The Christmas Truce-Cold Turkey

This year we are in the hands of politicians who have the power to keep us safe and save lives.

Politicians have decided people are allowed in 2020 to have a little respite from Covid and meet loved ones in a limited way over the festive period.

Many think this is too lenient. Who am I to say.

It's a sort of truce.

There are politicians and there are murdering politicians and just over a hundred years ago, during the First World War most were the latter.

Twenty years ago while running a campaign to save the Chambre Hardman archive for the people of Liverpool I received a phone call with the offer of help. 

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2020/09/edward-chambre-hardman-59-rodney-street.html

“It's Lady French” she had said on the telephone.

Expecting to meet an old dud in a tweed suit I was surprised, as she was quite young. We chatted over a coffee and after a while I asked her about her title.

“Oh my Grandfather got his title from World war One, Lord French”

“Wasn't he that murdering General that sent hundreds of thousands of people over the top to death”

She looked at me hardly surprised and said “Yes that's him”.

I did not receive any assistance, though we stayed friends.

We have had the hundred years commemorations for WWI.

Individual stories of heroism has given way to the endless lists of tragic deaths. 

Murdering Generals have been replaced by stories of heroes.

Recently during a recording at an Antiques Roadshow valuation I was asked to appraise a FA Cup Final medal from 1914.

King George V presented the medal and was, at that time the patron of the Football League.

Not to give too much away as it has not been aired yet.

The recipient of the medal was a bit of a card and the story that unfolded was of extreme interest to me. The story is mesmerizing. I hope I have done it justice. It will be aired sometime in 2021.

I learnt a lot from delving into these war years. I learnt a lot through football.

 If I don't learn something new every day I am very disappointed.

I entered the debate before Liverpool became European capital of Culcha in 2008. (Some people were saying the only culture in Liverpool, was, in the yogurt, in the fridge, in the Kwik Save, in Old Swan). But I disagreed. The debate of' 'Is football culture? Intrigued me, as I grew up a stones throw from Anfield. Football is part of my, modern day culture. Its in my DNA. All great cities such as Napoli and Rome embrace football. The highs and lows and.......the art of football. 

If a skilled craftsman can be a silversmith. Why cant a skilled footballer be treated the same way off the terraces.

I learnt more than I needed by handling this medal my mind began to race. That's just the way I like it. So it the story grew and grew.

The following year, after the medal was won, the 1915 Cup Final would be known as The Khaki Final because nearly all the crowd was dressed in uniform. I wonder if you did one of those images that took away all those who later died how many faces in the crowd would remain.

In between these two finals was of course the famous Christmas Truce.

Christmas Day 1914 where soldiers from both sides played a game of Togger in No Mans Land. They had both sung Silent Night in their mother tongues. The voices had hovered over the trenches in honest sentimentality. Fifty to hundred yards away from each other. It was a Christmas favorite in both homelands. The Germans had decorated little trees on the parapets of the trenches. These trees had been sent by their families and candles were put in jam jars lit up the night sky.

Shouting took place amidst the choirs.

“Happy Christmas Tommy”.

“Happy Christmas Fritz”. 

Who would want to kill on Christmas day.

It was said, that a sign was held up. 

Happy Christmas No Shooting”

And some brave soldier walked over the top. He was not shot and this started a unbelievable sight. Where enemies met and shook hands and swapped cigars coffee tea, and chocolate. Someone got a ball out and they had a kick around. That leather ball must have weighed a ton with the build up of mud amidst the bomb pocks and craters. What a match that must have been.

 Enemies playing a game in good spirit.

There was also talk of a British officer being blindfolded and taken behind German lines for Christmas dinner. He was given a slap up, by trench standards and was taken back soon afterwards. There were stories of people recognizing Germans who had worked in London. One even was said to have had his haircut by his barber who was German and had returned home to fight in the war.

Some truces lasted for days.

It is of course the season of goodwill. Photographs appeared in the British papers.

This was of great discontent to the Murdering Generals and of course the politicians with blood on their hands like Churchill, who had helped start the war so that they could play toy soldiers, for real.

The scorn that was poured on both Tommie's and Fritz's who nodded a ball around a field in some distant land meant that they were ordered to stop fraternizing and bomb the gubbing's out of the opposition shortly after. Orders were given by the murderers who probably never got anywhere near the front line.

Where these fraternizers the clever people. Could they have spoiled Churchill's war.

