Author: Sue Prichard
Published by Four Corners Books
Niche maritime history doesn’t easily lend itself to lavish coffee-table style publishing, so hats off to Four Corners Books and the National Maritime Museum Greenwich for taking a punt and producing this quite dashing catalogue of house flags.
If the term’s a new one to you, house flags describe those flown on a boat to denote the company it belongs to. The National Maritime Museum boasts one of the most diverse collections of them in the world, and leafing through these pages you’ll find shipping company emblems photographed shoulder-to-shoulder with those from such unexpected sources as British Rail and the Girl Guides. Indeed, the most striking examples in this book are usually the hand-sewn motifs of smaller vessels and recreational dinghies rather than big ship branding.
Shedding more light on these flags is senior curator Sue Prichard’s excellent introduction, which explains the history of what’s effectively maritime corporate identity, and how boat owners have used the rather limited visual vocabulary at their disposal to come up with endlessly new and exciting designs.
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