Sometimes sold in commercially available kits and sometimes made out of scrounged thread, feed sacks and woollen cloth taken from uniforms.
The tradition began in the 19th Century with Queen Victoria who, as an amateur practitioner of textile arts, thought soldiers may find quilting or needlepoint a welcome distraction during convalescence or times of loneliness. The tradition carried on throughout WW1 and the archive at the fort contains some fascinating examples of such pieces.
Materials included paper decoupage, glass beads, metal pins and plastic alongside sequins and braids.
Inscription:
‘Think of Me When the golden sun is sinking, and your mind from care set free, when of others you are thinking, will you sometimes Think of Me’
The activity was mostly undertaken by men and the pincushions were stuffed with a variety of materials including sawdust.
….At the edge of a group shot a child in a woollen hat stares into the camera.
She looks troubled, unsure, as if she’s biting her lip. The soldiers are laughing, with the central figure placed on a wooden cart who’s pretending to drink beer.
Due to the length of the exposure other figures appear ghostly, blurred.
‘Summer Has Been Turned To Winter By The Guns’ (2017)
at
The Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection)
8th October 2017 – 18th March 2018
“It has been a real experience for staff, volunteers, visitors and local schoolchildren to work with our Artist in Residence on this project – seeing our World War One archive through fresh and creative eyes. Robyn Woolston’s exhibition is stunning, thought-provoking and presents a personal response to ‘The Great War’ from the artist and the children and adults who contributed to the project.”
Fort George is a ‘registered Ancient Monument’ and for over 235 years has been a military garrison and training depot for a Regular Infantry Battalion of the British Army. It is currently home to the 3rd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland.
Set in what was formerly the Lieutenant Governor’s house, the Highlanders’ Museum was founded over 60 years ago. The museum houses more than 5,000 gallantry awards and campaign medals won by the fighting men of the regiment as well as silver and personal artefacts. It also contains a set of Colours carried at the Battle of Waterloo and King Edward VIII’s regimental uniform.
Opening Times: 10.00am - 3.15pm / closed at weekends Dec & Jan
Admission to the Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) is FREE but you must pay an admission charge to visit Fort George. Adult - £9.00 Concession - £7.20 Child aged 5–15 - £5.40 Under 5 - FREE
I’m now at a point in my Museums Galleries Scotland funded Artist Residency at the Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) where I’m moving from research into making. It’s a stage which requires me to spend less time ‘on location’ & more time in the studio.
After collating 1408 separate files comprised of photographs from the archive, notes sent both to-and-from the front line, official documents from Buckingham Palace, official portraits, and domestic snaps etc it is a time to focus upon narratives that will saturate and direct my final exhibition.
During the last 6 months I’ve been most touched by:
- ‘traces’ left by the human hand, a note scribbled in the corner of a printed army document or the inside of a cigarette wrapper. - hand-sewn greetings cards and notes - salvaged materials used within sweetheart pin-cushions (old uniforms, sack-cloth etc) - harrowing personal accounts of life in the trenches: ‘Our wounded were streaming back, some ghastly sights; holding on arms, legs, broken and smashed’&‘All that will be left is a nation of legless, and armless, blind and helpless except those that are making money’(1917)
Alongside extracts from newspapers such as the Shipley Express and Times from 1st June 1917 describing Arras:
‘…over wires, over shell holes, past mined patches and death traps…faced a torrent of fire aimed at us’
And then there are the thoughts of historians such as E.J. Hobsbawn raising pertinent questions such as: how did ‘the era of peace, of confident bourgeois civilisation, growing wealth and western empires within itself the embryo of the era of war, revolution and crisis put an end to it?’
In parallel I’m now diving deep into materials and techniques. Exploring hand-sewn and domestic processes alongside industrial fabrication techniques. I’m locating harvested cloth (from Highland charity shops and the collection itself) and found objects.
I’m midway through the research stage of my residency at Fort George, a large 18th-century fortress near Ardersier, to the north-east of Inverness, Scotland. Working out of the Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection), the museum covers three floors of Fort George’s former Lieutenant Governors’ House.