I respect the heroism of my Grandfathers generation who fought in that war and I have even come around to having a bit of sympathy for the German soldiers who were also led like lambs to the slaughter for the honour of their King and Country.

Now if the people had known what we know now about the Cousins, the spawn of the mentally disturbed Queen Victoria. King George his lookalike, Tzar Nicholas and the evil Wilhelm of Germany, would they have allowed themselves a glorious death.

Is there a glorious death?

Its strange the way time gives you more insight, to digest and when writing about the Next of Kin medal designed by the father of a lady I knew, I was quite emotional at the way solemnity and dignity could be designed as symbolism. A symbol of lament. Death.

https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2014/09/dead-mans-penny-edward-carter-preston.html

But recently I have started to feel that the dignity was manipulated to make up for the stupidity of murdering politicians now PR'd in the case of Churchill into saviors of our nation. If the word of peace had of been spread on Christmas day forthwith to both homelands maybe it would have saved 2 million peoples lives and a Second World War. The whole truth of The American Flu pandemic that was PR'd into The Spanish Flu killed near a hundred million souls. It is only with the outbreak of Covid 19 that people have become aware of the great death during WWI.

They also PR'd The Murderous act by the Hun of  torpedoing  The Lusitania. As a recruitment exercise to send more soldiers to their doom.

https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2015/04/lusitania-medal.html

DID THE FLU STOP THE WAR. That would have been an unacceptable response. A insult to all those relatives that received The Dead Mans Penny.

I grew up with stories of Great Britons the likes of Scott, Shackleton, The Charge of The Light Brigade. Scott of the Antarctic and the brave fool Shakleton. Only to now look back at the whole bouncy build up of British heroes as no more than lies spun on heroic failure. They have just named the Nightingale Hospitals to hide another con just like the invention of The Lady With The Lamp, Florence Nightingale. No matter how kind she was, her fame just hid the abominable state of medical treatment in The Crimea.

 And while it made her a jolly good fellow, while the mentally disturbed Queen Victoria and the politicians got away with murder. I could make the list of lies longer.

You get a bit cynical the older you get. But you also have more tie to think for yourself.

So what of those soldiers who met to spread a bit of Christmas cheer. A little respite to horror before they may have met a glorious death. Up to their necks in mud and lice they sensed a small respite from the horror of war.

They knew what death was in reality. It was all around them. Not a public relation invention by the suppressed newspaper magnates, in on the con. Feeding the flames

Where these honorable soldiers the clever people? 

These men most of whom had little or no education.

Who had nothing against the opposite of themselves. Barbers plumbers shopkeepers. Who went along with the propaganda of the evil Hun. Spun by the evil murdering politicians of Britain.

Most may have been wondering what they were really fighting for. What Belgium had to do with them. Most would not know that Leopold The King of the Belge was one of the most cruel people ever to walk the face of the earth. He was responsible for real evil in his African Congo Kingdom.

So what was it really all about?

When the murdering politicians on both sides were a confused bunch of confidence tricksters.

 Running amok.

One thing I have learnt, is that football was and has become a symbol of humanity. They shake hands after every match.

All politicians should be made to go out in a pair of muddy shorts and be made to play for a team on a wet windy Sunday morning. Because the game of life is like match. Once you start disrespecting yourself what chance for your opponent.

That those simple folk on the terraces. The Spion Kop (another con) are the salt of the earth and that modern culture is inextricably tied together with football.

For one thing I have learnt. From learning. Is that.

When it's foolish to be clever. It is folly to be wise. 

Update 22.12.2020.

There are now thousands of lorries waiting to get to France. The 2020 Christmas truce called by buffoon politicians  is all but cancelled. Brexit is looming.

France has banned the returns of lorries because the murdering politicians of Britain's current crop have made such a mess of dealing with Covid 19 that a new strain has developed. What a mess.

And they are still lying to us. Through Their teeth. What will the new year bring.

Liverpool Antiques Roadshow 2015 Lutyens Crypt Transmission Dates

Filming in Liverpool at Lutyens Crypt for the Antiques Roadshow went well and there will be two programmes that should go on air 22nd March and 29th March respectively.
Among items discovered will be a World War One Death Plaque.
Oh and some glass panels.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/antiques-roadshow-what-amazing.html


Further Reading;
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/dead-mans-penny-edward-carter-preston.html

Dead Mans Penny-Edward Carter Preston.

Edward Carter Preston-The Unsung Craftsman

Mention the name.........and most people will have no knowledge of a man whose sculpture was commissioned on such a monumental scale. He entered a competition with 800 other submissions for which he received £250. The chosen design for the Death Penny, is called Pyramus

Maybe its because most of Carter Preston's work was for memorials and testaments to others, that his work has never been fully investigated.

