Blood Swept Lands
and Seas of Red, 2014
Paul Cummins & Tom Piper

The artist Paul Cummins remembers, ‘One rainy day in 2012, I ducked into my local library for shelter and for some reason started looking at wills. I found one written by a woman from Derby who had disguised herself as a man and gone off to fight – and die – in the first world war. One phrase leapt out: “Blood swept lands and seas of red where angels fear to tread.” I started to think about the war’s death toll and discovered that 888,246 British and Colonial soldiers died.’

Cummins had been working in ceramics since university. He decided to memorialise all those deaths using the transient and fragile medium of clay. Three hundred people were involved in making nearly one million poppies at three different sites. They rolled, cut and shaped every poppy by hand. It was agreed that the Tower of London would be the site of the memorial. The masterstroke came when designer Tom Piper proposed that the poppies should cascade from high windows on two sides of the Tower.

The last poppy was installed on 11 November 2019. Five million people saw the piece, described
as the most popular art installation and the most effective commemoration in British history.

Art in Focus is curated by Meryl Doney

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This is an extract from an article published in the November 2024 edition of Reform

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