page_title: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red
section_title: Form
hierarchical_section_title: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red / Form
caption_attribution_description: Tower of London Remembers. To mark the centenary anniversary of the First World War the Tower of London is creating an evolving art installation "Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red". Formed of 888,246 ceramic poppies by artist Paul Cummins, with setting by stage designer Tom Piper, each poppy represents a British military fatality during the war. The installation was officially unveiled on 5 August 2014, one hundred years since the first full day of Britain's involvement in the First World War and will be in place until 11 November 2014. On 24 August I helped to build a just a little more of the installation by constructing and planting a batch of poppies. I believe it is now (as in these photos) about a quarter completed. Each poppy is a life lost - when it is completed maybe it will help to demonstrate the scale of those numbers which we really cannot imagine.
context_page_description: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red was a public art installation created in the moat of the Tower of London, England, between July and November 2014. It commemorated the centenary of the outbreak of World War I and consisted of 888,246 ceramic red poppies, each intended to represent one British or Colonial serviceman killed in the War. The ceramic artist was Paul Cummins, with conceptual design by the stage designer Tom Piper. The work's title was taken from the first line of a poem by an unknown soldier in World War I.
context_section_description: The work consisted of a sea of ceramic red poppies, in a design which appeared to flow out of the Tower itself and ripple across the moat. There were a series of designed elements which added drama, height and movement to the installation: the "Weeping Window" flowing out of a window in Legge's Mount in the West Moat, (which became the iconic image), "Over the Top", a cascade of poppies down the wall on the wharf side of the moat and the "Wave", a free-standing twisted metal sculpture covered in poppies which curled over the main causeway into the Tower. 
  The ceramic poppies were individually hand-made at Cummins' ceramics works in Derbyshire and at Johnson Tiles in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent. The poppies were added to the installation progressively by volunteers. The 497,000 kg of the Etruria Marl-based Etruscan red earthenware used, as well as the majority of the manufacturing equipment and materials, were supplied by Potclays Limited in Stoke-on-Trent. There were eventually 888,246 of the flowers, representing one count of the number of British and Colonial military fatalities in World War I.
  The first poppy was "planted" on 17 July 2014, and the work was unveiled on 5 August (the day following the centenary of Britain's entry into the war). A team of about 17,500 volunteers put the poppies in place, overseen by Tom Piper and Yeoman Warder Jim Duncan, making this a true public artwork. The last one was planted on 11 November 2014 (Remembrance Day), by a 13-year-old cadet, Harry Hayes, from the Combined Cadet Force (CCF) of Reading Blue Coat School. After that day a team of about 8,000 volunteers began removing the flowers.  Members of the public had been able to pre-order the ceramic poppies for £25 each, with a share of the proceeds (estimated at more than £15 million) going to six service charities: COBSEO, Combat Stress, Coming Home, Help for Heroes, the Royal British Legion and SSAFA.
  At around sunset each day between 1 September and 10 November, the names of 180 World War I service personnel, nominated by members of the public to appear on a Roll of Honour, were read aloud by a Yeoman Warder or guest reader, followed by the Last Post bugle call.
caption: Volunteer planting poppies
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