Sunday 7 December 2014

My poppy from the Tower of London display

This week, my ceramic poppy from the display Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red arrived.  I bought it back in September.  The artwork was a stunning sight, and 2 parts of it are to tour.  The Weeping Window is the cascade of poppies which can be seen pouring out of a window in the Tower - see below.













Wave is the curling swathe of poppies which rises up to create an arch over the entrance to the Tower.  Both will tour Britain until 2018.





This is my poppy - thankfully is wasn't damaged, and yes, it does have a stem but I haven't assembled it yet.


6 comments:

Kathryn Warner said...

Gorgeous! Wish I could have seen the Tower poppies.

Katarzyna Ogrodnik-Fujcik said...

Beautiful! Since when precisely were the poppies at the Tower? I didn't see them when I was in London a few years ago. I know they have a special meaning to bear, reaching back to WWI. Am I correct?

Anerje said...

I wish I could have seen them as well!

Kasia, they are part of a commemoration for World War 1, and each one represents a fallen soldier. They began planting them in August. They are ceramic poppies, and were planted in groups daily by volunteers and various royals, ministers etc. Since Armistice day, they have been gathered in and sold to raise money. So they were only on show for 4 months. They proved a huge tourist attraction.

Anerje said...

I should add the money raised goes to charity. They were designed by the artists Paul Cummins and Tom Piper, and there were 888,246 altogether.

Katarzyna Ogrodnik-Fujcik said...

My firend Joan- you surely know her from my blog - was lucky enough to see them during her trip in September. Now I can remember that she too explained that the poppies represent the souls so unnecessarily lost in what the British call the Great War - we, the Polish, use the words to describe WWII, in which we lost the entire generation of young and promising poets and writers.

Anerje said...

I think it's important we never forget. I refer to the wars as WW1 and WW11. I'm sure there will be something to mark an important anniversary for WW11. I had Polish step-relatives and heard some heart-breaking stories from Poland in WW11.