Moderate Amount of Fun with Flags

Bonus points to anybody who can identify
this flag. HINT: it's not the French flag.

Hello there! Tim here, back again to let you in on some of our endeavours into history. This week we have been going back through our collection of flags to make sure that they are catalogued properly and stored as best as possible. It has been a phenomenal learning opportunity because our manager Sarah is both an amazing teacher and very patient with me as I pelt her with an endless flow of questions. It's something I have always wanted to learn about but never had the opportunity.

A Canadian Red Ensign most likely
from between 1922 and 1953

The process itself is simple. We roll out the flag and check to make sure it's accession number matches our database and the box it is stored in. Once we've made sure that the tissue paper it is rolled with isn't damaged or creased, we gently roll the flag in a layer of tissue paper, gently tie it with twill tape, and then gently store it in a flag box. Note how I use the word 'gently' to describe every single step of the process. These flags are both surprisingly durable for their age and also surprisingly fragile. What impressed me most about the process, though, was how specific all the storage materials are. The boxes and tissue paper are acid-free, and our twill tape (which is not an adhesive tape so much as a ribbon of sorts) is made of unbleached cotton and is tied in a specific type of knot. This is all done to make sure that the storage materials do not do any damage to the textiles.

Another part of my involvement in the process was to help try and figure out as much as we can about the flags. We received most of our collection as a donation from H.M.C.S. Cabot but do not know a lot about the flags themselves. Being entirely honest, I am not some kind of professional textile historian, but I do have a background in tailoring and a degree in history, so I've been trying to narrow down some ages of the flags and what they are made out of. With the resources I have available (basically my hands, brain, and eyes) I wasn't able to deduce much, but I gave it a fair shot.

Lockstitching on the Union Jack

The first thing I did was examine the stitching. The stitching is very regular and straight, specifically a lockstitch. This means that they were most likely sewn on a machine. The first sewing machine was invented in 1790 but was not actually built until much later and only did chain stitches (not the type of stitching featured on our flags). The first machine capable of a lockstitch was invented in 1832, but thread tension consistency was unreliable at best until Singer came up with a patent in 1851 for a pressure foot and a basic thread tension system. Our flag is almost certainly more recent than that (by quite a bit, honestly), but I did enjoy researching it just to put a cap on the absolute earliest date it could have possibly come from.

Next up, we had to try to identify the materials. Now, flags before the invention and popularization of synthetic materials were mostly made out of four materials: cotton, linen, wool, and silk. The challenge I faced here is how I learned to identify fabrics. I am only confident in four methods of fabric identification. One involves burning a piece and seeing how it burns (whether it melts, turns to ash, etc.), one involves putting water on a piece and seeing how it absorbs, one involves smelling a piece of it (especially once it's wet), and the other is good old-fashioned examination. Since three of these four methods involve exposing the flag to things that could irreparably damage it, I chose to go with option four.

You can see the individual
fibres in the weave.

Let me start off by saying that I have chosen to not consider blended fibres. The main reason for this is simply that I don't have the resources to identify fabric blends and thus considering them would just be complicated and fruitless. Silk and water are a bad combination. Silk, once wet, loses a lot of its structural integrity and thus can be crossed off. The next fabric in question is cotton. My best guess is that the flag is not made of cotton, since the flags are surprisingly abrasive. Cotton is not known for being abrasive nor for having visible fibres like this flag does. Wool is an excellent candidate for its abrasive texture, but that's about as far as it goes. Wool is the least likely material from a historical standpoint. It wasn't used to make flags very often. The fibres don't really look like wool in that wool tends to felt together. There are not many well-worn wool fabrics that you can still see the individual fibres in. Think of a hat knit from wool and how the clearly visible stitches disappear as it is worn and it melds together into a solid piece. On top of that wool is extremely absorbent and while there is a waterproofing agent on these flags it is more in the structure of wool than in the material itself that is absorbent and so I am reticent to say that a waterproofing agent would help that much.

This is why I consider linen to be the most likely material. While modern linen is known for being light and soft, historical linen was not. Without modern machinery, linen could be quite dense and abrasive, comparable to burlap, even. Linen is flax woven into threads that are then woven into the fabric, so you can easily see the individual fibres. It was also the choice material for ship sails for quite some time, so why not also signal flags?

Luckily, I am not an authoritative figure on this subject, so I don't have the pressure of having to provide a definitive answer, but I am quite content with my conclusion. What I would love to know is some of your thoughts on it. Is there a material you think it could be that I had not considered? Do you think I counted something out too soon? Feel free to let me know in the comments!