I bought this marlin flag from Dan Brock, who found it in Zane Grey's Altadena mansion. The flag is quite large at about 76 inches in length, and about 42 inches wide at its widest end. I had zero wall space to hang it, and hiding it in a drawer seemed like a crime. So I had a piece of 1/8" UV acrylic custom cut in the shape of the flag, but a bit larger. Then I simply sandwiched the flag between the sheet of acrylic and the ceiling in my tackle room. I made fasteners/tabs out of pieces of scrap ¼” balsa plywood, and wood screws that have a screw on one end and a threaded end that will take a nut on the other. The threaded screws are identical to what are used with swag hooks for hanging plants. I drove the screws into my studs spaced every 16". The pieces of balsa slip over the threaded portion of the screws and are held in place by acorn nuts. In this way, I can easily remove the acrylic sheet and flag by loosening the nuts and turning the balsa tabs 90 degrees.
Do I like it? Well, I wouldn’t recommend it. Because the acrylic is on the ceiling, it picks up a lot of glare and reflections, so it is definitely not the best place to "frame" something. And the rods hanging below it make everything a bit busy. But given the space limitations in my tackle room, I really had no choice.
The flag is made out of cotton, not silk, and is in ZG's blue and red colors. Doug Whittington(KIWI) pointed out to me that many marlin flags sold back in the day were red and blue. That got me to wondering whether flag companies adopted these colors from ZG to cash in on ZG mania, or if ZG adopted them as his colors because marlin flags were traditionally made in red and blue. I would be curious to know more about the history of these flags, if there are any flag experts out there.
Cheers,
John
