Trench art map of Tasmania : Sapper S K Pearl, 5 Field Company Engineers, AIF

Trench art wall plaque in the shape of a map of Tasmania. The 'map' is made from a section of elm wood. Attached to it, in north-east and north- west Tasmania, are two red, white and blue pickelhaube cockades. Brass German buttons have been placed in the centre of each cockade. The centre of the plaque bears a raised, domed aluminium oval, to which is attached a brass and silver Saxon officer's pickelhaube plate, and his steel and silver belt buckle. The buckle shows clear evidence of shrapnel damage. The rays of the star on the pickelhaube plate also bear signs of shrapnel damage, but this has been repaired by the maker of the plaque. Attached to the top of the plaque, so that it can be hung on a wall, is a length of brass picture wire to which is attached a white ceramic signal wire insulator decorated with a silver German officer's button.

This plaque 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 and was employed as a carpenter by the Australian War Memorial. He supplied the following information about the plaque, 'This plaque, in the form of a map of Tasmania, was constructed at Armentieres in 1917. The elm was from furniture taken from a German dugout at Vaulx-Vraucourt; the facings from the equipment of a German officer, captain of the 152nd Regiment, shot while on patrol near Houplines, and shows the hole in the belt buckle made by the bullet that killed him. The signal wire insulator and button are from the Butte de Warlencourt.'