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Surrendering the Colors: An American Flag Collection Goes to Auction
52 Plays6 years ago
The first American flag Peter Keim collected was a hand-sewn thirteen-star specimen that he found poking out of a paper bag at a farm sale. Happily for Keim, the flag turned out to be a hand-sewn beaut from 1862, worth $10,000. Keim now owns approximately four hundred American flags.
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Transcript
Introduction to Freeman's Auction "A Grand Old Flag"
00:00:00
Speaker
Curious Objects is sponsored by Freeman's.
00:00:02
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.
00:00:12
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.
00:00:20
Speaker
Learn more about this collection of historic American flags and the upcoming auction at freemansauction.com.
00:00:26
Speaker
Visit freemansauction.com to view the auction catalog and register to bid now.
00:00:31
Speaker
Freeman's, Philadelphia's auction house, sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you wherever you are.
Why Collect American Flags?
00:00:47
Speaker
Welcome back to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:51
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I'm Ben Miller, and with me, of course, is Michael Diaz-Griffith.
00:00:55
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Hi, Michael.
00:00:55
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Hi, Ben.
00:00:56
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So in our last episode, we talked about baseball cards, which I suggested were maybe the most American thing that one could possibly collect.
00:01:09
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I was wrong about that because in this episode, we're going to be talking about literally collecting American flags.
00:01:16
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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.
00:01:29
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And as a fan of American material culture, you know, I'm quite happy to address that concern.
00:01:36
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Yeah.
00:01:37
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Well, this is no, you know, Regency commode.
00:01:41
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This is no collection of, you know, fine 18th century paintings.
00:01:48
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This is a group.
00:01:48
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It certainly ain't silver.
00:01:50
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And it certainly ain't silver.
00:01:53
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But it is, you know, it's an interesting collection.
00:01:55
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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.
00:02:11
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And the sale is going to be on Sunday the 24th.
00:02:18
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And Peter is a really interesting character.
00:02:22
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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.
00:02:45
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But instead, you know, Peter,
00:02:48
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it seems is really motivated, well, to put it simply by patriotism, and by a fascination with American history.
00:02:58
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And these flags are a pretty interesting way of interfacing with that.
00:03:02
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Yeah, and he's really a collector's collector, right?
00:03:04
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Because he came to the topic as an amateur.
00:03:09
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And now
00:03:10
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he's an expert, right?
00:03:12
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Undeniably.
00:03:13
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But that expertise never comes from a scholarly place.
00:03:17
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I mean...
00:03:19
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It always comes from a place of passion and a very direct kind of interest, which I was really impressed by.
00:03:26
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So I think the idea of collecting flags is pretty interesting in itself.
00:03:31
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Obviously, it's a potent symbol.
00:03:34
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And, you know, we're familiar with, you know, the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima.
00:03:42
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And I mean, now the national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner.
00:03:49
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But then we also know about flag burnings, Vietnam protests.
00:03:56
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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.
Symbolism and Culture of American Flags
00:04:09
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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.
00:04:32
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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.
00:04:43
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But symbolically, it's so charged.
00:04:46
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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
00:04:56
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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?
00:05:06
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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.
00:05:18
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You know, we're through, whether we're talking about the Vietnam era or the way the flag is wielded today, it's,
00:05:25
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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.
00:05:38
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Yeah, yeah.
00:05:40
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Yeah, the passions run high.
00:05:43
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Well, it's fun.
00:05:44
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I mean, it's interesting.
00:05:45
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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.
00:05:56
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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.
00:06:09
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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.
00:06:22
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What a, what a strange thing to wrap your head around.
00:06:25
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Precisely.
00:06:26
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No, the contradictory nature of Southern patriotism to the union is, uh,
00:06:34
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Well, I don't know that I got much further for you than you and my thinking about that.
00:06:40
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I remain actually a bit confused about what it all means.
00:06:45
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I think that we can certainly agree that patriotism in itself, to whatever body, to whatever nation, is just such a powerful thing.
00:06:56
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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?
00:07:12
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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.
00:07:23
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Right.
00:07:25
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Yeah, seemingly contradictory.
Historical Flags: Political Reflections
00:07:27
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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.
