Transcript
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by Freeman's.
Speaker: Since 1805, Freeman's has been part of the Fabric of Philadelphia, helping generations of clients in the buying and selling of fine and decorative arts, jewelry, modern design, and more.
Speaker: Freeman's is excited to announce the upcoming single-owner auction, A Grand Old Flag, the Stars and Stripes collection of Peter J. Keim.
Speaker: Learn more about this collection of historic American flags and the upcoming auction at freemansauction.com.
Speaker: Visit freemansauction.com to view the auction catalog and register to bid now.
Speaker: Freeman's, Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
Speaker: Welcome back to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
Speaker: I'm Ben Miller, and with me, of course, is Michael Diaz-Griffith.
Speaker: Hi, Michael.
Speaker: Hi, Ben.
Speaker: So in our last episode, we talked about baseball cards, which I suggested were maybe the most American thing that one could possibly collect.
Speaker: I was wrong about that because in this episode, we're going to be talking about literally collecting American flags.
Speaker: And I think that this is a really good development because I've heard a few rumblings from folks that we only pay attention to high style objects at the expense of material culture.
Speaker: And as a fan of American material culture, you know, I'm quite happy to address that concern.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, this is no, you know, Regency commode.
Speaker: This is no collection of, you know, fine 18th century paintings.
Speaker: This is a group.
Speaker: It certainly ain't silver.
Speaker: And it certainly ain't silver.
Speaker: But it is, you know, it's an interesting collection.
Speaker: This is the collection of a man named Dr. Peter Kime, who's collected flags for quite a long time and is now selling the bulk of his collection in a sale at Freeman's Auction House.
Speaker: And the sale is going to be on Sunday the 24th.
Speaker: And Peter is a really interesting character.
Speaker: And I was interested to talk to him because, you know, he doesn't come from this world of committed decorative arts scholarship that you and I spend so much of our time engrossed in and that, frankly, so many of the people who have appeared on Curious Objects have come out of.
Speaker: But instead, you know, Peter,
Speaker: it seems is really motivated, well, to put it simply by patriotism, and by a fascination with American history.
Speaker: And these flags are a pretty interesting way of interfacing with that.
Speaker: Yeah, and he's really a collector's collector, right?
Speaker: Because he came to the topic as an amateur.
Speaker: And now
Speaker: he's an expert, right?
Speaker: Undeniably.
Speaker: But that expertise never comes from a scholarly place.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: It always comes from a place of passion and a very direct kind of interest, which I was really impressed by.
Speaker: So I think the idea of collecting flags is pretty interesting in itself.
Speaker: Obviously, it's a potent symbol.
Speaker: And, you know, we're familiar with, you know, the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.
Speaker: And I mean, now the national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner.
Speaker: But then we also know about flag burnings, Vietnam protests.
Speaker: We were just talking a minute ago about Colin Kaepernick, who's brought a whole new dimension of interpretation to the idea of the American flag and what it means to us.
Speaker: So it can sort of, the flag by itself can maybe be seen as a blank canvas or a neutral symbol that it's, the people who use it are able to direct to whatever cause they want to direct it.
Speaker: Well, and maybe, you know, maybe it's politically neutral, right, in the sense that it represents the nation, but not one particular perspective within it.
Speaker: But symbolically, it's so charged.
Speaker: And, you know, I think that we find that that charge, that power can be wielded to different ends, whether they're rhetorical ends or
Speaker: in the case of a flag burning, you know, it's the destruction of the flag itself only, you know, generates more power in the symbolism, right?
Speaker: So it's kind of a, it's a fascinating object for that sense alone, that its destruction is such a powerful act that it has a place in our culture.
Speaker: You know, we're through, whether we're talking about the Vietnam era or the way the flag is wielded today, it's,
Speaker: Its maintenance, the way it's handled and its life is a great concern to many, which I wish we could say about more material culture, actually.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, the passions run high.
Speaker: Well, it's fun.
Speaker: I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker: You and I both grew up in the South, and obviously there's no shortage of flag-related passions in that part of the country.
Speaker: One of the most interesting paradoxes to me was always seeing the Confederate battle flag flying alongside or even on the same flagpole as the American flag.
