AWM Collection Record: ART90951

AWM image ART90951

ID Number: ART90951
Title: Tree
Maker: Gunther, Pat
Object type: Applied Art
Place made: Netherlands East Indies: Sumatra, Palembang
Date made: 1944
Physical description: wool and cotton embroidery on fabric
Summary: Depicts an embroidery completed in Palembang, Sumatra of a large eucalypt gum tree and surrounding landscape. A number of Australian nurses, including Pat Gunther, survived the sinking of the 'Vyner Brooke' and endured captivity at Palembang and Muntok. The women developed ways of surviving the harsh conditions, and ways of maintaining tenuous links with normality, however remote normality may have been. A silver jam spoon and pair of eyebrow tweezers came to signify the last vestiges of a civilised world. This embroidery was woven from threads pulled from clothing at the prisoner of war camp.
Copyright: Unlicensed copyright; External copyright
Related subject: Embroidery; Handicrafts; Plant relics; Vegetation
Related place: Netherlands East Indies: Sumatra; Netherlands East Indies: Sumatra, Palembang
Related conflict: Second World War, 1939-1945

Last-Modified: Tue, 07 Apr 2009 18:10:30 GMT

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