00:07:35
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But there was one that really caught my eye that I wanted to chat with you about, which dates to 1858.
00:07:44
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So apropos of our conversation about the Confederacy,
00:07:52
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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.
00:08:06
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But one of those very strange lines was defined by the emergence of what's commonly referred to as the know-nothings,
00:08:16
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So this was an organization that came out of a secret society called the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner.
00:08:27
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So already we have an interest in the flag here.
00:08:30
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So it's a secret society that was initially defined by its anti-Catholic sentiments.
00:08:38
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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.
00:09:00
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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.
00:09:13
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So, you know, figure that one out.
00:09:16
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The history of this country is, yeah, there are many twists and turns.
00:09:22
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And they co-opted the image of George Washington,
00:09:28
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Correct, who was the sort of ultimate human of the American party.
00:09:33
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And they slapped it on their flag.
00:09:36
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Right.
00:09:37
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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.
00:09:58
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But this Know Nothing flag that we're looking at doesn't have that appearance, right?
00:10:03
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It has stripes.
00:10:04
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Those look familiar.
00:10:05
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Yeah, although it has a lot of them.
00:10:08
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I think it's 17 stripes altogether.
00:10:12
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Yeah, it looks a little bit like a French sailor's jersey.
00:10:20
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But with George Washington hanging out on it.
00:10:22
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Yeah.
00:10:23
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Which is so interesting.
00:10:24
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I mean, you know...
00:10:27
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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?
00:10:42
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And to sort of be co-opted just as an image of, you know, father country.
00:10:49
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Also, you know, practically within the lifetime of many of his peers, his younger peers.
00:10:55
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Yeah.
00:10:56
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Yeah, really fascinating flag.
00:10:58
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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.
00:11:14
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I mean, people from all manner of political factions can claim him as a as a hero.
00:11:23
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And yeah, and these no-nothings were certainly no exception to that rule.
00:11:27
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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.
00:11:47
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And above him, you have an eagle, an eagle,
00:11:52
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and actually several little American flags with their own stars and stripes on them.
00:12:01
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So it's a sort of a Russian nesting doll of American flags.
00:12:06
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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.
00:12:16
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And I think
00:12:18
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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
00:12:47
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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?
00:13:03
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Through these changing flags that change as the nation changes.
00:13:10
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And how, you know, how fascinating that,
00:13:13
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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.
00:13:34
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Right.
00:13:35
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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.
00:13:52
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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,
00:14:04
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growing the scope of the country and in the process changing its character.
Civil War Flags and Political Sentiments
00:14:09
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That growth tracks along with so many debates about the nature of the country's growth, right?
00:14:18
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Through slavery, through annexation, through this country's few kind of imperialist moments when it was acquiring territory, not in the contiguous United States,
00:14:34
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I think there are several different phases in American history that we forget about, and these flags remind us.
00:14:43
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.
00:15:03
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So in some cases, that means making new flags with stars just for the states that belong to the Union.
00:15:09
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But in other cases, it means taking a flag that had stars for all the states, including now the Confederate states, and...
00:15:18
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removing those Confederate stars, either cutting them out, unstitching them, or covering them up somehow.
00:15:27
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And it's, you know, what a sort of poignant, because we have to remember these flags are not
00:15:38
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at this stage in American history, they're not mass produced.
00:15:41
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They're made often at home.
00:15:46
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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.
00:15:57
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So the flags are, even within their own, the lifetimes of their original creators were intended to be living documents of American history.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it wasn't until 1912 or so that an official flag was decided upon.
00:16:19
Speaker
So there were sort of guidelines, but quite a lot of room for interpretation.
00:16:26
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And I love the idea that the important thing for a given person working on their flag was to create an accurate accounting
00:16:35
Speaker
of where the nation stood on the given day of their stitching, right?
00:16:41
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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?
00:17:03
Speaker
So that you could have two people
00:17:06
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.
00:17:17
Speaker
Right.
00:17:18
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,
00:17:25
Speaker
all five to understand the story of the country on that day, right?
00:17:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's so true.
Interpreting Peter Kime's Collection
00:17:33
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.
00:17:45
Speaker
He and his son wrote a book about the collection, which captures some of their ideas about it.
