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Exhibition Copy

University of California - Santa Cruz Board of Councilors Meeting, 7 June 2012 Rare Flags Exhibit Santa Cruz, CA, June 7, 2012: The Zaricor Flag Collection exhibited 34 flags and artifacts at the University of California Santa Cruz Campus for the Board of Councilors Meeting. 13 Star United States Flag - The "True Betsy Ross Flag" Date: circa 1780 Medium: Hand loomed wool bunting, with hand sewn cotton stars, cotton and hemp heading, with red worsted twill ties, hand sewn linen and cotton threads. Comment: 13 Star U.S. Flag - "The True Betsy Ross Flag" - This single ring with larger center star flag dates from the American Revolution. Americans are familiar with the so-called Betsy Ross pattern, often depicted as a flag with a single ring of 13 stars with a void in the center. The single ring of 13 stars flag is mythologicaly accepted as the first U.S. flag dated 1777 conceived by Betsy Ross. This has never been documented, and no flag with this design is known to have existed. Only a single period image of such a design dates to 1782 and it is an artist's interpretation. Based on surviving examples, it is clear that a single ring of 12 stars around a center star was the design crafted in the late 1770s and 1780s, not just by Mrs. Ross, but throughout the American Colonies. A void in the center of a ring of stars, as a design element, was anathema to 18th century flag designers, and all surviving period examples contain something - a star, an eagle, a monogram or other device - within the ring, like this example. There are a number of examples that have survived, leaving evidence of what the earliest flags looked like. They are all an oblong circle with some device in the middle if they are not of straight horizontal row patterns. This flag, a well worn 18th century example, was thought to be such a flag by Boleslaw Mastai, who used it for the frontispiece of his land mark book, The Stars and Stripes, and selected it for the cover of Time magazine in July 1980. Textile analysis and other datable surviving flags with a circle of stars with a single star in the middle confirm its use in the 1780s. Provenance: Acquired at auction by the Zaricor Flag Collection (ZFC0715) in 2002 from the Boleslaw and Marie Louise D'Otrange Mastai Estate via Sotheby's Auctions, New York, New York. www.FlagCollection.com

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