Speaker: and thinking about the message of, uh, of these two flags representing, well, at the time two warring countries and yet taking pride simultaneously in both of them.
Speaker: What a, what a strange thing to wrap your head around.
Speaker: Precisely.
Speaker: No, the contradictory nature of Southern patriotism to the union is, uh,
Speaker: Well, I don't know that I got much further for you than you and my thinking about that.
Speaker: I remain actually a bit confused about what it all means.
Speaker: I think that we can certainly agree that patriotism in itself, to whatever body, to whatever nation, is just such a powerful thing.
Speaker: force that some people seem to be just as invested in the patriotism as in the particular, you know, ideological character, you know, or value system of the nation that's being kind of represented, which is interesting, right?
Speaker: Like just duty to flag as a primary force, no matter which flag, or maybe even the duty can be pursued in the direction of two different flags.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah, seemingly contradictory.
Speaker: And yet, I mean, it's so the collection is quite large and there are a lot of interesting objects in it, a lot of interesting flags.
Speaker: But there was one that really caught my eye that I wanted to chat with you about, which dates to 1858.
Speaker: So apropos of our conversation about the Confederacy,
Speaker: And in the decade leading up to the Civil War, American politics was divided along a lot of complicated lines, frankly, that are maybe a little difficult to understand from a modern perspective.
Speaker: But one of those very strange lines was defined by the emergence of what's commonly referred to as the know-nothings,
Speaker: So this was an organization that came out of a secret society called the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner.
Speaker: So already we have an interest in the flag here.
Speaker: So it's a secret society that was initially defined by its anti-Catholic sentiments.
Speaker: And as it grew and sort of became less secret and more public and more ambitious and finally formed into a political party, this organization took on all manner of nativist sentiments, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic.
Speaker: This party actually, if I'm remembering right, catapulted the first Jewish candidate to national public office in the United States on an anti-Catholic platform.
Speaker: So, you know, figure that one out.
Speaker: The history of this country is, yeah, there are many twists and turns.
Speaker: And they co-opted the image of George Washington,
Speaker: Correct, who was the sort of ultimate human of the American party.
Speaker: And they slapped it on their flag.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's fascinating to me because, you know, we're so used to the Canton and stars that in their abstraction, you know, don't speak directly to our history and symbolize it in this, you know, very ceremonial or ritualistic way.
Speaker: But this Know Nothing flag that we're looking at doesn't have that appearance, right?
Speaker: It has stripes.
Speaker: Those look familiar.
Speaker: Yeah, although it has a lot of them.
Speaker: I think it's 17 stripes altogether.
Speaker: Yeah, it looks a little bit like a French sailor's jersey.
Speaker: But with George Washington hanging out on it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which is so interesting.
Speaker: I mean, you know...
Speaker: you know, by the 1840s, he was a figure who, regardless of his personal views, could represent nativism in this already historically removed way, right?
Speaker: And to sort of be co-opted just as an image of, you know, father country.
Speaker: Also, you know, practically within the lifetime of many of his peers, his younger peers.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, really fascinating flag.
Speaker: I mean, one of the sort of interesting aspects to me of Washington's legacy is that his aspirations to political neutrality open up interpretation of him in any number of different ways.
Speaker: I mean, people from all manner of political factions can claim him as a as a hero.
Speaker: And yeah, and these no-nothings were certainly no exception to that rule.
Speaker: And this flag is, you know, it's, as you say, there's an embroidered image of George Washington that's essentially replacing the little square where you would normally have the blue field with the white stars on it.
Speaker: And above him, you have an eagle, an eagle,
Speaker: and actually several little American flags with their own stars and stripes on them.
Speaker: So it's a sort of a Russian nesting doll of American flags.
Speaker: Well, I don't want to lead us away from this flag, but just that phrase, a Russian nesting doll of flags, really came to me just now as an image of flag collecting.
Speaker: And I think
Speaker: One of the things that's so interesting about it and about the collecting practice of your guest today, Ben, is that while we might associate patriotism with kind of static ideas about the moral integrity of a native land and a sense that it's unchanging or that it has a spirit that is comprehensible
Speaker: at any given moment in time in one way, you know, even though we can see that in the patriotism that leads to flag collecting, actually, the fascinating thing is that it's an exploration of the evolution of the nation, right?
