An Artist Crafted Remembrance Day Poppies Out of Lamb Heart Tissue
Image: Paddy Hartley

FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

An Artist Crafted Remembrance Day Poppies Out of Lamb Heart Tissue

​Unlike the artificial ones, this one was built to wither away.​

On November 11 every year, the poppy holds significant sway over the UK. Since John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" was published in 1915, the red flower has become a hallmark for veterans, for remembering the dead, and honoring those who passed in the name of war. It seems poetic, and somewhat morbid, that someone would craft poppies out of the tissue of lambs' hearts.

"Some regard the poppy as a tool of propaganda and patriotism, and as someone who chooses to not wear a poppy during remembrance week, I find the increasingly vocal peer pressure to wear one is tangible, and at times disquieting," Paddy Hartley, the artist who created the poppies, wrote in a statement.

Advertisement

Made out of the lambs' heart tissue, horsehair, and cotton, Hartley worked with Dr. Ian Thompson of King's College in London to slice, compress, freeze, mold, and stitch together the components to make them look like poppies in full bloom. The poppies are up for display across London at the moment before making tours around the rest of the UK.

"Papaver rhoeas" on display at the Sir John Soanes Museum. Image: Paddy Hartley

They're stuck into glass bottles, where the poppies will eventually decompose, making the water cloudy. The poppies will eventually just disappear. It's a distinctly opposite take on the artificial poppies you see pinned to people's shirts today; this one will wither away and probably won't end up in a bin at the end of the day.

Every year, 50 million poppies are manufactured for Remembrance Day. Every year also revives discussions about reasons why some people opt out of wearing one. One reason is that it's become politically charged. Not every person feels comfortable with publicly displaying patriotism, not everyone subscribes to the poppy's culture of remembrance, and not everyone supports the military or war.

Image: Paddy Hartley

Another reason people opt out of wearing them is because the poppy's original intent has been lost—the last veterans of World War I have died off, and we can only speak through secondhand experience about how traumatizing trench warfare was. We now view war through a very different lens than our grandparents did.

Hartley's way of memorializing the day then, comes in the form of a sort of vanitas: a visceral form of art that acts as a reminder of human mortality. It's also a reminder that politics and nationalism are just two small factors in of the grander act of memorialization.

"Having lovingly fashioned each poppy from a single lamb's heart, the hardest part of this work is accepting its finite, terminal nature, and that each poppy has a limited lifespan," Hartley wrote. "Their existence must be cherished for the time they—we, you or I—exist."