ICV 27 - Speaker 16: Ralph Kelly

Empire Flag at Imperial University, The Huxley Building, London

Kelly spoke about the Empire flag of the UK, so appropriate for a talk at Imperial University.  Ralph Kelly's paper was simply entitled A Flag for Empire.

The Imperial flag for the British Empire has been carted to dust bin of history.  But for a little while, persons across the British Empire were encouraged to celebrate 'Empire Day.'  The British were heads and shoulders leading the world with technologies and other important discoveries at the time.  Likewise the connectivity between the colonies were rather strong, at the beginning of the 1900s.

Kelly noted that Empire Day started in Canada, but become a global holiday across the Empire.  Eventually a flag was created to honor this day which featured the coat of arms of Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the Star of India in the center of the cross on white canton UK flag. 


Here is a photo of the Empire Flag being waved at the end of WWII.

ICV 27 - Speaker 15: Alan Hardy

Hardy spoke about new ways to format flags and code for the various national colours.  In an effort to standardize colours and ratios of flags a cutting edge set of new flag proposals for the nations were illustrated.

Notice that Hardy added a yellow ring to the national flag of Bangladesh to provide contrast.  China's flag was given a major zoom in, with the flag of South Korea underwent a major change.

ICV 27 - Speaker 14: Scot Guenter

 

 Guenter illustrated the various on goings within and the varied approaches to vexillology.  The traditional route according to Scot is the scholarly approach that requires lots of reading and sifting through books.  A second avenue is the active vexillologist who promotes certain ideas, mostly centered on reforming bad flag design. 


Guenter cited Roman Mars as connected to Vexillology in action and discussed the effect of such promotions in the media to cause of vexillology. 

Always giving a delightful and well presented paper, Scot Guenter is a corner stone in modern day post-Whitney Smith vexillology.   Guenter adheres to the original academic aspect of Whiteney's work. 

He also ended his presentation with a homework assignment, that everyone in vexillology should read the thesis of William Crampton, the UK's version of Whitney Smith.   

ICV 27 Speaker 13: Manuela Schmoger

 Schmoger revealed the on going personal efforts to catalogue flags of local municipalities flags in Germany.  It is often a time consuming practice, yet the rewards are compelling.  Often it is that local municipalities are not aware of local symbols.  But Schmoger was able to get most of the local flags charted in Bavaria and publish the date on newer easy to use Wikis.

Schmoger ended the talk by recruiting others to help.

ICV 27 Speaker 12: Roberto Breschi

Breschi discussed how the local municipality flags from the 1860s were rediscovered. 

Breschi ran into an old index book of flags for Italian municipalities.  Although index publications are often less than friendly reading, they are trustworthy resources.  The index that Brechi discovered was dated to 1869.

Apparently several flags were created to celebrate Alighieri's 600th birthday, who was influential in establishing modern Italian; Dante Alighieri was born in 1265.  Alighieri is best known for his work the Divine Comedy 1320. 

Eventually Breschi was able to match up index numbers from a lost collection of flags were literally wafting away in a museum basement.    

Identifying lost flags is a cumbersome process, but Breschi was able to reconnect unidentifiable flags to their celebratory event in 1865, it was true tale of a successful vexillological archaeologist. 

IVC 27 - Speaker 11: Rachel Phelan

Phelan discussed in exquisite detail the preservation efforts of the Irish Republic Flag of the 1916 Easter Rising.  Her paper was entitled What's Up with the Big Green Flag?  The Conservation of the flag of the Irish Republic.   Phelan was charged with honoring and preserving the original Irish Republic flag which is now 101 years old. 

Phelan showed us that flag was captured by the British and treated as a hunting prize, hung upside down in imperial contempt.  However, as relations between the UK and Ireland eased she showed us a short clip of its honorable return to Ireland.

The paint on this historical flag was turning to dust and major distortions were noticeable, which required the use of expensive and impressive machine technologies, something of the gelatine solution was used to preserve the flag itself. 

Rachel also corrected the legendary tale of its creation.  Flag restoration is complicated process that involves many individuals and specific experts.  But Phelan was the lead coordinator to help preserve and establish one of Ireland's Original flags.  It is now under proper care and can be seen by the public at large in Ireland.

ICV 27 - Speaker 10: Ralph Bartlett

The flags of a local artist were featured with his paper Flags by King for Country.  The title is wonderful play on words of the featured flag designer named Robert King Crawford.  Crawford designed several flags for social events in his local community in Australia.  Crawford often used Good Flag principles before the publication of Good Flag, Bad Flag.

It was keenly notes that documentation of early flag exploits before the rise of the internet is important.  Many flags can get lost in the shuffle, but by focusing one persons unique and collection of flags is solid work within vexillology.