Speaker: Through these changing flags that change as the nation changes.
Speaker: And how, you know, how fascinating that,
Speaker: the patriotism of someone like your guest is expressed through this, I think, very, you know, kind of detail-oriented and painstaking study of the twists and turns of nation building, you know, including the messy side of nation building.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I mean, he set out to collect a flag, an American flag, with every possible number of stars on it, right, between 13 and 50, and actually even some with more than 50 stars.
Speaker: And as you say, what better encapsulation of the whole scope of American history than this expansionist idea, adding one state, adding another, adding another,
Speaker: growing the scope of the country and in the process changing its character.
Speaker: That growth tracks along with so many debates about the nature of the country's growth, right?
Speaker: Through slavery, through annexation, through this country's few kind of imperialist moments when it was acquiring territory, not in the contiguous United States,
Speaker: I think there are several different phases in American history that we forget about, and these flags remind us.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, there's a whole group of flags in this sail that represent the United States of America as perceived from the perspective of Union states during the Civil War, in which the stars representing the Confederate states have actually been erased.
Speaker: So in some cases, that means making new flags with stars just for the states that belong to the Union.
Speaker: But in other cases, it means taking a flag that had stars for all the states, including now the Confederate states, and...
Speaker: removing those Confederate stars, either cutting them out, unstitching them, or covering them up somehow.
Speaker: And it's, you know, what a sort of poignant, because we have to remember these flags are not
Speaker: at this stage in American history, they're not mass produced.
Speaker: They're made often at home.
Speaker: And great care was taken to make flags that were, in some cases, expandable, because there was an expectation that new states would be added.
Speaker: So the flags are, even within their own, the lifetimes of their original creators were intended to be living documents of American history.
Speaker: Yeah, and I think it wasn't until 1912 or so that an official flag was decided upon.
Speaker: So there were sort of guidelines, but quite a lot of room for interpretation.
Speaker: And I love the idea that the important thing for a given person working on their flag was to create an accurate accounting
Speaker: of where the nation stood on the given day of their stitching, right?
Speaker: So with the pace of communication being slower than it is today, with there being disagreements about the validity of a certain state's accession, there are so many different contingencies that time and space and the politics of the day kind of opened the flag up to, right?
Speaker: So that you could have two people
Speaker: Or you could have five people working on five flags in five different parts of the country on a given day in the 1840s, and they're going to come up with five different results.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And the story of each of those flags is about so much more, you know, it's like you have to look at the,
Speaker: all five to understand the story of the country on that day, right?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, that's so true.
Speaker: And now we have the chance to, or I should say Peter Kime has had the chance through the process of collecting to add his own layer of story on top of it.
Speaker: He and his son wrote a book about the collection, which captures some of their ideas about it.
Speaker: But
Speaker: But we're witnessing right now a transition because that collection is being sold, it's going to be bought by presumably a wide array of different collectors who each have their own particular ideas about why these flags are interesting, what they're going to be.
Speaker: what's potent about them and what they represent to us.
Speaker: And I wonder how different their ideas will be from Peter's and how different Peter's ideas have been from the generations before him that collected these objects and before that who made them.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, it kind of takes us back to the question of patriotism itself.
Speaker: You know, one person's patriotism may mean unquestioning loyalty.
Speaker: And I don't just mean here in America, anywhere.
Speaker: And another person's patriotism may mean, you know, a great deal of questioning of the object of that patriotism, right?
Speaker: So I love the idea that we can have, you know, a celebratory relation to the flag as a national symbol, but it can also act as a kind of cipher for our more complicated or questioning values
Speaker: thinking about, you know, the country and, you know, the idea that this collection could sort of by turn move through both modes, through both kinds of relationships to patriotism, I think is really interesting.
Speaker: So it's a particular, I like the word potent, you know, flags are a particularly potent kind of material culture.
Speaker: There's something about them, man.
Speaker: Just absolutely.
Speaker: It gets us going.
Speaker: Well, I think that's a good note on which to kick off this conversation with Peter.
Speaker: Excellent.
Speaker: Well, I know it's going to be enlightening, and I know that it's also going to be rather entertaining because Peter's a good storyteller.
Speaker: Thanks, Michael.
Speaker: Thanks, Ben.
