How to Make 888,246 Ceramic Poppies for the Dead

You’ve seen this Tower of London exhibit? There are so few good ways to visually represent a national tragedy, and this flood of red poppies commemorating the hundredth anniversary of World War I seems about as effective as could be. They were handmade from clay under the direction of ceramic artist Paul Cummins: the people who worked in this studio must have a really precise grip on the magnitude of 888,246.