00:17:50
Speaker
But
00:17:51
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.
00:18:07
Speaker
what's potent about them and what they represent to us.
00:18:12
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.
00:18:28
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, it kind of takes us back to the question of patriotism itself.
00:18:33
Speaker
You know, one person's patriotism may mean unquestioning loyalty.
00:18:37
Speaker
And I don't just mean here in America, anywhere.
00:18:40
Speaker
And another person's patriotism may mean, you know, a great deal of questioning of the object of that patriotism, right?
00:18:49
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
00:19:02
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.
Flags as Material Culture Symbols
00:19:21
Speaker
So it's a particular, I like the word potent, you know, flags are a particularly potent kind of material culture.
00:19:27
Speaker
There's something about them, man.
00:19:29
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Just absolutely.
00:19:32
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It gets us going.
00:19:35
Speaker
Well, I think that's a good note on which to kick off this conversation with Peter.
00:19:44
Speaker
Excellent.
00:19:44
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.
00:19:51
Speaker
Thanks, Michael.
00:19:52
Speaker
Thanks, Ben.
00:19:54
Speaker
Okay, we'll get right to Dr. Peter Kime.
00:19:56
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.
Engagement and Contact Information
00:20:03
Speaker
If you enjoy the episode, let me ask a favor.
00:20:07
Speaker
Would you leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening?
00:20:12
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.
00:20:20
Speaker
If you'd like to get in touch with comments or ideas, you can reach me on Instagram at Objective Interest.
00:20:25
Speaker
And Michael is on Instagram as at Michael D.S.
00:20:29
Speaker
Griffith.
00:20:30
Speaker
With that said, we'll hear from Dr. Keim right after this.
00:20:33
Speaker
Curious Objects is sponsored by Freemans.
00:20:36
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.
00:20:45
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.
00:20:54
Speaker
Wyeth, Mary Cassatt, Hans Hoffman, and notable Pennsylvania Impressionists such as Fern Coppage and Daniel Garber.
00:21:01
Speaker
Visit freemansauction.com to view the auction catalog and register to bid now.
Upcoming Auction Announcement
00:21:06
Speaker
Freeman's, Philadelphia's auction house.
00:21:09
Speaker
Sharing the world of art, design, and jewelry with you, wherever you are.
00:21:16
Speaker
You're a grand old rag, you're a high-flying flag, and forever in peace may you wave.
00:21:24
Speaker
You're the emblem of the land I love, the home of the free and the brave.
00:21:31
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.
00:21:54
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.
00:22:04
Speaker
And a lot of these areas of collecting are objects that are somehow useful.
00:22:10
Speaker
Or in the case of paintings, they may be telling intricate stories.
00:22:17
Speaker
They may be highly decorative objects.
00:22:20
Speaker
Flags strike me as a little bit different than any of those categories.
00:22:25
Speaker
They certainly can serve a functional purpose out in the world, but in a collection, what is the draw?
00:22:33
Speaker
What's the appeal?
00:22:37
Speaker
What do you see in a flag?
00:22:39
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:22:44
Speaker
My wife and I collected antiques, furniture, lighting, rugs, you name it, we collected it.
00:22:54
Speaker
But we collected it to furnish our home, and we had an 18th century house built for us in southwest Pennsylvania.
00:23:09
Speaker
My background is in medicine.
00:23:11
Speaker
I practiced family medicine for 25 or so years.
00:23:19
Speaker
We had five children, so we were busy into day-to-day life, but antiques intrigued us.
00:23:29
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.
00:23:42
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.
00:23:55
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,
00:24:10
Speaker
I asked the farm lady how much you wanted for it.
00:24:17
Speaker
She said $50.
00:24:18
Speaker
I said, well, I'll give you 40.
00:24:20
Speaker
And she took it, I think mainly because it was starting to rain and she wanted to get back in the farmhouse.
00:24:25
Speaker
Anyway, I didn't bother taking it out of the bag actually before I even negotiated it, nor when I bought it.
00:24:33
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.
00:24:46
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.
00:25:05
Speaker
Did you know what a rarity that would be?
00:25:08
Speaker
No.
