Trench art rose bowl : Sapper S K Pearl, 5 Field Company Engineers, AIF

Trench art rose bowl made from the cut down base of a German 155mm howitzer shell. There are three 'feet' attached to the base, made from British 60 pounder fuzes. The sides of the shell have been flared out at the top of the bowl. A mesh grid to hold the roses in place, made from copper telephone wire, is fitted to the top of the bowl. The front of the bowl has an attached Australian 'rising sun' hat badge, from which the original oxidised finish has been removed to show the copper base of the badge. Ten plain brass and two plain steel German uniform buttons are set in a decorative ring around the lower part of the bowl. The base of the howitzer shell is impressed '576 MRZ 1917 Sp255 PATRONENFABRIK KARLSRUHE'. One of the shell fuze 'feet' is impressed 'No 94 IV 7/18 177', and the other two 'No 94 IV 7/18 168'.

This bowl 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 rose bowl, 'Made on the Somme in October 1918, from a 5.9-inch shell-case found at Chuignes. The German buttons encircling the bowl were removed from dead enemy soldiers at Bayonvillers and Proyart. The feet are tips of three 60-pounder shell fuzes from Biaches and the grid is made of telephone wire from Cartigny. The large Rising Sun was taken from a hat left in a billet by a sapper wounded while building a bridge at Ommiecourt-les-Clery near Mont St. Quentin.'