Bend Emblem

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Ten souvenirs, with a price each

City of Bend centennial site · November 21, 2005

In the story: 6. The emblem outlives the club, 1930–2010.

A cream disc with a heavy black ring, the word BEND across it in narrow black letters.
The centennial button artwork: the emblem on its own, black on cream. City of Bend centennial site · retrieved from the Internet Archive · documentary reproduction Examine the original

The city's centennial put the emblem on a bear, a cap, a jacket, a key chain, a glass, a mug, a tote and a shirt, and printed what each one cost.

The Bend Chamber ran the City's centennial in 2005, and the centennial site's merchandise page is the only place in this archive where the emblem has a price. Ten items are listed. A tote bag at $24.00, caps at $16.99, a Bend Bear at $10.99, a key chain at $4.99, a steel mug at $12.99, a glass at $6.99, centennial T-shirts at $14.99, a fleece jacket at $49.99, a vest at $44.99, and a quilt poster at $7.50. They were sold at Bend City Hall, the Bend Chamber of Commerce, the Bend Visitors and Convention Bureau and Camp Fire USA, with the quilt posters also at two quilt shops.

Eight of the ten product photographs carry the emblem, and most of them carry it alone rather than inside the City's landscape badge: the key chain is the emblem and nothing else, the glass and the mug and the tote set it over the line 1905–2005 CELEBRATING 100 YEARS, and the teddy bear wears it on a shirt.

The page’s own button artwork is the plainest rendering of it: the word in a cream disc with a heavy black ring, at 121 pixels, no landscape and no other text. That is the drawing measured here, and at 121 pixels it is also the smallest picture of its construction on file, which is why what it is made of took two readings to settle and why a larger capture of the same artwork is still wanted.

The page also sells something this archive would very much like to see. “Bend the Beautiful — Centennial Stories”, a 45-minute limited-edition video at $19.95, described as stories from people who lived and grew up in Bend “almost back to 1905”. No copy has been located.

Where it sits, and who put it there. The button is filed with the bureau roundel, which is the construction the City of Bend draws its own mark in, and it was moved there by the curator on 16 September 2026 with the matrix agreeing. It had been filed that morning with a capital N, and on that reading it was the earliest drawing of the other family and gave that family its name. Enlarged and set at one height beside the City’s 2016 standalone file and its 2026 mark, its third letter is the arch those two carry, with the same spur above its left stem and no diagonal in it at any enlargement. So the City’s centennial mark is the City’s own construction rather than the head of the commercial line, and the family it briefly named went back to being named for Downtown Bend’s file of November 2006, which is the earliest drawing left in it. The id never moved, so every link still resolves.

Measured

The bureau roundel, the notched construction. Narrow letters, a notched E and a notched B at the same height, an arched third letter, and rounded corners.

Read at medium confidence from 87 px of letter, which is the letters alone, at this drawing's own letter cut.

Each drawing is reduced to the same thing — the letters BEND, cropped to their own ink, rasterised at a common size — so two of them can be compared by shape alone.

Device aspect
1.017 The roundel’s width divided by its height. 1.000 is a true circle; anything else is an oval, or a photograph taken at an angle. 0.977 – 1.048 across the collection
Word aspect
1.008 The same ratio for the block of BEND letters alone, once cropped to their own ink. 0.927 – 1.862; the high end is lettering set wide rather than stacked
Figure ink
0.436 How much of the drawing is ink rather than ground. A heavy ring and fat letters push it up. 0.169 – 0.728, median 0.493
Coverage
0.343 How much of the normalised square the letters fill once every drawing is reduced to the same size. 0.198 – 0.576, median 0.456

What it most resembles. Two digitisations of a single printing score 0.975, so that is what “the same artwork” looks like as a number.

Least like it: Bend Rubber Stamp & Printing, at 0.174.

Resemblance is not descent. A high score means two drawings have the same shape. It does not establish which came first, or that either was copied from the other.

Compare this drawing with another · The board · How the drawings were measured

Seen in use

9 dated sightings, 2005. Each is a record of this object or this drawing somewhere else, and where a picture is hosted it is a documentary crop of the object, credited to whoever holds it.
Two canvas tote bags, the larger carrying a BEND emblem over the words 1905 to 2005, celebrating 100 years.
The tote bags at $24.00, with the dated line under the emblem. City of Bend centennial site · retrieved from the Internet Archive · documentary reproduction Examine the original
A T-shirt design: a banner reading BEND OREGON over a woodcut landscape, with a green ribbon reading CELEBRATING 100 YEARS.
The T-shirt artwork at $14.99: the City’s banner badge with the emblem at its foot. City of Bend centennial site · retrieved from the Internet Archive · documentary reproduction Examine the original

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