Tracey Emin turned down an offer of £1million to recreate one of her most famous works, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-95, which was destroyed in a warehouse fire in 2004.

Speaking at the start of her Edinburgh retrospective, Emin — who habitually refers to her lost work as “the tent” — said that she had been contacted by the Saatchi Gallery after the Momart fire in East London and offered the sum, equivalent to the insurance payout, to make a copy.

“To recreate it would have been morally wrong. I recreated small pieces [for this show] but that work really lends itself to being recreated. But to remake the tent would just be silly. It wouldn't have that emotional input to it,” said Emin, who said that she had been upset by the offer. “Had I made the tent, the insurance company would have paid out the insurance money to the Saatchi Gallery and then the gallery would have paid the money to me to make the tent,” she said.

The work had 102 names sewn on to its sides, including Emin's lovers, her aborted foetuses and relatives that she slept with as a child. “It was really sweet, it smelt nice, it was cosy. It wasn't simply the names of everyone I'd ever slept with. It was about intimacy,” said the artist.

Not everyone involved in contemporary art world mourned the incineration of the tent, which was destroyed along with about 100 pieces by artists including Damien Hirst and Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Emin, though, had no doubts, calling it a “seminal, fantastic and amazing work” which she would have loved to see alongside My Bed, which was equally “seminal, fantastic and amazing”. That work, comprising an unmade bed scattered with the detritus of the artist's personal life, is one of the centrepieces of the Edinburgh show.

Emin said that the retrospective was a “very emotional” collection. It would appeal to “people who have a sensitive nature that aren't afraid to express something”.

She said that her biggest fans were aged between 15 and 20, though she added that she knew she was “a massive gay icon”. Men in general “have a lot more trouble looking at my work”, she said.

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