My previous blog about the German occupiers and the Belgian Relief flour sacks generated several responses that made me reflect on my findings. In particular, this response from Nick Saunders: “Fantastic example of trench art, at the other extreme from the shell cases, but still full of conflict resonance”!? [1]
Far from trench art
Wow, including the decorated flour sacks from WWI within the category of “trench art”? That felt strange… So far, I have followed my own path with the research into the decorated flour sacks. I spontaneously listed seven reasons why the flour sacks do not belong to trench art.
1 Death and destruction
The word “trench art” did not appeal to me. Simply because the colorful, carefully embroidered, delicate textiles that have been preserved did not have to be dragged through the mud of the trenches a hundred years later, let alone the mire of the earth that had been stained red by the blood of the hundreds of thousands of young men who died on the battlefields.
2 Girls and women
What had been their role? Women were nurses at the war front, they cared for wounded soldiers, assisted them in their dying days. In Great Britain, women in the munitions factories took over the tasks from men who had left for the front.
The decorated flour sacks formed the other extreme. Their hidden story was revealed; finally, the contribution of hundreds of Belgian girls and women emerged, their works as part of a charitable effort under the German occupation.
I wanted their stories to stand on their own and not be grounded in the horrors of military conflict.
3 Well-to-do bourgeoisie
Ladies of good standing and nuns in convents and parishes organized charitable works. They propagated gratitude, expressed in many words in Flemish, French and English. Under their leadership, industrious girls and young ladies from the well-to-do bourgeoisie made a hype out of the decorated flour sacks in 1915; after that it was over (quite suddenly).
4 Royal lace, folksy sacks
Attempting to associate between the decorated flour sacks with the “war lace”, coming from their backgrounds in textile material and production period, was seen to be impertinent. Historically, Belgian lace has centuries-old traditions, it was intended for queens and kings, the rich and powerful of the earth. War lace and the thousands of Belgian lacemakers had patron saints in the highest Western European, aristocratic and American circles.
In contrast, sacks belonged to the people, to bakers and millers, to industry.
5 Marginal
Moreover, the story was about sacks, a marginalized piece of cloth, associated with poverty when reused, after all, in the industrialized Western world it was only intended for temporary use as packaging for the storage and transport of food, after which it could be discarded or if necessary reused
6 Art?
Charitably, it could be said that the decorated flour sacks were works of art, but in reality this notion could not be sustained. The makers showed goodwill, expressed their feelings in a way that their work is best classified as folk art.
7 Art!
Well-known Belgian artists have painted the flour sacks in a communal expression of gratitude to the suppliers of the food relief. However, the “real” art went as unnoticed as the embroideries. Only once did the German occupier censor exhibited sacks.
In 1919 the artists’ association held a sale of the painted sacks with the announcement “strictly speaking not an art exhibition”, “these are far from masterpieces”; they were sold for unit prices. [2]
Besides, serious art history seems to prefer to skip the years 1914-1918 in general.
Seven reasons to create my own path with my research, which allowed me – without delving into the subject – to stay away from the term “trench art”.
Feed back
Now that my research and the presentation of the results are generating reactions and positive feedback, it dawns on me that the meaning of my stories about the decorated flour sacks naturally resonates with the stories and field of activity of others.
Nicholas J. Saunders is the founder of the contemporary vision on trench art. He saw the resonance of the conflict in my blog about the German occupier and the flour sacks, he recognized the flour sacks as trench art, as part of the material culture. To make it clear to me what he meant, he sent me four of his articles to read.
At first reading I at once understood what Saunders recognized in the sack stories. The articles opened my eyes: the knowledge of the decorated flour sacks will deepen by exploring the interfaces they have with trench art and their place in material culture, as described by him.
To me it feels like a paradigm shift, it demands that I take a different position when considering the flour sacks.
That’s quite a job, which I decided to tackle while blogging. It allows others to share in the process. Hence this blog.