Speaker: Okay, we'll get right to Dr. Peter Kime.
Speaker: But let me remind you first that you can see images of some of the flags from the collection at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast.
Speaker: If you enjoy the episode, let me ask a favor.
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Speaker: Those ratings are really important in bringing new listeners to the show, and I would really be grateful if you took a few seconds to help us out.
Speaker: If you'd like to get in touch with comments or ideas, you can reach me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
Speaker: And Michael is on Instagram as at Michael D.S.
Speaker: Griffith.
Speaker: With that said, we'll hear from Dr. Keim right after this.
Speaker: Curious Objects is sponsored by Freemans.
Speaker: Since 1805, Freemans has been part of the Fabric of Philadelphia, helping generations of clients in the buying and selling of fine and decorative arts, jewelry, modern design, and more.
Speaker: On December 8th, Freemans will hold its American Art and Pennsylvania Impressionists auction, featuring works by some of the most recognizable names in the field, including N.C.
Speaker: Wyeth, Mary Cassatt, Hans Hoffman, and notable Pennsylvania Impressionists such as Fern Coppage and Daniel Garber.
Speaker: Visit freemansauction.com to view the auction catalog and register to bid now.
Speaker: Freeman's, Philadelphia's auction house.
Speaker: Sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you, wherever you are.
Speaker: You're a grand old rag, you're a high-flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave.
Speaker: You're the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave.
Speaker: I want to start out by asking, you know, I know you have a couple of flags from your collection that are special objects that you are going to tell me about, but I want to start out with a couple of broader questions about how you got into this area of interest and what exactly the collection means to you.
Speaker: Because it's interesting, I have people on this podcast who talk about furniture, and they talk about painting, and I'm a silver dealer.
Speaker: And a lot of these areas of collecting are objects that are somehow useful.
Speaker: Or in the case of paintings, they may be telling intricate stories.
Speaker: They may be highly decorative objects.
Speaker: Flags strike me as a little bit different than any of those categories.
Speaker: They certainly can serve a functional purpose out in the world, but in a collection, what is the draw?
Speaker: What's the appeal?
Speaker: What do you see in a flag?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: My wife and I collected antiques, furniture, lighting, rugs, you name it, we collected it.
Speaker: But we collected it to furnish our home, and we had an 18th century house built for us in southwest Pennsylvania.
Speaker: My background is in medicine.
Speaker: I practiced family medicine for 25 or so years.
Speaker: We had five children, so we were busy into day-to-day life, but antiques intrigued us.
Speaker: And back in 1974, in the summer, we went to a farm sale up in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, which is north central Pennsylvania above Allentown.
Speaker: It's a heavily Amish area and there was a farm sale going on and we had seen in the newspaper ad that it sounded like there was some interesting furniture in it, so we drove up from Pittsburgh.
Speaker: In the course of the afternoon, I came upon a table filled with little glass objects which didn't particularly interest me, but I saw a flag, an old flag in a paper bag and for whatever reason,
Speaker: I asked the farm lady how much you wanted for it.
Speaker: She said $50.
Speaker: I said, well, I'll give you 40.
Speaker: And she took it, I think mainly because it was starting to rain and she wanted to get back in the farmhouse.
Speaker: Anyway, I didn't bother taking it out of the bag actually before I even negotiated it, nor when I bought it.
Speaker: I took it and put it in the back of our station wagon with all the other treasures that we had found during the course of the day, maybe a desk or a chair or table or whatever.
Speaker: And when we got back to Pittsburgh that night and were unloading the treasures, I pulled the paper bag out and took it in the house and took the flag out of it and realized that it looked like I had a hand-sewn 13-star flag.
Speaker: Did you know what a rarity that would be?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: I mean, truly not knowing anything about textiles, sewing methods or fabrics.
Speaker: I really didn't know anything about it, but it had what, you know, with furniture we called a patina to it intrigued me.
Speaker: I became quite inquisitive about it.
Speaker: I bought a couple books.
Speaker: There wasn't much available back then in 74 in the way of information access.
Speaker: I went to the library, saw there were a couple of older books that they didn't have, so I found them through a book dealer and bought them and started reading those.
Speaker: Then I started looking for a textile expert.
