Yet another vexillological ramble
Wassup?
As I promised on my Second Thread, here you have TWO walls of text that I though of while translating my other threads over to here. And a nice flag. Enjoy.
Through my history in Twitter, I have shat on what I call "catalogue-books" a lot. One of the many forms of vexillological literature that takes the form of pages upon pages of images of flags with overly complicated or redundant footnotes. But now I realise the utility they have and I appreciate them. Firstly, in the past they had a far larger purpose, as when the internet didn't exist to give you the latest flag news you had to wait for the next book or magazine from your local vexillological society to give them to you. They're specially useful for serious essays as well, as serious publications prefer or require physical, material sources, and not the internet which is not to be fully trusted in some cases. While books like these supposedly are trustworthy. Finally, with the love that one may profess to vexillology I have realised that having physical books with your favourite flags, or just flags, is a great pleasure, even if they're outdated.
Vexillology is the gift that keeps on giving. When I started making flags over at Flagmaker & Print, when I saw their page explaining vexillology, I though that I already knew everything because I had read the Wikipedia page. Oh how wrong I was! There's a recurrent joke in the left of "read theory", well, get to reading theory! From my limited readings (I am even ashamed in comparison to what I have downloaded) i have discovered points of view, stories and flag that i wouldn't have discovered otherwise. For much artistic talent and sublime handling of tools that one may have, a vexillographer that hasn't read ("Good Flag, Bad Flag" doesn't count), will be more limited than one that creates less (and maybe worse) but has read more. It's a spectrum, everything is a spectrum for fuck's sake! I have gone though many phases of jumping between vexillology and vexillography, sometimes I create more and I'm more involved with the community, and other times I'm more centred on the "theory" behind vexillology and my own archive. If anyone wants theory, hit me up.
For your patience, here you have the flag of Marden, UK.