Or it could be that his memento-mori's were of such heart rendering, that the public conception of death, and the glorious nature of conflict at the time, meant that they did not want to know the names of the people who recollected the memories of those glorious dead. There were so many grieving memories at a time when people wished to forget the horror of the carnage of World war I.

The perceived idea of art was to think of the classics as work passed down from an other age. To us.

Preferring to think that it was the work of an ancient age. Of Greek hero's, or Roman myths brought up to modern times. Death is all the same. But perhaps the classical style was why he, and many other unsung, hard working sculptors were so successful. People needed dignity, they had lost a lot.

That he gave, through his work, the dignity of death, to people, in treacherous times, and reinvented it on behalf of the top brass, the heavy establishment, those that cloaked the war, in glory, and gave reasons with which to justify the mass slaughter of a nations sons.

A justification.

The conflict that gave way to killing on a scale of mass production , that also gave us mass produced weapons of destruction, of a whole generations soul.

We wanted to mythologise the way those brave hero's went to the deaths.

Many without a wish to understand more than the basic of human instincts of self defence and proud nationhood, that would later be lost in a muddy field in a distant land.

What other cause can create the image of an old General saying “Your Country needs You”.

And they believed him. Maybe it would not happen today. The masses wouldn't let them get there. History would of course, in hindsight immortalise all those who who would not give way, and fight to the tyranny. That would defend their minds image of freedom.

These were the creation of the scarred generation that went on to create the horrors of World War II. But during the first World War they sang songs of freedom and home while being led to their deaths, on both sides, by the hands of Queen Victoria's privileged, but deadly offspring.

Who clung on to childish playground games, now played out with deadly consequences, for their subjects, that they sent over the top.

Gone were the lead soldiers, replaced by real flesh and blood, that tore.

Those in power counted a war in terms of how many more of the other side that you killed rather than the endgames. Those deadly games of starvation, and in the killing of civilians, many of who had had the fateful postman's knock themselves.

Just as many would die of broken hearts.

Could civilisation invent such a hatred for each other with a pretence of glory without even looking at the reasoning of why so much was wrong.

Or that the very Monarchs whose honour that they were upholding were the very cause of the disaster in the first place. They were the laughing assassins of war.

The faces that led the march. These tin pot dictators who had no concept of peasant life.

Just before the conflict began. The Tsar was seen to have gone out to a ball, the very night that hundreds of his subjects had been trampled in a stampede for images of him and the Tsarina....Did he really care about them?

So should they fight for him. For a time at least, they would. Before the Revolution.

Queen Victoria who gave birth to most of the ignorant spoilt fools, who were married off to congeal the Empires prowess. This small group of in-breeds spawned the generation of monarchs who sent us all of to war.

It really is a long way to Tipperary and most of them never would come back.

Paul Nash recorded the slaughter, with his, at times pretty emotionless depictions of bomb craters. And planes, that for me don't really show the true horrors of war.

I was at a local auction when a lithograph by Paul Nash of Hill 60 crater 11, made £23,000, for me it lacked the attachment, it just looks like a hole.

 It also lacked attachment for the pathetic Runcorn Auction Centre who valued it at £300. 

Nash was there, but it is shame, that his stylised depictions get all the credits, with retrospective exhibitions and epilogues, from the likes of Alastair Cook of the BBC, the next in the long line of peddlers of myths, they are the new establishment. The BBC.

So what we get from the establishment is an upgraded story from a new commentator who is too scared to go against the grain of the, said establishment, to say that the likes of Paul Nash is someone who couldn't really look, for fear because he was too scared himself.

That he did not record the true horrors, is true, because it is un-recordable.

I once found a Death Penny in a house that I was renovating when I was quite young. I did not know what it was then. But I kept it for a while until a military dealer spelt out the meaning to me. I recall admiring its detail but felt humbled, by its presence.

It was only worth about £30 at the time, there were a lot of them around.

It was not for a general or a Colonel, although there was no mention of rank, on the bronze plaques as there was no distinction to be made of the sacrifice of individuals.

They are frequently traded.

A few years later when I had learnt more about the facts that led to the deaths of so many across Europe. The same war would even bring in Americans, Canadians and Australians, it really was a World War.

And so what of the man whose initials E.Cr.P were cast into the bronze roundels that where sent to the next of kin.