00:25:13
Speaker
I mean, truly not knowing anything about textiles, sewing methods or fabrics.
00:25:22
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.
00:25:32
Speaker
I became quite inquisitive about it.
00:25:35
Speaker
I bought a couple books.
00:25:38
Speaker
There wasn't much available back then in 74 in the way of information access.
00:25:45
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.
00:25:56
Speaker
Then I started looking for a textile expert.
00:26:00
Speaker
And after about nine or ten months later, I came upon a conservator by the name of Fonda Thompson.
00:26:09
Speaker
Fonda lived in Sharpsburg, Maryland.
00:26:12
Speaker
And it turned out that I was her family's...
00:26:18
Speaker
family doctor in Pittsburgh.
00:26:22
Speaker
In that nine or ten months, have you looked at any other flags?
00:26:27
Speaker
Had you put this one under a magnifying glass?
00:26:31
Speaker
It was under, so to speak, magnifying glass by me.
00:26:40
Speaker
not actually, because I didn't know what to look for.
00:26:46
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,
00:27:02
Speaker
version and hand-sewn flag originating from Pennsylvania.
00:27:09
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.
00:27:20
Speaker
In 1974, that was real money.
00:27:26
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:27
Speaker
And then I don't know how much later I happened upon a second flag and bought it.
00:27:36
Speaker
And then it just totally went out of control.
00:27:42
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.
00:27:50
Speaker
Yes.
00:27:53
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.
00:28:17
Speaker
Ah-ha.
00:28:21
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.
00:28:26
Speaker
Is that because states were admitted at the same time?
00:28:41
Speaker
Well, with the first flag act, we had 13.
00:28:43
Speaker
Then the second flag act increased it to 15.
00:28:48
Speaker
So Congress never said anything about a 14-star flag.
00:28:52
Speaker
And then we went from 15 to 20 back in the early 1800s.
00:29:01
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.
00:29:13
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.
00:29:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:29:23
Speaker
But I imagine that there were aberrations and exceptions and people making flags that didn't conform.
00:29:29
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.
00:29:41
Speaker
I tried to be statehood.
00:29:44
Speaker
So over the period of time, I did gather representative flags with every number of stars.
00:29:53
Speaker
And that's sort of where the collection was going and I was doing a lot of reading.
00:29:57
Speaker
I was doing a little bit of lecturing, mostly with school kids, about the history of the flag.
00:30:04
Speaker
But then one thing really changed the course of all of it.
00:30:08
Speaker
I have always been a fan of New York and go there quite often.
00:30:12
Speaker
I'm a big New York Yankee fan.
00:30:15
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.
00:30:27
Speaker
But then over the ensuing six months, a couple of things happened.
00:30:36
Speaker
One, I was contacted for artifacts to include in the traveling exhibit, and that worked out.
00:30:46
Speaker
And then I got the idea that I ought to show my sympathy to New York.
00:30:51
Speaker
So I contacted three of the department stores.
00:30:56
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.
00:31:11
Speaker
Well, Bergdorf contacted me, David Hoey, and one thing led to another.
00:31:20
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.
00:31:32
Speaker
and decorated all of their windows on Fifth Avenue with just my flags.
00:31:37
Speaker
Wow.
00:31:38
Speaker
And that was in 2002?
00:31:39
Speaker
That was in 2002, September of 2002.
00:31:46
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.
00:31:57
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.
00:32:06
Speaker
And they started talking to each other at the window.
00:32:09
Speaker
And, you know, you just didn't see that in New York City.
00:32:14
Speaker
And pretty soon, one put her arm around the other one because she was sobbing.
00:32:21
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.
00:32:34
Speaker
Something really changed between 2000 and 2002 in the way that you approach the idea of building this collection.
00:32:45
Speaker
No, it didn't involve building the collection because the collection was pretty well built by that time.
00:32:52
Speaker
What it...
00:32:54
Speaker
told us that was that there was a need to educate Americans about the history of our flag.
00:33:02
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.
00:33:17
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.
00:33:35
Speaker
And that's sort of where the collection took me and itself.
00:33:40
Speaker
And over the last 20 years, we've done exhibitions in numerous museums across the country and other venues.
