Citizens living in areas behind the lines, but close enough to have hordes of soldiers passing through their towns and villages, were quick to see the potential for producing items to sell to the soldiers.

Such enterprise continued, albeit with a different mood, after the Armistice, with the flood of pilgrims visiting the places where loved ones fought and died. Added to this market was the almost unlimited supply of free raw materials, namely the piles of empty shell cases that littered the post-war battlefields.

Where you find pieces of trench art with town crests, rather than regimental crests, it is more than likely these were purchased on pilgrimages to the Western Front in the early twenties.

In fairness I would still consider these to constitute trench art, given they are make in a theatre of war and deliberately from the detritus of war, although, obviously, pieces with an Arras town crest are likely to be more common that one with an Infantry Regiment crest on !