Converting some Berbers to standard bearers.
Everybody likes flags and standards. Medieval armies with their multiple standards, flags and lance pennons make an especially colorful sight. By the late 19th century, carrying flags into battle was going out of fashion–but you still find them.
Documentation of native North African flags is a bit harder to come by than the corresponding French flags. I found these very unusual ones in a painting by the French Orientalist Henri-Felix-Emmanuel Philippoteaux.
The painting depicts Sherif Boubagha (center, on white horse) and Fatma Lala N’soumer, the woman in the black djellabah to the right, on black horse. (The original painting, signed and dated by the artist, sold at auction in 2013 for $431,854.)
Sherif Boubagha waged a rebellion in the Kabylia region of Algeria against the French Marshal Radon from 1850-57.
To make the standard bearers from the painting, I cut the rifles from two Berbers in djellabahs (BC-1) and a Spahi (FRC-5) and replaced them with wire flag poles. The standards themselves were made from paper. I used Microsoft Visio to draw rectangles of the size I wanted and them “filled” them with custom colors that I thought matched the painting. There are programs on the web where you can get exact RGB values from a swatch of color but I did this by eye.
I’ve uploaded a PDF version of the file, which you can download and print to make your own flags.
