Contested Objects: Curating Soldier Art

Abstract

Joseph Rawdon’s account of his making of a military quilt incorporates an emotionalobject biography of a kind typically attached to this kind of material. He recallsthe long period of production, an investment of physical and emotional labourof a different, but related, order to the effort of his dead colleagues, those ‘poorfellows that fought hard for their country and fell in the struggle’, and whose thensurplus uniforms contribute to the fabric of the patchwork. In this co-authoredarticle we draw upon objects like that produced by Rawdon, and the narrativesthat accompany them, to explore the value and challenges of curating objectsproduced by soldiers in wartime. Focusing on patchwork produced by Victorianmilitary men, we seek to extend the understanding of trench art, in terms ofchronology and form.