted illustrations in the lid are also common and follow the general pattern of commercially produced masonic snuffboxes on the continent. These usually depict a patriotic or martial scene designed to appeal to the intended market.
    The siege of Lucknow during the mutiny of 1857 has left us some masonic memorabilia: two gavels exist which were made from the wood of the Residency at Lucknow, the defence of which became a key imperial legend and whose commander, Sir Henry Lawrence, was feted as an imperial martyr. The earlier of the two bears a plaque stating that the wood was taken from the room in which he died. The second gavel was created in 1907 on the 50th anniversary of the event and illustrates the durability of the legend which had, by then, been joined by many others.

Across the Lines

This recurring imagery of masonic symbolism can also cut across the divides imposed by the conflict itself. Of the few examples of masonic Trench Art made under fire, the gavel of St Catherine Park Lodge, No. 2899, is a most potent example. The head was carved from the wooden parts of a German Mauser rifle found in a captured trench by the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, and the gavel itself was used in meetings held within the combat area. It passed to the United Kingdom lodge in the 1920s because of that lodge’s hospitality to overseas masons during the war. Another illustration of the international dimension to masonic Trench Art is the gavel made in a British Prisoner of War camp by a Boer prisoner and presented to his captor, Lt. Colonel Cordes of Benevolent Lodge No. 303.
    Other examples of masonic Trench Art from the First World War include wooden boxes made by British soldier masons who were interned in Holland from 1914 and who set up a lodge at their camp in Groningen. In Germany patriotic masonic lodges between the world wars used jewels made from recycled Iron Cross decorations; in a poignant irony these lodges were closed during the Third Reich as representing a threat to the Fatherland, and their members were ostracised and barred from many aspects of public life.
    The Ad Astra Lodge, No. 3808, was formed from the Air Inspection Directorate. The work of the latter was commemorated in the lodge by the collecting box, made from the central section of a laminated wood propeller. Little was thought about this artefact until recently, when an examination of the serial marks on the wood allowed the identification of the plane as a SE2B, an experimental design with a rear-mounted propeller. This plane saw much service in the First World War.

Memorial Objects

While some examples of soldier-made Trench Art, such as aluminium fingerrings, were made in the trenches, others such as sophisticated shell-case vases were made in safer rear areas. Some of these items were produced by experienced craftsmen with professional tools, such as blacksmiths and the Royal Engineers, and others by men with little or no artistic ability. Some objects were made to order and for sale, others for barter and exchange, and some as personal mementoes or souvenirs sent home to families. In fact, objects made by civilians between 1919 and 1939 were sold to war widows on battlefield visits as poignant memorial objects. These items helped authenticate the pilgrimage experience, and enabled the bereaved to take home a tangible link with the dead.
    One masonic Trench-Art object represents both the traditional concerns of its Freemason maker as well as symbolising the new kind of warfare which the 1939-45 conflict embodied. Preserved today in the Museum of the United Grand Lodge of Freemasonry, it is a beautifully carved maul, made of oak from the roof of London’s Guildhall which was destroyed by the Luftwaffe on 29 December 1940: this maul was presented by the Lord Mayor of London, Frank Newson-Smith.
    Each war produces its own heroes, its own histories, and its own mythologies. Those who were not present at the time can never truly understand the dramatic changes in human behaviour and attitudes that war produces. The bravery, pain, and sense of loss, the relief, boredom and endurance suffered during conflict, inevitably fade with the passing away of the war generation. At such times, words often fail, and later written accounts cannot capture that spark of immediacy.
    Only objects which can be touched, passed through the fingers, and pondered, evoke anything like true human emotion. Crucially, the key element in Trench Art remains the ‘context of war’, a context which breathes life into the objects and conjures up human experiences of armed conflict, that most extreme cultural phenomenon.