Neville Crawford on Military Framing (2)

PART TWO

SOME EXAMPLES –

POSTCARD To Jack with love from Mollie 17.10.16 –
Facsimile made for framing. Original encapsulated for archival purposes.
Jack was wounded in the Battle of Fromelles where several thousand of Australians were killed. Somehow the mail got lost and was found in the mud which is still today embeddded in the paper.

BAYONET FRAME –
Trench art, buttons, badges etc – cleaned and coated with Incralac.
Verdigris encrusted shell – minor clean and treated with microcrystalline wax to hold at current point of “decay”.
Bayonet – submerged in phosphoric acid solution to at least partially convert ferric oxide to ferric phosphate. Then placed in an acetone bath to drive off residual water and allowed to dry. Followed by brushing on a solution of microcrystalline wax, driving this into the crevices with a hair-dryer.
Note – there must be millions of items such as this buried on the Western Front and it has no particular value, if it had, a metals conservator would have to be consulted.

Photograph of WWI Soldier –
This is a recreation of a typical WWI frame, using an original frame for Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance.

3 WWII Frames – –
Two with replica medals for different members of the family. One frame contains a Military Cross as mentioned earlier in the group which gives it provenance it is worth over $8000, without the other medals its value drops to about $1000.

WWI Frame –
This soldier after having had his dictionary stop a piece of shrapnel, was later killed. The Memorial Plaque at the base of the frame was presented to his family.
His personal effects which were also sent to the family included the coins now displayed in this frame.

Dictionary with embedded shrapnel
Sewing coins to back of frame
Sewing coins to back of frame
The supporting structures for the items to be framed
Everything sitting in place
The top mat in place – note – the pencil marks for the hand-cutting have yet to be removed. The tools used in this manufacture are to the right of the photo