00:33:50
Speaker
We did Bergdorf's Windows again in 2008.
00:33:53
Speaker
But...
00:34:03
Speaker
That's what's been going on.
00:34:05
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.
00:34:24
Speaker
Right.
00:34:25
Speaker
There were no regulations about the placement of the stars in the field.
00:34:29
Speaker
No.
00:34:30
Speaker
And some of the most some of the interesting flags that I have, I mean, have red, white and blue stripes.
00:34:39
Speaker
Some of them have a white canton with red stars.
00:34:43
Speaker
Some of them have an eagle in the middle of the field.
00:34:46
Speaker
Any number of folk like renditions of what's exactly the American flag.
00:34:54
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.
00:35:04
Speaker
But if you show that flag to 99% of Americans, they'll say, yes, that's an American flag.
00:35:12
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.
00:35:18
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.
00:35:38
Speaker
And I'm hoping you can tell me a little bit more about that.
00:35:42
Speaker
What do you think it is that you can learn about America or about us by studying the flag?
00:35:49
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.
00:36:03
Speaker
And that is that the flag means more to you and me
00:36:08
Speaker
than it did to George Washington.
00:36:11
Speaker
Tell me what you mean by that.
00:36:14
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.
00:36:31
Speaker
It's a pretty well-known fact by historians
00:36:35
Speaker
that the stars and stripes was not carried in the American Revolution.
00:36:40
Speaker
They weren't just just wasn't there at the time or seen a value of use.
00:36:51
Speaker
And that's evolved so tremendously to if you think about to the Civil War.
00:36:58
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.
00:37:11
Speaker
And when they were shot, what happened?
00:37:14
Speaker
Somebody else picked up the flag.
00:37:19
Speaker
Which is a powerful act of symbolism that you're willing to make that sacrifice.
00:37:24
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:26
Speaker
Yes.
00:37:27
Speaker
But you're saying in the days of the revolution that was an unknown practice?
00:37:33
Speaker
No, it was, yes.
00:37:34
Speaker
It wasn't a known practice.
00:37:35
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.
00:37:47
Speaker
But it really didn't happen.
00:37:48
Speaker
The painting we see of Washington crossing the Potomac...
00:37:58
Speaker
Not the Potomac, the Delaware.
00:38:00
Speaker
Washington crossing the Delaware with a flag draped over the shoulder of the person behind him was not factual.
00:38:07
Speaker
That painting actually was made 100 years later.
00:38:11
Speaker
They didn't have stars and stripes crossing the Delaware.
00:38:16
Speaker
So what changed in between 1780 and 1860?
00:38:24
Speaker
A number of things.
00:38:26
Speaker
People...
00:38:29
Speaker
The flag became more apparent to people as states were admitted to the Union.
00:38:39
Speaker
You know, declarations were made as to what was to happen with the flag.
00:38:46
Speaker
We had Fort McHenry where the Star Spangled Banner was
00:38:54
Speaker
written and portrayed the flag at Fort McHenry.
00:39:02
Speaker
And people became much more aware of it for what it is to America.
00:39:10
Speaker
In the Civil War, people started displaying the American flag in front of their homes.
00:39:19
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.
00:39:37
Speaker
So there were a lot of reasons why the American flag became more significant as time evolved.
00:39:48
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.
00:40:07
Speaker
So...
00:40:11
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.
00:40:20
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.
00:40:32
Speaker
So could you tell me what are the flags that you have in mind?
00:40:38
Speaker
There are a number of them.
00:40:39
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.
00:40:50
Speaker
I know.
00:40:51
Speaker
But, you know, most of the collection is stored in archival boxes, carefully folded and wrapped in acid-free paper.
00:41:00
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.
00:41:17
Speaker
And that really happens often.
00:41:19
Speaker
That's a familiar story for a lot of collectors, I think.
00:41:23
Speaker
Oh, isn't it?
00:41:24
Speaker
Yeah, I know.
00:41:25
Speaker
But a couple of flags that I'll tell you about.
00:41:28
Speaker
I have a 33-star flag where there are six horizontal rows of five stars.
00:41:44
Speaker
But to the left of those rows, from the top, are three stars coming down in the top three rows.
