A few scraps of crumpled red silk and cotton, one of the oldest surviving Scottish remembrance poppies, has been restored in time for Armistice Day. It was made in 1930, just four years after the separate Scottish poppy scheme was founded.
The poppies made and distributed in Scotland are still distinct from those made in England; they are more botanically correct with a four-petal flower and a stem without a leaf.
There was an immediate protest this month when some Scottish branches of Sainsbury’s were found to be stocking the wrong variety.
The Royal British Legion was founded in 1921, the year of the first official fundraising Poppy Day, choosing the flower that had already become a cherished emblem of the first world war, inspired by In Flanders Fields, a poem by John McCrae, a Canadian army surgeon.
The following year Maj George Howson opened the first poppy factory in London, which soon employed hundreds of disabled ex-servicemen, but there was such a demand for them that few reached Scotland. In 1926 Lady Haig, wife of Earl Haig, a veteran of the Battle of the Somme and one of the founders of the Legion, opened the first Scottish factory in Edinburgh.
The crumpled flower in the National Army Museum collection was given in memory of a brother who died in the war, but it had not survived well: it was so creased and grubby that the conservators thought it might not survive their efforts to restore it. Its petals were gently cleaned and steamed open, and broken silk threads delicately repaired, gradually revealing the central button reading Haig’s Fund.
The poppy will be on display for the first time when the museum reopens next year after a £23m rebuild.
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