The Death Penny is 5inches (120mm) across cast in bronze by the memorial factory of Acton road London. With its brave lion walking with Britannia holding a trident in the centre, as a depiction of the strong and noble British spirit. In her other hand she has a oak wreath just above the tablet that would bear the deceased name. Two dolphins swim around Britannia, symbolising Britain's sea power, and at the bottom a second lion is tearing apart the German eagle. The reverse is blank.

He didn't show the donkey symbolising those that drove the brave soldiers to death, for it would not have been right to pour scorn on all those that never returned from the fight for King and Country.

He just give it to them straight. As they would have wished, as they deserved .

He would have been proud to have been commissioned.

And he should be rewarded for it. For without the approach of dignified sculptors such as Edward Carter Preston, who knew their trade and did it well, we would not have been able to remember the many. And as bronze lasts it is now possible to look back into the individual stories behind the lives of those who gave the ultimate sacrifice. The lives of the Lords and the labourer were to both be remembered equally.

They made that sacrifice hoping it would give us our freedom.

What price a Dead Mans Penny............Immortality.

Edward Carter-Preston was related to Herbert Tyson Smith.http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html

I was one of the last people to see the culmination of the collection of her fathers work by Julia Carter Preston at her house in Canning Street here in Liverpool. The whole of hers and her fathers work and their memories too, went off to Hope University, to probably be lost for now.

We need an exhibition of his work a retrospective he was a very clever, and dignified man who does not get enough recognition, in my opinion.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/julia-carter-sgraffito-presto-plate.html

Julia Carter Preston Sgraffito Plate-Piece of the Week

Her Wheel Keeps On Turning.

I haven’t used it yet and it’s a bit old fashioned and cumbersome and I am used to using a Shimpo wheel but I will get around to setting it up and throwing pots on the wheel that Julia Carter Preston actually used.
It is nice to interact with her history by either owning some of Julia's work or as in my case using the actual tools that she used to create her sgraffito ware that she was famous for. Though she never exhibited at the V&A she was well known to the insular Liverpool crowd of art collectors.

Entering into her studio shortly after her sad death and taking out objects that were personally used by her has given me a detailed insight into her techniques and how she fired her pieces.
I actually don’t think I will try and emulate her works they are a little too feminine for my style but it is interesting relating backwards by seeing the glazes and oxides she used.
http://www.classicartdeco.co.uk/my-own-work.php I tend to want to create more classical shapes of which the job is still very much a work in progress but is coming along slowly but surely.

This groupment of objects left, just as she used them, gives you a real insight into how she arrived at her finished article, a little like looking at an equation for a mathematical answer. What good is the answer if you don’t know how it is arrived at?

Of course most of her clients who bought her work will have no concern about her use of lustre’s in any other way as a description but an inquisitive mind is always needed if you are to progress in any journey that involves building up a skill.

I only came across her occasionally at various openings and events and every time she extended an invitation to call in for tea and I never did, although I extended an invitation to Peter Elson who jumped in like a long lost friend and did an article about her treasure trove of artefact's antiques and mementos of a life in Liverpool http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-culture/2007/10/08/the-potters-wheel-keeps-on-turning-64375-19912267/  It is a shame he never took up the campaign to save Julia's Uncles The Herbert Tyson Smith studio in the Bluecoat when it was under threat.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html see previous post


With a reputation of the daughter of a father who was a rather good sculptor and medallist.
The Edward Carter Preston name can be seen in cartouche on the Bronze plaque, the death plaque from the First World War, that he designed, that was given to next of kin as a memory of the part played by so many brave soldiers who lost their lives in the name of  Britain and the cause of Freedom
We have yet to see a full exhibition of his work other than small accumulations on occasional show, but when we do we will be able to understand him more and know how his daughter had to grow up in an environment of creativity in a more gentler age.
She didn’t really need the money and she didn’t charge a lot but her reputation was slightly diminished by allowing herself to be pushed into an exhibition of work that was previously rejected.
Her gallery took the short-term commission and have irrevocably damaged her reputation in exhibiting later work that was inferior.
 It may have been her elderly status and the need to create that kept her going. But it seems the gallery pushed her to into selling seconds after her prices raced up after a mention by one of the pumpkins on the Antique Road show, who said she was one for the future.

