(From: SC Flag Study Committee) Proposed project for a new SC state flag.
COLOMBIA, SC (AP) – A committee trying to standardize the iconic design of the South Carolina state flag is starting again after residents ridiculed historians’ first attempt.
The Post and Courier reports that the team of historians selected by the legislator, chosen to straighten out the project, is taking complaints from critics calmly.
The South Carolina flag features a palm tree and a crescent moon on an indigo background. But the state has lacked a standard flag design since 1940, which means that flag makers are free to choose their own shades of blue and adjust the crescent curve to their liking.
Lawmakers brought together a team of historians in 2018 to study the flag’s first iterations and work out a historically accurate design.
Historians chose a color, Pantone 282 C, based on the uniforms worn by Colonel William Moultrie’s 2nd South Carolina Regiment in the Revolutionary War. The shape of the crescent was decided on the basis of the symbol that Moultrie’s troops wore on their hats.
And the heart of palm itself was modeled after a pencil sketch by Charleston artist Ellen Heyward Jervey, first drawn by AS Salley, the first secretary of the South Carolina Historical Commission, who designed the 1910 state flag.
After the newspaper first published the proposed project, historians responded to thousands of complaints, many of them ridiculing the quality of the palm tree’s representation, recognizing that they were returning to the drawing board.
Committee member Scott Malyerck told the newspaper that, in retrospect, the flag committee sacrificed aesthetics for historical accuracy and that he estimated about 95% of the response to the flag design was negative.
“We don’t want to present anything that people don’t like,” said Malyerck.