Drawing on experience
As the anniversary of the end of the First World War draws closer we remember a man whose talent helped boost morale
REMINDING visitors that this year marks the centenary of the end of the First World War, the Antiques for Everyone fair at the NEC is hosting a special display of ceramics that show how trench humour helped us through one of the most horrific periods in 20th century history.
The display will be mounted by Brian Carruthers, trading as Bac to Basics Antiques from Lichfield, who has exhibited at the NEC fair for more than 25 years. In addition to rare and interesting Great War commemoratives, he has secured a comprehensive range of around 60 pieces of pottery, all featuring the cartoons drawn by Captain Bruce Bairnsfather.
Bairnsfather was once described as “The Man who Won the War”. An officer with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, he served in the trenches and developed a deep respect for the black humour and courage of his men. He was a commercial artist by training and became famous for his humorous cartoons depicting life at the front.
Over time, Bairnsfather became Britain’s secret weapon. As he and his comrades fought in Flanders, the young infantry officer kept his men’s spirits high by drawing cartoons in charcoal on the backs of maps and on the walls of farmhouses where they were billeted.
The potential was soon recognised by the War Office and Bairnsfather embarked on a career as an official war artist that took him to all the important battlefronts. Universal fame followed when the magazine ‘Bystander’ published a weekly series of his cartoons featuring his most famous character, “Old Bill”, a seasoned Tommy with a walrus moustache, balaclava and a sarcastic wit, and his pals Bert and Alf.
Perhaps the best known cartoon depicts Bill and a comrade sheltering in a shell crater in mid-battle. As the bullets whistle above their heads Bill says: “Well, if you know a better ‘ole, go to it!” It was reproduced in countless ways, notably on a number of different pottery items that kept people smiling for two world wars.
Main manufacturer of the ware was Grimwades of Stoke-on-Trent and pieces – although not all – are marked Winton or Atlas China. An upmarket Old Bill ceramics manufacturer was the Royal Staffordshire Pottery of Wilkinson Ltd, while
Carlton China, owned by Wiltshaw and Robinson, also of Stoke, produced porcelain figures of the character in a style similar to that of WH Goss (of crested china fame).
Giving extra bite to the propaganda exercise was an inscription found on the underside of some Bairnsfather ware which reads: “Made by the girls of Staffordshire during the winter of 1917 when the boys were in the trenches fighting for liberty and civilisation.” Examples are prized today.
Captain (Charles) Bruce Bairnsfather (1888-1959) was born in India into a military family. He arrived in England in 1895 to be educated at the United Services College, Westward Ho! and then at Stratford-upon-Avon.
He failed entrance exams to Sandhurst and Woolwich Academies but still intent on a military career, he joined the Cheshire Regiment, only to resign in 1907 to become an artist. He studied under the illustrator John Hassall, who ran the New Art School and School of Poster Design in Kensington.
Artistic success continued to evade him, however, and he found work first as an electrical engineer, a job that took him to the Old Memorial Theatre, Stratford, where he met the novelist Marie Corelli.
Corelli introduced him to Thomas Lipton, the millionaire Glasgow merchant, who employed him to draw advertising sketches for his famous Lipton Tea. Further commissions followed for Player’s Cigarettes, Keene’s Mustard and Beecham’s Pills.
On the outbreak of the Great War, Bairnsfather joined the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and served with a machine gun unit in France until 1915, when he was hospitalised with shell shock and hearing damage sustained during the fighting at Ypres.
He was subsequently posted to the 34th Division HQ on Salisbury Plain, where he further developed his humorous series for the Bystander.
Many of his cartoons were collected in his first book Fragments From France, published in 1914 and the autobiographical Bullets & Billets (1916). The undoubted star was Old Bill, whom Bairnsfather described in the latter publication as “Discovered in the Alluvial Deposits of Southern Flanders. Feeds Almost Exclusively on Jam and Water Biscuits. Hobby: Filling Sandbags, on Dark and Rainy Nights”.
Despite objections to Bairnsfather’s “vulgar caricature” in some quarters, his drawings proved hugely popular with the troops and gave a massive sales boost to the Bystander, which ran a weekly series of his cartoons from 1915. His success in raising morale led to his promotion to captain and a War Office appointment to draw for other Allied forces.
Old Bill continued to appear in new cartoons during the Second World War, but no work was forthcoming from the War Office. Instead, Bairnsfather became the official cartoonist to the American forces in Europe, his drawings appearing in the US magazines Stars and Stripes and Yank. He lived at Clun, near allied airbases in Shropshire, and is said to have painted some of the cartoon art on the nose cones of American bombers.
However, his art was very much of its time. His obituary in The Times described him as being “fortunate in possessing a talent which suited almost to the point of genius one particular moment and one particular set of circumstances; and he was unfortunate in that he was never able to adapt, at all happily, his talent to new times and new circumstances”.
Old Bill commemorative pottery is widely collected but quite hard to find. As it was produced as utility ware for the home, most pieces were eventually broken or lost, and it is difficult to find pieces that are still in good condition.
However, The Pottery Gazette also made a rather prophetic observation, commenting that “though people are likely to purchase these various articles for the ostensible purpose for which they were fabricated, it is almost inevitable that most people will want to put by pieces of this ware as a reminder to their children and children’s children of the most stressful period in the world’s history”.