Speaker: And after about nine or ten months later, I came upon a conservator by the name of Fonda Thompson.
Speaker: Fonda lived in Sharpsburg, Maryland.
Speaker: And it turned out that I was her family's...
Speaker: family doctor in Pittsburgh.
Speaker: In that nine or ten months, have you looked at any other flags?
Speaker: Had you put this one under a magnifying glass?
Speaker: It was under, so to speak, magnifying glass by me.
Speaker: not actually, because I didn't know what to look for.
Speaker: But once I came upon Fonda and that Christmas Eve at her parents' house, we looked at the flag together and she recognized it as probably around 1860,
Speaker: version and hand-sewn flag originating from Pennsylvania.
Speaker: And she estimated at that time that that was the age, which is really what I was interested in, but she also casually mentioned that it was probably worth around $10,000.
Speaker: In 1974, that was real money.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And then I don't know how much later I happened upon a second flag and bought it.
Speaker: And then it just totally went out of control.
Speaker: And built up to the point where you now have, if I'm not mistaken, somewhere on the order of 400 flags in your collection.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And it was after a period of time of doing a lot of reading, collecting a lot of old books, doing as much reading as I could about the history of the flag, I decided that where I wanted to go with the collection was I wanted to gather a collection including every number of stars from 13 to 50.
Speaker: Ah-ha.
Speaker: Now, as you may know, there never was supposed to be a 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 39, 40, 41, 42, or 22, or 47 star flag.
Speaker: Is that because states were admitted at the same time?
Speaker: Well, with the first flag act, we had 13.
Speaker: Then the second flag act increased it to 15.
Speaker: So Congress never said anything about a 14-star flag.
Speaker: And then we went from 15 to 20 back in the early 1800s.
Speaker: And then at that time, the Congress said that a star would be added for each new state, but not until the following 4th of July.
Speaker: So that meant that if more than one state was admitted between one 4th of July and the next one, all those stars should be added at the same time.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: But I imagine that there were aberrations and exceptions and people making flags that didn't conform.
Speaker: Well, what happened was that when a state was admitted to the Union, grandma or the flag maker at home made a flag and put a star on it for it.
Speaker: I tried to be statehood.
Speaker: So over the period of time, I did gather representative flags with every number of stars.
Speaker: And that's sort of where the collection was going and I was doing a lot of reading.
Speaker: I was doing a little bit of lecturing, mostly with school kids, about the history of the flag.
Speaker: But then one thing really changed the course of all of it.
Speaker: I have always been a fan of New York and go there quite often.
Speaker: I'm a big New York Yankee fan.
Speaker: I hate to say that after the last few days, but we were in New York two days before 9-11 and happened to return to Pittsburgh on Sunday, two days before it.
Speaker: But then over the ensuing six months, a couple of things happened.
Speaker: One, I was contacted for artifacts to include in the traveling exhibit, and that worked out.
Speaker: And then I got the idea that I ought to show my sympathy to New York.
Speaker: So I contacted three of the department stores.
Speaker: Bergdorf Sachs and Barneys, and told them that I had some flags, historic flags, and I'd be glad to loan them at no cost to them for their windows for the anniversary of 9-11.
Speaker: Well, Bergdorf contacted me, David Hoey, and one thing led to another.
Speaker: We met, I showed him some flags, and what came to be was for the only time in the history of Bergdorf, they took all of their merchandise out of the windows.
Speaker: and decorated all of their windows on Fifth Avenue with just my flags.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And that was in 2002?
Speaker: That was in 2002, September of 2002.
Speaker: And then in the course of that exhibit, I was standing on the corner on the street one day with my wife and we're just watching people go by and look at the windows.
Speaker: And a woman came from one direction who happened to be African-American and another woman came the other direction happened to be Asian.
Speaker: And they started talking to each other at the window.
Speaker: And, you know, you just didn't see that in New York City.
Speaker: And pretty soon, one put her arm around the other one because she was sobbing.
Speaker: And one thing that really struck us was that the passion that we feel for our flag without knowing very much about the history of it.
Speaker: Something really changed between 2000 and 2002 in the way that you approach the idea of building this collection.
Speaker: No, it didn't involve building the collection because the collection was pretty well built by that time.
Speaker: What it...
