IV · MMXXVI · 6 min

The Bird and the Flower

On the tradition behind every State Edition crest.

Long before we drew a single crest, the states had already chosen. A bird, a flower — named in statute, voted on, set down in the record. We did not invent the pairing. We inherited it.

It is one of the gentler habits of American government. Sometime in the last century or so, nearly every state legislature paused its more serious business to name an official bird and an official flower. The choices were rarely grand. They were the bird at the feeder, the flower in the ditch and the front yard — the things people already knew on sight, made official because they were beloved, not because they were rare.

That is exactly why they make a good crest. A coat of arms is borrowed grandeur. A bird and a flower are local truth. They are specific in the way a state is specific — and specificity is the whole point of the State Editions.

The Georgia crest — embroidered heritage medallion — Georgia’s brown thrasher and Cherokee rose, North Carolina’s cardinal and dogwood, Texas’s mockingbird and bluebonnet — each pair, one seal.

The North Carolina crest — embroidered heritage medallion — Georgia’s brown thrasher and Cherokee rose, North Carolina’s cardinal and dogwood, Texas’s mockingbird and bluebonnet — each pair, one seal.

Consider Georgia: the brown thrasher, a restless singer of the pine understory, and the Cherokee rose, white and climbing the old fence lines. Or North Carolina, where the cardinal moves through the longleaf and the dogwood whitens the Sandhills come April. Or Texas, the mockingbird answering from the live oaks while the bluebonnets run blue across the hill country. None of these is interchangeable. That is the gift the legislatures left us.

How the crest is built

We take the documented pair — the official bird, the official flower — and draw them into a single round seal in our studio. No lettering inside the emblem; the bird and the flower do the work. The palette is pulled from the state itself, from its woods and fields and the way light falls late in the day. Then we offer the same crest two ways: the discreet emblem, stitched small at the chest, and the fuller seal, worn larger.

We hold ourselves to what is on the record. A state’s bird and flower are facts, set by its legislature; everything we say about them stays inside those facts. We would rather a crest be quietly true than loudly clever.

“The bird at the feeder, the flower in the yard.”

Atticus Reed

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