Rainbow Peace flag

Rainbow peace flag: rainbow-coloured rays spiralling outward from the centre, separated by black, with a white circle at the centre containing the peace symbol.

Ontwerper: Peace symbol: Gerald Holtom, 1958. Rainbow peace flag: Aldo Capitini, 1961. This spiral variant: unknown · Peace symbol 1958; rainbow peace flag 1961; spiral variant unknown

Two well-documented symbols combined in a design that is not documented at all. The peace symbol was completed in February 1958 by Gerald Holtom, an RCA-trained designer and conscientious objector, for the Direct Action Committee's Easter march from London to Aldermaston. It superimposes the semaphore signals for N and D, for nuclear disarmament: N is two flags held down at 45 degrees, D is one flag up and one down. Holtom also described it as a self-portrait, an individual in despair with palms outstretched downward, in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad. CND deliberately never copyrighted it: a symbol of freedom, it is free for all. The rainbow peace flag is Italian. Aldo Capitini made it for the first Perugia to Assisi peace march on 24 September 1961, inspired by the Aldermaston marchers, having friends sew coloured stripes together at speed. The original had five stripes; the familiar version has seven, purple at the top down to red, with PACE across the centre. This spiral or sunburst variant has no attributable designer and no publication date. It is a generic commercial design sold by many unrelated vendors, none of whom credit an originator. No colour specification exists for it. The black between the rays has no documented meaning.

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Geschiedenis

Most flags in this guide have one origin story. This one has two, plus a third that cannot be traced.

The peace symbol is two semaphore letters

Gerald Holtom drew it in February 1958 for the first Aldermaston march. N and D, nuclear disarmament, in flag semaphore, laid over each other inside a circle. Five hundred cardboard versions went on that march, half black on white and half white on green, so the colours read from winter to spring, from death to life.

The rainbow came from Assisi

Aldo Capitini needed a banner for a peace march from Perugia to Assisi in September 1961 and had one improvised out of coloured stripes. It became the Italian peace flag, PACE written across it, and the model for rainbow peace flags everywhere since. It predates Gilbert Baker's pride flag by seventeen years and is a separate lineage, not a borrowing.

This particular design is anonymous

The spiral arrangement with black between the rays is a commercial variant. We could find no designer, no date and no published meaning for it, and we would rather say so than invent one.