I stood while a queue formed at a Private View at the Bluecoat Display Centre and there was actually a scrum to get in and the rush of red labels that were stuck to her work surprised me especially as they were some warped and badly decorated pieces flying off the shelves.
I stood with Julia while a woman ran around with a tile in her hand shouting, “I have got a rabbit, I have got a rabbit”

Julia turned to me and said “Stupid woman that is a Hare….it just shows you how much she knows”

That summed that particular exhibition up for me.

The undeserving who didn’t know what they were looking at were now her principal patrons of her work taking it out of the range of those people who actually enjoyed her for her skillful but laid back approach of which she leaves us a legacy of a body of work that will if exhibited correctly by the now trustees of her collection Hope University in Liverpool.

http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/in-the-mix/2012/02/04/julia-carter-preston-part-of-liverpool-artistic-dynasty-100252-30262161/

A lot of he work was to commission. For those who own a piece of her work, treasure it, she really did make it for you with a lot of skill and care that will see he name grow in the eyes of collectors both here in Liverpool and much further afield.

Herbert Tyson Smith Bronze-Piece of the Week

 I bought this bronze by Herbert Tyson Smith in an auction hundreds of miles away.

The Internet now dictates there is nothing local anymore.

But this really is a local artefact, and I had to have it, and paid a bit for it, but I must bring it home I thought..

It is a study of a Merman. Images of Mermen are all around this locality around Water Street and the town centre.

There is n almost identical depiction on the façade of Martins Bank Building across the road from my shop.

 It is signed in the bronze and sits on an exotic marble base.

It seems to my mind to be a limited casting; I would be surprised if there was more than one made. Herbert Tyson Smith had been very productive in the inter war years.

He was the man who created the bronze castings on the Cenotaph on the space directly in front of the entrance to St Georges Hall along with architect Lionel Buddon.

Look up at most stone carvings from that interwar period and there is a chance that they were done in his workshop.

There was a little bit of research to do but I can take my time I thought but shortly after me picking it up Terry McDonald a local sculptor who seems to have been around forever, dropped in the shop.

Of course he used to work for Tyson Smith so I showed him an image of the bronze.

” Oh yes I remember that....... I broke the full sized plaster model of that same piece up, after the war, It was going to be a fountain, there was no money around for it”

“Are you sure it’s the same one”

“Positive I was only a young bloke then but I remember it as if it was yesterday” he replied
pic; by Wayne Colquhoun; Terry McDonald at his workshop

I went around to Terry’s place and there you go, original pieces by Herbert Tyson Smith with the same themes and much more. His workshop was fascinating. 

Here he is pictured with a model for the huge bronze that he was commissioned for that was erected outside Liverpool Womens Hospital. 

pic; relief by Tyson Smith in Terry's workshop

I had been a member of the Liver Sketching Club at one time and I spent numerous Saturday mornings sitting by an easel drawing from life while Terry held court strutting around the circle of budding artists giving advice in a parental manner.

It was a bit too much for me and I refused his help but remembered the experience of the Saturdays spent in Seal Street with a group of older blokes who were dedicated to thier art.

Tyson Smith had his workshops at the Bluecoat and I made an application to have a separate listing within the English Heritage listing of his studio at the Bluecoat in School Lane.

Those English Heritics saw it a more fitting proposition to knock it down.

What a tourist attraction this would now make but instead http://www.liverpoolmonuments.co.uk/tyson/workshop06.htm  it is now a shop selling cheap Chinese imports that do nothing to evoke the history of that area.

He sculpted reliefs for "The Crown" a hotel and public house on the East Lancashire Road http://www.liverpoolmonuments.co.uk/sculpture/crown01.html  that in an act o vadalism was knocked down last year by a bunch of morons and this was allowed by an even larger group of clowns the City Council.

He also did work out of the city this is a monument he erected in Accrington. http://www.liverpoolmonuments.co.uk/tyson/accrington/content/figure01_large.html

Son of a lithographic printer and engraver, Herbert Tyson Smith was Liverpool born and educated at Liverpool University.

He enrolled in evening classes at the college of art where he studies clay modelling, plaster casting and stone carving.

He also studies drawing under Augustus John at the "Art Sheds" and University School of Art where he met Charles Allen, head of sculpture.

He joined the Royal Engineers at the outbreak of war in 1914 and was stationed at Dymchurch, Kent.

Honorary degree at the University of Liverpool. 1948 (George) Herbert Tyson Smith, MA.

Honorary instructor in Craftsmanship at Liverpool University School of Architecture.

He exhibited at Walker Art Gallery and the Sandon Studios where he was a member of the Sandon Studios Society.

pic courtesy of Chambre Hardman archive Liverpool