Project Aims:
To respond creatively to the World War 1 displays and archives at The Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection).
To engage with local children and communities
To produce a finished artwork/exhibition to be exhibited at The Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) for 6 months (October 2017 - March 2018)
So far I’ve been working here for three months and completed 5 primary school workshops which have resulted in a wall-based battlefield mural, a series of imaginary medals, a collection of Trench Poetry and a series of letters home to loved ones.
‘We are absolutely delighted to welcome artist Robyn Woolston to The Highlanders’ Museum as our Artist in Residence and are excited about the work she has already been doing. The project will help bring our First World War archive to life featuring some of the interesting stories and characters which exist in the original letters, diaries and photographs kept by Highland soldiers during the conflict.’
Gill Bird / Education and Outreach Officer
From personal, hand-drawn, love letters to military orders, each visit provides a proliferation of compelling avenues for investigation.
It’s a time of immersion and editing, of reflection and navigation through a collection that houses thousands of objects, photographs, paintings, uniforms and reference texts.
‘God bless my DEAR DADDY at the WAR and keep him safe. With little Duncan’s love.’ / SGT DAVID J MCRAE 240180
‘Take this for your mascot’ / SGT DAVID J MCRAE 240180
It’s also a time of contemplation in terms of the ‘axis’ that embodies ‘where’ creative response meets military rigour. Of considering how suitability and juxtaposition may highlight-and-handle harrowing conflict-based narratives. I’m conceiving of plans which will both comment and illuminate with the intention of partially pushing aside many of the traditional conventions, or norms, in terms of museum display. Questions arise as to ways in which one can effectively honour tradition whilst reigniting/reframing perceptions.
S U M M E R H A S B E E N
T U R N E D T O
W I N T E R B Y T H E
G U N S
(A label found below a photograph housed deep within a section of the photographic archive not open to the general public)
In our final classroom-based workshop this week we looked at Propaganda Posters and Trench Poetry.
We took inspiration from the collection at Fort George including a poem written by 8384 Private W Hendry of the 2nd Royal Scots: ‘In the Trenches, somewhere in France’
….next week we’ll take a trip to the fort itself and continue our research in-situ.
Fort George is a large 18th-century fortress to the north-east of Inverness. The current fortress has never been attacked and has remained in continuous use as a garrison.
The fortification is based on a star design that remains virtually unaltered.
The Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) covers three floors of Fort George’s former Lieutenant Governors’ House.
I’m lucky to have spent some concentrated time delving into the archives (photographic + object based) at the Highlanders’ Museum at Fort George, Inverness, over the past 6 weeks. It’s provided a fascinating, funny, and at times, incredibly poignant window onto the everyday lives of families, soldiers and regiments during World War One.
Naturally there are War Diaries, which detail strategic manoeuvres and life-saving co-ordinates, but there are also highly personal notes like the one sent from son to father which signs-off ‘Your dying son’or the postcard which reads ‘God bless my DEAR DADDY at the WAR and keep him safe’
Out of this densely woven web of narratives I’m beginning to navigate some ‘pathways for expression’ which will lead to an exhibition on-site from October 2017 - March 2018.
Image: The photographs above show my working space at the museum. It’s an ‘open-studio’ of sorts where I can communicate with people visiting the site, explore ideas and get a feel for the over-arching narratives that are emerging out of my residency.
‘He whom this scroll commemorates was numbered among those who at the call of King and Country, left all that was dear to them, endured hardness, faced danger, and finally passed out of sight of men by the path of duty and self-sacrifice, giving up their own lives that others might live in freedom. Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten.
The upcoming exhibition of works from my residency at The Highlanders’ Museum (Queen’s Own Highlanders Collection) at Fort George, Scotland, has been extended into 2018.
It will now run from October 2017 - March 2018
Watch this space for further updates or follow the project blog for research posts as the story develops:
Photo credit: My research photographs show a newspaper from the archive at Fort George. ‘Prisoners of War’ by Jean Pierre Laurens is a testimony on the German occupation during the 1st World War.
It can be found within the Seaforths documentation (No’s 80 - 133 + 84 - 101)