Speaker: told us that was that there was a need to educate Americans about the history of our flag.
Speaker: And that what that led to was my son and I wrote and had published by DK our book on the history of the American flag titled A Grand Old Flag.
Speaker: And it also started a run of doing exhibitions in museums and other venues with the flags, as well as increased amount of public speaking on the history of the flag.
Speaker: And that's sort of where the collection took me and itself.
Speaker: And over the last 20 years, we've done exhibitions in numerous museums across the country and other venues.
Speaker: We did Bergdorf's Windows again in 2008.
Speaker: But...
Speaker: That's what's been going on.
Speaker: And along the way, obviously, I never did stop collecting because there are so many iterations of the American flag, especially being that it wasn't until we had 48 stars that we were told how the stars were to be arranged.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There were no regulations about the placement of the stars in the field.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And some of the most some of the interesting flags that I have, I mean, have red, white and blue stripes.
Speaker: Some of them have a white canton with red stars.
Speaker: Some of them have an eagle in the middle of the field.
Speaker: Any number of folk like renditions of what's exactly the American flag.
Speaker: So that when you look at these iterations or renditions of it, you might say to yourself, if you're a purist, you might say, oh, that's not an American flag.
Speaker: But if you show that flag to 99% of Americans, they'll say, yes, that's an American flag.
Speaker: So I want to circle back in a minute to talk a little bit more about the specifics of some of the flags in your collection.
Speaker: But I'm really interested in this idea that you brought up just a minute ago that while you were watching this conversation happen in front of the display of Verdor, you realized that the flag was really an important symbol and something that was important to know about and learn about.
Speaker: And I'm hoping you can tell me a little bit more about that.
Speaker: What do you think it is that you can learn about America or about us by studying the flag?
Speaker: Well, I think one of the things that it woke me up to that I've been quoted for was a statement that sort of sounds startling at first, but then when you think about it, it's quite apparently true.
Speaker: And that is that the flag means more to you and me
Speaker: than it did to George Washington.
Speaker: Tell me what you mean by that.
Speaker: Well, back in the late 18th century, the use of the American flag was mostly on boats, sailing vessels, to indicate where they were from.
Speaker: It's a pretty well-known fact by historians
Speaker: that the stars and stripes was not carried in the American Revolution.
Speaker: They weren't just just wasn't there at the time or seen a value of use.
Speaker: And that's evolved so tremendously to if you think about to the Civil War.
Speaker: the person that carried the flag into battle did it very proudly and knew most likely that they were going to be the first one to get shot.
Speaker: And when they were shot, what happened?
Speaker: Somebody else picked up the flag.
Speaker: Which is a powerful act of symbolism that you're willing to make that sacrifice.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: But you're saying in the days of the revolution that was an unknown practice?
Speaker: No, it was, yes.
Speaker: It wasn't a known practice.
Speaker: It was known that Washington had pleaded with the quartermaster corps to provide more fiefs, drums, and standards, what flags were called at the time.
Speaker: But it really didn't happen.
Speaker: The painting we see of Washington crossing the Potomac...
Speaker: Not the Potomac, the Delaware.
Speaker: Washington crossing the Delaware with a flag draped over the shoulder of the person behind him was not factual.
Speaker: That painting actually was made 100 years later.
Speaker: They didn't have stars and stripes crossing the Delaware.
Speaker: So what changed in between 1780 and 1860?
Speaker: A number of things.
Speaker: People...
Speaker: The flag became more apparent to people as states were admitted to the Union.
Speaker: You know, declarations were made as to what was to happen with the flag.
Speaker: We had Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner was
Speaker: written and portrayed the flag at Fort McHenry.
Speaker: And people became much more aware of it for what it is to America.
Speaker: In the Civil War, people started displaying the American flag in front of their homes.
Speaker: oftentimes because they were in marginal states and they wanted the Union soldiers to know as they came through their town that they were Unionists, so don't burn down our house, we're behind you.
Speaker: So there were a lot of reasons why the American flag became more significant as time evolved.
Speaker: And then beyond the Civil War, we then came to the centennial period, a period of celebration, when the display of flags increased substantially.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: Coming back to your collection, then, you, as we've mentioned, you have innumerable flags, and each one of them, I'm sure, has its own story to tell.