00:41:57
Speaker
So it has obvious space for three more stars.
00:42:03
Speaker
Oh, right.
00:42:04
Speaker
Okay?
00:42:05
Speaker
But the other significant thing about this flag was that it was carried at the first battle of Bull Run.
00:42:16
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.
00:42:42
Speaker
So the story of the flag is written on the flag itself?
00:42:46
Speaker
Yes.
00:42:49
Speaker
Which was okay.
00:42:50
Speaker
He didn't write it on the stripes.
00:42:52
Speaker
He wrote it on just this hoist strip.
00:42:54
Speaker
And that's usually even where the manufacturer of the flag puts his logo.
00:42:59
Speaker
But anyway, here he took the time to do that, and then he carried the flag at the first battle of Bull Run.
00:43:08
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.
00:43:21
Speaker
Lincoln was opposed to that.
00:43:25
Speaker
His argument was that they haven't left, we're just having an argument.
00:43:30
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.
00:43:44
Speaker
But here this flag maker left room for three more.
00:43:49
Speaker
What a positive approach to the Civil War.
00:43:53
Speaker
That's fantastic.
00:43:55
Speaker
How did you come across it?
00:44:00
Speaker
I found this flag in the Midwest, I don't remember exactly where.
00:44:12
Speaker
But the provenance has proved valid.
00:44:16
Speaker
So it's a flag that clearly displays at the time of the Civil War
00:44:24
Speaker
the passion for the flag, the fact that the flag maker left room for some more stars.
00:44:32
Speaker
Because you have to realize that, you know, when we went from...
00:44:39
Speaker
48 to 49 stars back in 1959.
00:44:45
Speaker
Obviously, nobody at home sewed another star on their flag.
00:44:49
Speaker
Just the flag makers across the United States and across the world made American flags with 49 stars.
00:44:59
Speaker
And then the same thing happened when we went to 50.
00:45:04
Speaker
But back toward the Civil War and period before then, flags were handmade.
00:45:13
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.
00:45:25
Speaker
One of two things happened.
00:45:28
Speaker
They didn't add on the new stars, or they just individually added on new stars to the flag that they had.
00:45:37
Speaker
I imagine that could lead to some pretty interesting patterns.
00:45:41
Speaker
Oh, it does.
00:45:43
Speaker
I mean, I have a flag that has 36 stars on one side and 37 on the other.
00:45:47
Speaker
I mean, you know, I wish I could... It's totally inconsistent.
00:45:51
Speaker
I wish I could talk to that person and find out if they just had problems counting or what their rationale was.
00:45:58
Speaker
That's the way it happened.
00:46:00
Speaker
The flag at Fort Sumter, it was a 29-star diamond-shaped design, and four stars were added to it.
00:46:11
Speaker
I have the same flag, although the four stars aren't sewn on exactly the same, but pretty much the same.
00:46:20
Speaker
but I have one that dates back three years before Fort Sumter.
00:46:26
Speaker
So that, you know, states were being added quite frequently then.
00:46:36
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.
00:46:46
Speaker
When Idaho became the...
00:46:49
Speaker
43rd state on July 3rd of 1890.
00:46:54
Speaker
Wyoming became the 44th state seven days later.
00:46:58
Speaker
Wow.
00:47:01
Speaker
So it really was hard to keep up.
00:47:04
Speaker
It'd be very hard to keep up.
00:47:06
Speaker
I like to tell a story that a 100-year-old person today has only known three flags, 48, 49, and 50.
00:47:17
Speaker
A hundred-year-old person in 1912 knew 25 flags.
00:47:23
Speaker
Wow.
00:47:26
Speaker
Well, of course, there's still time for us to add numbers 51 and 52 and so on.
00:47:31
Speaker
Right.
00:47:32
Speaker
I have a 52.
00:47:33
Speaker
Do you really?
00:47:35
Speaker
Tell me about that.
00:47:38
Speaker
Well, somebody wanted to make a flag with a peace symbol on it.
00:47:43
Speaker
And they, I guess in the final stitching of stars, realized they needed two more stars to make it a peace symbol.
00:47:56
Speaker
To fill out the pattern.
