Trench Art

Stefan Schütz, passionate collector
Schütz began his career at the Royal Military Academy in 1965, before leaving his position as a reserve cavalry officer three years later to study law in Leiden. He went on to work in a law firm and became a part-time justice at the Amsterdam Court of Appeals in 2005.
His collection covers a wide range of areas, including paintings and watercolours by Hoynck van Papendrecht and H.W. Koekkoek, instruction models of tanks, travel guides, military timepieces and Trench Art. He describes his motive for collecting Trench Art as follows:

Trench Art brings you close to the people who made it, especially if it includes the artists name and the place where it was made the Somme, Verdun or Ieper. It is often primitive, sometimes naive. Thats what makes it so interesting. By collecting Trench Art, I try to get a feel for how it was. Collecting is a perfect excuse to visit markets and fairs, but Schütz acquired his nicest piece a French clock made from a cannonball, supported by bayonets as the result of a swap. I had a half-sunken boat outside my house on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam and an antique dealer offered me the clock in exchange for it. It turned out later that the boat was beyond repair but I still have the clock. While the lions share of his collection comes from national and international fairs, he now hunts for pieces primarily on the internet.

Trench Art
During times of war, military service meant that many tradesmen such as metalworkers and carpenters were drafted. To kill time and make souvenirs for those at home, many soldiers used the detritus of war to create artistic objects a pastime that was particularly popular during the First World War (1914-1918). Prisoners-of-war would also use anything they could find to create such art. Similar trinkets were made during peacetime to decorate living rooms in a military fashion. Since battlefields have long been tourist attractions for old soldiers and interested sightseers alike, the tourist industry has also taken an interest in Trench Art a category that has arisen for objects made from recycled wartime materials.

Domestic surroundings
Military objects were often transformed into household items. A rifle cartridge became a lighter, a shell casing became a coffee pot and a piece of shrapnel became a letter opener, as skilled soldiers on the front line sold their wares to supplement their pay. The post-war tourist industry has also made good use of the waste material found at the front, turning it into practical objects that they hoped would be bought by visitors to the front lines.

 

Timepieces
The collection contains a wide variety of timepieces. A relatively simple way of making a clock was to simply cut a hole in a shell casing and insert a clock face and movement. Other timepieces were made from waste wood and metal. One of the oldest objects in the collection is a black clock from the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), which was undoubtedly made as a post-war souvenir from one of the spent mortars found on the battlefield.

Recycled aeroplanes
Aeroplanes are fascinating pieces of equipment, which is why materials from planes that have crashed are often recycled to make new objects. Trench Art has been created using such materials as the laminated wood propellers, which, thanks to their many layers, can look extremely attractive, as well as the white aluminium, which is both pliable and easy to work with.

Recycling ammunition
Ammunition is a much-used item during times of war. The brass shells in which bullets and mortars are fired are especially easy to transform into pieces of art. Spent ammunition is the most commonly used item in military art, with almost half of all Trench Art consisting of ammunition such as casings, bullets, artillery shells and hand grenades.

From far and wide
Soldiers are often posted in countries that leave an indelible mark on them, which was the reason why they made souvenirs that primarily consisted of a place name and the period in which they saw action. However, exotic non-military items such as coconuts could also serve as perfect wartime souvenirs. This type of object served largely as a conversation piece when the soldiers returned home.