Speaker: But there are a couple of pieces that stood out that you were going to tell me about that have a particularly interesting story behind them.
Speaker: So could you tell me what are the flags that you have in mind?
Speaker: There are a number of them.
Speaker: In fact, it's... I know, I'm going to... It's going to be hard to restrain yourself to just a couple, I'm sure.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: But, you know, most of the collection is stored in archival boxes, carefully folded and wrapped in acid-free paper.
Speaker: And oftentimes, as I'm going through looking for one particular flag to include in an exhibition, I'll open up another one by mistake and look at it and say to myself, wow, I forgot about this one.
Speaker: And that really happens often.
Speaker: That's a familiar story for a lot of collectors, I think.
Speaker: Oh, isn't it?
Speaker: Yeah, I know.
Speaker: But a couple of flags that I'll tell you about.
Speaker: I have a 33-star flag where there are six horizontal rows of five stars.
Speaker: But to the left of those rows, from the top, are three stars coming down in the top three rows.
Speaker: So it has obvious space for three more stars.
Speaker: Oh, right.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: But the other significant thing about this flag was that it was carried at the first battle of Bull Run.
Speaker: A musician by the name of James Marshall of Company B, 1st Regiment, Rhode Island, detached militia, took the time to document all of that along the hoist strip, which is a strip of fabric along the left side of the flag where it attaches to a pole.
Speaker: So the story of the flag is written on the flag itself?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Which was okay.
Speaker: He didn't write it on the stripes.
Speaker: He wrote it on just this hoist strip.
Speaker: And that's usually even where the manufacturer of the flag puts his logo.
Speaker: But anyway, here he took the time to do that, and then he carried the flag at the first battle of Bull Run.
Speaker: At the time, there was a lot of sentiment going on that we should, that Unionist sentiment was that we should remove the stars for the seceding states.
Speaker: Lincoln was opposed to that.
Speaker: His argument was that they haven't left, we're just having an argument.
Speaker: and that no stars were to be removed from the flag, which obviously this person didn't because this flag is from 1861 when there was 31 states, I mean 33 states.
Speaker: But here this flag maker left room for three more.
Speaker: What a positive approach to the Civil War.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: How did you come across it?
Speaker: I found this flag in the Midwest, I don't remember exactly where.
Speaker: But the provenance has proved valid.
Speaker: So it's a flag that clearly displays at the time of the Civil War
Speaker: the passion for the flag, the fact that the flag maker left room for some more stars.
Speaker: Because you have to realize that, you know, when we went from...
Speaker: 48 to 49 stars back in 1959.
Speaker: Obviously, nobody at home sewed another star on their flag.
Speaker: Just the flag makers across the United States and across the world made American flags with 49 stars.
Speaker: And then the same thing happened when we went to 50.
Speaker: But back toward the Civil War and period before then, flags were handmade.
Speaker: And it wasn't like the woman in the home or the man in the home was going to sit down and sew out a completely new flag with the new number of stars.
Speaker: One of two things happened.
Speaker: They didn't add on the new stars, or they just individually added on new stars to the flag that they had.
Speaker: I imagine that could lead to some pretty interesting patterns.
Speaker: Oh, it does.
Speaker: I mean, I have a flag that has 36 stars on one side and 37 on the other.
Speaker: I mean, you know, I wish I could... It's totally inconsistent.
Speaker: I wish I could talk to that person and find out if they just had problems counting or what their rationale was.
Speaker: That's the way it happened.
Speaker: The flag at Fort Sumter, it was a 29-star diamond-shaped design, and four stars were added to it.
Speaker: I have the same flag, although the four stars aren't sewn on exactly the same, but pretty much the same.
Speaker: but I have one that dates back three years before Fort Sumter.
Speaker: So that, you know, states were being added quite frequently then.
Speaker: So that to put a new star on the flag, you didn't know when you were going to have to add another one.
Speaker: When Idaho became the...
Speaker: 43rd state on July 3rd of 1890.
Speaker: Wyoming became the 44th state seven days later.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So it really was hard to keep up.
Speaker: It'd be very hard to keep up.
Speaker: I like to tell a story that a 100-year-old person today has only known three flags, 48, 49, and 50.