‘Trench Art and the Great War Recycled’
In 2000, Saunders formulated as the definition of trench art: “Any item made by soldiers, prisoners of war, and civilians, from war matériel directly, or any other material, as long as it and they are associated temporally and/or spatially with armed conflict or its consequences.” [3]
This definition certainly applies to the flour sacks, as they are “items made by civilians directly from material associated in time and place with the consequences of armed conflict”.
“Trench art is war art, sensory and tactile, it evokes memories,” said Saunders.
That fits seamlessly with my adage: “Sacks are full of memories. Each sack cherishes a precious and fragile story.”
Are the sacks trench art?
Let me reconsider my seven reasons for forging my own path and keeping my distance from the concept of trench art, in a first attempt to bring the decorated flour sacks under this heading.
1 Death and destruction
One flour sack immediately came into my mind’s eye: “De Koene Held” (The Valiant Hero), 1914-1916.
Previously I blogged about the sack decoration in amazement.
“It is a Belgian war souvenir with comforting words and images for men who threatened to lose their lives on the battlefield, while they worried whether their wives and children would be cared for. The answer was yes, America takes care of women and children. In a way the text seemed naive to me, I would not embroider this if I had, as a married woman, a husband or son, fighting in the trenches, let alone, as a girl in school with a father or brother on the battlefield. The only way I could imagine it was that this cloth had been embroidered by nuns in a convent, skilled embroiderers and bringers of care and comforting, edifying words.”
An alienating embroidery, it is uncomfortable, evoking a feeling of disbelief.
Saunders denominates this as the power of trench art: the embroidery contains tension, capturing the paradox of war – it destroys and creates at the same time.
2 Girls and women
Some of the decorated flour sacks bear characteristics of the identity of the maker, her name, her school, her town or village, the craft group. The sacks and decorations can be traced, the objects can be personalized. Families have kept sacks as war souvenirs, as memories of the maker. They live on through the stories.
The story of a nurse and the embroidered flour sack (1915-11-9) that she kept, comes together in the life of Emilie Gerard, it is similarly uncomfortable.
“A flour sack from California belonged to grandmother, Emilie Gerard. It is not known who embroidered the sack. Emilie was a nurse during World War I. She lived in Brussels. She gave birth to her baby in Antwerp, but the son was placed elsewhere after three days. The father of the son has always remained unknown. She never revealed the father’s identity. Her son has often asked who he was. It was a great disgrace at the time, which Emilie suffered greatly from. Emilie Gerard has worked for Dr. Delporte.” [4]
3 Well-to-do bourgeoisie
The creative reuse of the empty flour sacks was conceived by institutions, schools, parishes, women’s organizations, sewing workshops and committees, it was institutionalized within the existing social organizations and networks of the well-to-do bourgeoisie. In particular higher-class women were active in charitable work.
They considered it their moral duty to employ girls and young women from the lower classes.
“It was our duty to encourage the young girls to come and work in our workshop, because we are sure to keep them there in a moral and happy atmosphere, saving them from the dangers of the street, because we allow these who live alone to save light and fire and because we are confident our workshop is more to them than the daily bread earning.” [5]
For their own class-based morality, the driving force was as well to enthuse young women about sack decorating “since the holidays this year will be completely stripped of their attractive country residences and will therefore provide most of them with free hours, which they could certainly not use for any nobler purpose.” [6]
The Belgian ladies were very well aware that the flour that arrived in occupied Belgium had been sent thanks to appeals to and donations by their female counterparts in American society. However, those donations were short-lived – four to six weeks in November/December 1914 at the most, after which the enthusiasm cooled down. [7]
The reuse of flour sacks by the Belgian girls took longer, a year was spent decorating the flour sacks, exhibitions were organized, and raffles were held. At the beginning of 1916 the enthusiasm waned, other impulses were needed to raise money for charity.
