Bowdoin College Seal Patch — c. 1980s

A vintage Bowdoin College patch from Brunswick, Maine, estimated to date from the 1970s or 80s, cut with a scalloped edge and bordered in black — a black ring carrying BOWDOIN COLLEGII SIGILLUM in white caps with ★ 1794 ★ at the foot, and at the center a yellow sun with a human face, ringed in red flame. The college seal rather than a ski area, out of the same drawer as the ski patches.

Not a ski patch, strictly speaking. It came out of the same drawer as the ski patches, which is how a great deal of this material actually survives — somebody's accumulated life in a tin, sorted by nobody, kept by accident.

It belongs to the same New England outdoor tradition all the same. Bowdoin has been sending people onto the winter carnival circuit for about as long as there has been one, and college skiing in Maine and Vermont was for decades the most competitive skiing in the country, full stop.

The design is unusually good for an institutional mark of this period — a sun, rays, a hard black field, and the discipline to leave it alone.

It is also a reminder that these objects were never sorted by category when they were in use. A person had a jacket, and on that jacket went the ski area, the club, the college and wherever else they had been. The categories are ours. The drawer did not have any.

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