00:47:58
Speaker
So they just invented two new states.
00:48:01
Speaker
Put them on, yeah.
00:48:03
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.
00:48:17
Speaker
I have a couple of flags that have 17 stripes.
00:48:20
Speaker
And if you stand back and look at them from a distance, they look right.
00:48:24
Speaker
And it had to do with the width of the stripe that they used with the general structure of the flag.
00:48:31
Speaker
They sort of sewed stripes on to make it look right.
00:48:35
Speaker
And, you know, they might have ended up with 9, 10, 11, or 17.
00:48:38
Speaker
But then again, it also could have been...
00:48:46
Speaker
a matter of the amount of fabric they had.
00:48:49
Speaker
But in any case, it was either an aesthetic decision or a practical decision that seems more important than the symbolism.
00:48:57
Speaker
Yes.
00:48:58
Speaker
Yeah, the symbol was more important than the exactness of it, yes.
00:49:02
Speaker
What's the oldest flag in your collection?
00:49:06
Speaker
I have a 13-star flag that's...
00:49:16
Speaker
possibly late 18th century.
00:49:19
Speaker
I have a 14 star flag that is late 18th century.
00:49:25
Speaker
The flag that you found that started this whole journey off, what happened to that?
00:49:31
Speaker
It's been hung on the wall of our home since probably
00:49:41
Speaker
a month or two after I bought it once I had it framed.
00:49:46
Speaker
Keep a light on it.
00:49:48
Speaker
The only time it has left our home was for the anniversary of 9-11 in Bergdorf.
00:49:58
Speaker
We loaned it to them.
00:50:00
Speaker
But other than that, it's always been with us.
00:50:03
Speaker
You're selling the collection now.
00:50:05
Speaker
What led you to the decision to do that?
00:50:10
Speaker
I just thought that it's time.
00:50:12
Speaker
I've been doing museum exhibitions.
00:50:17
Speaker
I closed three recently, one in Florida, one in New York, and one in Texas.
00:50:24
Speaker
And I'm 81.
00:50:27
Speaker
Exhibitions with museums, you have to schedule at least three years out.
00:50:34
Speaker
And I just think it's time.
00:50:39
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.
00:51:07
Speaker
Certainly plenty of work.
00:51:09
Speaker
Yeah, there's been a number of museums that have approached me about the collection.
00:51:15
Speaker
And, you know, the way I gathered this collection is from other collectors and individually from people.
00:51:23
Speaker
And I'm giving people the chance to embellish their collections.
00:51:32
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
00:52:03
Speaker
I'm holding on to the first flag, the one I told you about that's always been in our home.
00:52:08
Speaker
And I'm holding on to the 14-star flag.
00:52:10
Speaker
And then I also have a few other flags that I'm holding on to.
00:52:18
Speaker
Well, you can't get rid of everything.
00:52:20
Speaker
No.
00:52:21
Speaker
No.
00:52:23
Speaker
Well, it's a touching story.
00:52:24
Speaker
I appreciate you sharing your collection with...
00:52:28
Speaker
with me and with our listeners.
00:52:30
Speaker
And I'm excited to see what, um, what happens at the sale.
00:52:33
Speaker
Uh, and I, I wish you the best of luck with that.
00:52:37
Speaker
I appreciate, I appreciate that.
00:52:40
Speaker
And, uh, I'm excited about it.
00:52:43
Speaker
I have, uh,
00:52:45
Speaker
Great vibes with folks at Freeman's.
00:52:50
Speaker
They've been great to work with.
00:52:57
Speaker
And time will tell.
00:53:02
Speaker
Well, Dr. Kine, thanks so much.
00:53:03
Speaker
I appreciate your time.
00:53:05
Speaker
Hey, Ben, it's been a pleasure.
00:53:07
Speaker
It's one of my favorite things to talk about.
00:53:12
Speaker
That about wraps up today's show.
00:53:14
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.
00:53:23
Speaker
But don't worry, we'll be back to pediments and provenance and patina and all the rest very soon.
00:53:30
Speaker
In the meantime, today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
00:53:34
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit.
00:53:36
Speaker
My co-host is Michael Diaz-Griffith, and I'm your host, Ben Miller.