Resonance 28/11/14

The Beautiful Game.

My interests in the ceramic artefacts of The Great War and the moving and inspirational stories behind the Christmas Truce have come together in a new piece of work, currently on temporary display in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent. The Beautiful Game is inspired by the events of Christmas 1914 when an unofficial truce called a temporary halt to the carnage on the Western Front.

The Beautiful Game adopts the genre of Crested China (a type of souvenir-ware, produced in the Potteries by the firm of W.H. Goss and many others, which was at the height of its popularity during the Great War) and takes the form of a British and a German football team. The individual figures are loosely modelled on crested china originals; a footballer and a World War 1 ‘Tommy’, and each bears the name and regimental crest of a soldier known to have participated in, or at least witnessed, the Christmas truce.

Following the raising of decorated Christmas trees along the parapets of the German trenches on Christmas Eve, carols were sung, enjoyed and applauded by both sides. On Christmas Day, exchanges of gifts, addresses and souvenirs took place along the front line, and it is known that several improvised football matches took place between the opposing trenches on that day. It would seem that the shared experience of Christmas had eroded the notion of ‘difference’, built up by years of propaganda, and replaced this with a sense of commonality and camaraderie. Sadly this was not to last.

Stephen Dixon