Cup

Creativity from the trenches

This small aluminium drinking cup was probably made by soldiers recuperating in a hospital at Steenvorde in northern France where New Zealand nurse, Margaret (Daisy) Hitchcock, was working. Margaret Hitchcock nursed for the duration of the First World War. She first served with the French Flag Nursing Corps and then with the New Zealand Military Nursing Service.

The cup is significant as an example of trench art or rehabilitation craft made during the Great War. The outside of the cup is decorated entirely with vertical stripes of horizontally zigzagged hatched marks, made by turning the vessel on a lathe. Overtop the raised lettering reads 'Hopital de Steenvoordeen 1914-1915'. On the base of the cup the hatched pattern continues in concentric rings covering the base. Two hand-engraved crossed flags overlay the hatched base. The crossed flags signify the solidarity between the countries represented - France and New Zealand. The cup's handle is made from a single thickness of aluminium, hand-engraved with the name 'Guignolet' - a French wild cherry liqueur.

A gift for a nurse

Margaret Hitchcock was born in 1883 to parents Maria and Henry Hitchcock of Wellington. She trained as a nurse and left Wellington in 1910, with her friend Lily Lind, to undertake midwifery training in Dublin, Ireland. On completion of the training, they travelled to England, and were living in London working privately as nurses when war broke out in 1914. The French Flag Nursing Corps, like the French Red Cross, accepted volunteers of all nationalities, providing board and lodging, or an allowance for such. Hitchcock and Lind were among a small group of New Zealand nurses already in England who joined the French Flag Nursing Corps and quickly travelled to France. She was stationed initially at Rouen, then posted to a military hospital at Steenvoorde where she probably acquired this item. During her service in the War, Hitchcock received a small collection of trench art and rehabilitative art from soldiers she cared for.