By the middle of 1915, the organization of international food supply to the population of occupied Belgium functioned on a large scale and was commercially viable. For the Commission for Relief in Belgium and the Comité National de Secours et d’Alimentation grain transports and transshipments via elevators had been the industrial approach from the beginning. Charity was part of marketing and propaganda; it was just no longer materially visible.
4 Folk sacks
Sacks or bags represented business. They were functional, used by farmers, millers and bread bakers. Food production was industrialized to feed the growing population, workers in factories, in urban environments.
The size of a bag made it functional for individual handling by the artisan baker, but bags in 1914 were industrial products, produced by the thousands.
Large American and Canadian mills supplied the bulk of the flour to occupied Belgium. They had a ‘Bag Department’. Other mills bought their bags from bag factories, Bemis Bag Company was a leading supplier.
If bags were deployed for local use, they remained the property of the mill, the bags were cleaned, reused and administratively the mill used a deposit system.
American food supplies went overseas, so the flour was packaged for export, printed with millers’ logos and names. The sacks had to be strong enough to withstand transport in trains, ocean liners, barges, carts and transshipment in ports.
The printing provided the sender with an identity, confirmed his or her charitable works. However, the millers were not unfamiliar with direct or derived commercial interest in the name on the bags. The Sperry Flour Co. designed a special brand and logo to print on the cotton sacks: “We are putting out an especial brand. Our factory is working on the sacks which bear an Indian head imprint with the word “California” across the front.” The flour sack is printed in the Belgian colors black, yellow and red.
Once in Belgium, they became the property of the bakeries, the companies that bought the flour, including the sacks. But then what? Where did the sacks go then? The bakers who wanted to get rid of the sacks sought financial gain and found willing customers in Belgian souvenir hunters, among other things.
5 Marginal
The American relief workers showed great opportunism regarding the flour sack reuse. That can feel alienating.
In November 1914 they chose American cotton as the packaging for the flour, so that the cloth of the solid cotton sacks could be reused for undergarments and home textiles. They positioned their choice for their American audience as a win-win situation: they donated food and clothing.
“Instructions were issued at the same time for packing the flour. These stipulated that a strong forty-nine-pound cotton sack be used…. Most important, after the flour was eaten, the empty cotton sack could be used by the housewife for an undergarment, the package thus providing both food and clothing.” [8]
The suggestion has been followed in Belgium. In Heverlee, for example, 80 children, mostly girls from about 4 to 6 years old, had their picture taken, dressed in flour sack dresses with the “American Commission” logo. [9]
One year later, money was needed for clothing and the American relief workers changed their strategy. The Belgian re-use of sacks was marginalized, it was precisely the argument to show the American public how bad it was seeing as the Belgians could not even procure children’s clothing.
P. H. Chadbourn brought Belgian gifts to U.S. President Wilson in Washington, including decorated flour sacks. Acting on behalf of the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), Chadbourn used the publicity he received to call on Americans to donate money for clothing for the Belgians.
Chadbourn said that many Belgian children wore no shirts other than those made from flour sacks with holes cut for the head and arms. There was therefore the greatest need for clothing!
“Mr. Chadbourn told the President clothing was now the greatest need of the Belgians. He described how flour bags, with holes cut for the head and arms, were being used as shirts by many children”. [10]
The CRB provided the newspapers with a press release, along with a photo of a girl in a flour sack dress, to underline the statement.
6 Art?
Is trench art art, as the word says? Art historians generally reject this, as trench art fails to conform to aesthetic principles. They group it under the heading of primitive art or folk art. Another approach to art emphasizes the function-oriented nature, in combination with the social component that connects the creator of the object. [11]
Girls’ schools’ students in Brussels decorated flour sacks in class. Young women in Antwerp were invited in groups to decorate flour sacks. “The most special aim is to make use of the American Flour Sack, thus immediately becoming a memorial and an object of art. Experience has proven that it lends itself to the most artful arrangements …
It would, however, be desirable that every performance should include a reflection on the circumstances of the times.” [12]
The creativity shown by children to express the conditions of 1915 in the purest form often gives me the feeling of holding a “work of art” when studying the flour sacks.
