Trench art paper knife : Sapper S K Pearl, 5 Field Company Engineers, AIF

Trench art paper knife with a voided triangular copper blade, and a handle made from a French small arms cartridge, part of a rifle grenade and a French button. A copper map of Tasmania is attached to the handle.

This paper knife is part of a collection of trench art made by 6756 Sapper Stanley Keith Pearl, a Tasmanian who served with 5 Field Company Engineers, AIF. He enlisted for service on 9 November 1915 and returned to Australia on 21 March 1919. Pearl subsequently moved to Canberra where he was employed as a carpenter by the Australian War Memorial. He supplied the following information anout the knife, 'Fashioned at Ypres in October 1916. The handle is a French cartridge thrown from a troop train; the map of Tasmania is a piece of petrol feed-pipe from a German Gotha [aircraft] brought down in the Salient; the handle base is the detonator well of a Hales rifle-grenade and a French button. Its blade is from a steam-pipe taken from a wrecked Decauville locomotive near Longueval, split and flattened.