![]() The Queen later spoke about the memorial in her annual Christmas Message, broadcast on 25 December 2014. ![]() 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 the Duke of Edinburgh on 16 October. Reading of the Roll of Honour, to be followed by playing of the Last Post Īt 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. 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. After that day a team of about 8,000 volunteers began removing the flowers. 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. 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 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). 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 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. The poppies were added to the installation progressively by volunteers. The ceramic poppies were individually hand-made at Cummins' ceramics works in Derbyshire and at Johnson Tiles in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent. 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 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. View of the Tower of London from The Shard, August 2014, with Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red visible in the moat ![]() The work was created by Paul Cummins Ceramics in conjunction with Historic Royal Palaces to be displayed in the moat of the Tower of London, which was used in the early days of the war as a training ground for City of London workers who had enlisted to fight – the " Stockbrokers' Battalion". The poem was contained in the soldier's unsigned will, found by Cummins among old records in Chesterfield, Derbyshire. The poem begins: "The blood swept lands and seas of red,/ Where angels dare to tread /. It was written by an unknown World War I soldier from Derbyshire, who joined up in the early days of the war and died at the Front during the First World War. The work's title came from a poem discovered by Paul Cummins and was used by Tom Piper as the inspiration for his conceptual design. The work's title was taken from the first line of a poem by an unknown soldier in World War I. The ceramic artist was Paul Cummins, with conceptual design by the stage designer Tom Piper. 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. Statistics source: Tower of London Remembers īlood 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.
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