7 Art!
The painting of the flour sacks was a fundraiser held by the Belgian artists’ associations to raise money for those artists and their families who desperately needed support because of the occupation and war conditions.
On the sacks they have decorated, references to the circumstances of 1915 are diverse, often food related. The academically trained painters did not yet seem to be fully aware of their misery, or at least in June 1915 they painted the picture of a better time that now lay behind them. With lovely images they “marketed” their country to the Americans for whom the sacks were intended as a sign of gratitude. They reprinted their own popular works, previously made on paper, on flour sacks. Also, they literally copied the photos of (American) war photographers in paint.
In that sense their work seemed easy, barely innovative or original. Although this conclusion also evokes some discomfort. Unless the artists really felt the threatening power and censorship of the German occupier and kept their paintings rather superficial.
Conclusion
That concludes my ideas so far about where the decorated flour sacks touch on the definition of trench art and can be placed in material culture. The paradigm shift offers me a guideline.
The definition of trench art explicates the association with armed conflict. For me it was obvious that the flour sacks were decorated during war and occupation, that was self-evident and did not have to be explicitly mentioned.
The suggestion to start from the consideration of flour sacks and their decorations from the perspective of the tension of the conflict, to examine their makers from the perspective of discomfort, to see the paradox imprisoned in the objects, can offer me additional focus.
In any case, these sacks, these colorful, carefully embroidered and painted textiles are associated with death, loss and mourning; with the mud of the trenches and the mire of the earth stained red by the blood of the hundreds of thousands of young men who died on the battlefields.
Sacks are full of memories. Each sack cherishes a precious and fragile story.
Continued July 21, 2024
Recycled flour sacks from WWI – a Belgian field of tension
In my blog “Recyclede meelzakken in WO I – het Belgische spanningsveld” (Recycled flour sacks in WWI – a Belgian field of tension) I further elaborate my vision on “trench art and the decorated flour sacks”.
The blog is written in Dutch. For English, French, Italian or Spanish, please use the orange “Translate” button, bottom left on the page.
Thanks to
– Nicholas J. Saunders for his intervention and the wealth of articles he sent me.
– Georgina Kuipers for her attentive corrections to the English translations of my blogs.
Footnotes
[1] Comment Nick Saunders to my post of June 16, 2023, Lizerne Trench Art Facebook group
[2] L’Indépendance Belge, April 21, 1919, La Libre Belgique, May 3, 1919 / La Nation Belge, May 5, 1919
[3] Saunders, Nicholas J., Bodies of Metal, Shells of Memory: ‘Trench Art’, and the Great War Re-cycled. SAGE Publications, Journal of Material Culture, 2000; 5; 43-67.
[4] Europeana Collections
[5] Letter from Anna Osterrieth-Lippens to Edward Hunt, Antwerp, August 17, 1915. HILA CRB records 22003, box 324.2
[6] Letter Antwerp Committee for Aid to families ravaged by the war – Middenkomiteit, Antwerp, July 22, 1915. FelixArchief
[7] Letters American Belgian Relief committees to Lindon W. Bates, CRB New York office, December 1914, coll. HILA
[8]The Millers’ Belgian Relief Movement 1914-15 conducted by The Northwestern Miller. Final Report of its director William C. Edgar, Editor of the Northwestern Miller, MCMXV
[9] Europeana Collections
[10] St. Joseph News Press (St. Joseph, Missouri), January 19, 1916
[11] Nicholas J. Saunders ‘Trench art: Objects and people in conflict’. War & Art: A visual history of modern conflict. Ed. Joanna Bourke, 2017
[12] Letter Antwerp Committee for Aid to families ravaged by the war – Middenkomiteit, Antwerp, July 22, 1915. FelixArchief