Sunday River Sunny Ski Patch — c. 1980s

A vintage Sunday River ski patch, estimated to date from the 1980s, round on a medium blue ground inside a navy merrowed border — a yellow spiky sun with a face, wearing navy wraparound sunglasses and grinning, SUNDAY arched in navy across the top and RIVER around the bottom. Maine, in February. The sun is wearing sunglasses.

Maine, in February. The sun is wearing sunglasses.

Somebody was doing their best under difficult circumstances, and the result is the most cheerful object in the catalog. You cannot look at this and be in a bad mood, which was presumably the entire design brief.

Sunday River also became, fairly or not, the mountain most associated with making its own snow in enormous quantities. A sun in sunglasses on a hill famous for manufactured winter is a joke the marketing department probably did not intend and definitely earned.

Embroidered on twill, merrowed edge. Photos are the condition report.