Postcard, 'New Zealand'

This embroidered postcard was probably sent by a soldier of the New Zealand (Maori) Pioneer Battalion to Miss Sybil Mary Lee (1872-1956) during the First World War. Miss Lee was a missionary with the Church Missionary Society in New Zealand. In 1915, she was granted six months leave of absence to visit England, but quickly found work visiting Maori soldiers at Wandsworth and Walton-on-Thames hospitals and stayed for two and a half years.

During the First World War (1914-19), French women and girls embroidered silk postcards for soldiers to send home to their wives, mothers, sisters and girlfriends. Hundreds of thousands of men from the British Empire, including New Zealand, were stationed in France. The anxieties of separation and distance fuelled a thriving cottage industry of postcard making.

They are not ordinary postcards. Delicate silk embroidered with flowers, flags and messages of love and affection, were attached to card, but were obviously not robust enough to be franked and sent as normal postcards. Instead, they were carefully sent in their own envelopes, or safely tucked into letters. They were meant to stay pristine and beautiful, to be cherished by the recipient.

This delicate souvenirfeatures the New Zealand flag and insignia of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force.