Speaker: A hundred-year-old person in 1912 knew 25 flags.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Well, of course, there's still time for us to add numbers 51 and 52 and so on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I have a 52.
Speaker: Do you really?
Speaker: Tell me about that.
Speaker: Well, somebody wanted to make a flag with a peace symbol on it.
Speaker: And they, I guess in the final stitching of stars, realized they needed two more stars to make it a peace symbol.
Speaker: To fill out the pattern.
Speaker: So they just invented two new states.
Speaker: Put them on, yeah.
Speaker: But back over the years with significantly older flags, the other thing that I see frequently is that they have maybe nine stripes, maybe they have 11 stripes.
Speaker: I have a couple of flags that have 17 stripes.
Speaker: And if you stand back and look at them from a distance, they look right.
Speaker: And it had to do with the width of the stripe that they used with the general structure of the flag.
Speaker: They sort of sewed stripes on to make it look right.
Speaker: And, you know, they might have ended up with 9, 10, 11, or 17.
Speaker: But then again, it also could have been...
Speaker: a matter of the amount of fabric they had.
Speaker: But in any case, it was either an aesthetic decision or a practical decision that seems more important than the symbolism.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, the symbol was more important than the exactness of it, yes.
Speaker: What's the oldest flag in your collection?
Speaker: I have a 13-star flag that's...
Speaker: possibly late 18th century.
Speaker: I have a 14 star flag that is late 18th century.
Speaker: The flag that you found that started this whole journey off, what happened to that?
Speaker: It's been hung on the wall of our home since probably
Speaker: a month or two after I bought it once I had it framed.
Speaker: Keep a light on it.
Speaker: The only time it has left our home was for the anniversary of 9-11 in Bergdorf.
Speaker: We loaned it to them.
Speaker: But other than that, it's always been with us.
Speaker: You're selling the collection now.
Speaker: What led you to the decision to do that?
Speaker: I just thought that it's time.
Speaker: I've been doing museum exhibitions.
Speaker: I closed three recently, one in Florida, one in New York, and one in Texas.
Speaker: And I'm 81.
Speaker: Exhibitions with museums, you have to schedule at least three years out.
Speaker: And I just think it's time.
Speaker: And our children are all respectful of the flag and they all have flag from the collection, but they all have their things that are important in their lives and that they're doing and are not interested in carrying on with the collection and exhibitions and public speaking and all the things involved with it.
Speaker: Certainly plenty of work.
Speaker: Yeah, there's been a number of museums that have approached me about the collection.
Speaker: And, you know, the way I gathered this collection is from other collectors and individually from people.
Speaker: And I'm giving people the chance to embellish their collections.
Speaker: or start a collection and I feel good about that although I do have moments of nostalgia and second thoughts about the whole thing and I said to Pat my wife the other night I said now I understand why people wait till they're dead to sell their collection but can I say it's safe to assume that you're probably holding on to at least some of them yes
Speaker: I'm holding on to the first flag, the one I told you about that's always been in our home.
Speaker: And I'm holding on to the 14-star flag.
Speaker: And then I also have a few other flags that I'm holding on to.
Speaker: Well, you can't get rid of everything.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Well, it's a touching story.
Speaker: I appreciate you sharing your collection with...
Speaker: with me and with our listeners.
Speaker: And I'm excited to see what, um, what happens at the sale.
Speaker: Uh, and I, I wish you the best of luck with that.
Speaker: I appreciate, I appreciate that.
Speaker: And, uh, I'm excited about it.
Speaker: I have, uh,
Speaker: Great vibes with folks at Freeman's.
Speaker: They've been great to work with.
Speaker: And time will tell.
Speaker: Well, Dr. Kine, thanks so much.
Speaker: I appreciate your time.
Speaker: Hey, Ben, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker: It's one of my favorite things to talk about.
Speaker: That about wraps up today's show.
Speaker: I've really enjoyed getting a little outside the traditional and, let's face it, sometimes stayed world of formal art and decorative art history over the last couple episodes.
Speaker: But don't worry, we'll be back to pediments and provenance and patina and all the rest very soon.
Speaker: In the meantime, today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
Speaker: Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
Speaker: My co-host is Michael Diaz-Griffith, and I'm your host, Ben Miller.
