page_title: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red
section_title: Official visits and public reaction
hierarchical_section_title: Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red / Official visits and public reaction
caption_attribution_description: English: Yeoman Warder reading from the roll of honour alongside a bugler who will sound the Last Post"" among ceramic poppies in the temporary art installation Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at the Tower of London.
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 installation was visited by the Princes William and Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge on the day of its opening, and by the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh on 16 October. The Queen later spoke about the memorial in her annual Christmas Message, broadcast on 25 December 2014.
  In all, an estimated 5 million people saw the installation, and the huge visitor demand saw the Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians join calls to try and extend the period for which the installation remained at the Tower so that more visitors would be able to pay their respects. Historic Royal Palaces and the artist Paul Cummins resisted such calls, stating that the transience of the installation was a key part of the artistic concept, and that the poppies would be removed as planned and distributed to their purchasers. On 8 November it was announced that Wave, which rose up over the Tower's entrance, would remain in place until the end of the month and that following this, the sculptures Wave and Weeping Window would be taken on a tour of the UK, organised by 14–18 NOW. This tour would last until the centenary of the armistice of World War I in November of 2018 and visit 19 locations; after the tour the sculptures would enter the Imperial War Museum's collection. A campaign was launched in December 2014 to bring the sculptural elements to Stoke-on-Trent during the tour itinerary as the majority of materials and a large number of ceramic poppies were manufactured in the city. In April 2016, about halfway through the tour, Weeping Window was installed at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney, Britain's most northerly cathedral, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Jutland, the biggest naval engagement of the First World War.
  In recognition of the work, Paul Cummins and Tom Piper were both awarded the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2015 New Year Honours.
caption: Reading of the Roll of Honour, to be followed by playing of the Last Post
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