Brenau University
Georgia
1878
Formerly “Georgia Baptist Female Seminary”
Citations in the World Almanac (listed by cover date; color information is from the previous year): orange/black (1923-1931); black/gold (1934-1935)
The chevron was by far the most common heraldic division the Intercollegiate Bureau of Academic Costume (IBAC) employed to divide the two or three colors in an institution’s hood, but beginning in 1895 the “parti per chevron” was also used quite frequently. Here the two school colors were placed in the hood lining one above the other, with the division between them following the shape of a chevron. Later the IBAC began to use a per reversed chevron division and a division per bar on rare occasions. Confusingly, in IBAC lists from 1927 and 1948, a number of hoods were described as “[color] above [color]” or “[color] over [color]” which referred either to a hood lining divided per chevron, per reversed chevron, or per bar, and today it is not usually known which of these three patterns the IBAC intended to describe.
Because Brenau College’s “gold” is a dark brownish orange shade, the IBAC assigned Brenau College a hood lined “orange above black” no later than 1927, according to an IBAC list from that period. Similar descriptions were cited in 1948 and 1972 IBAC lists, but none these lists described the way the two colors were divided. However, a list compiled by Kevin Sheard in Academic Heraldry in America (1962) described Brenau’s hood lining as old gold and black, divided per chevron.
Here Brenau has been reassigned a hood using a copper color, as this more accurately captures the distinctly orange shade of metallic gold officially used by the college.
Detailed historical information about the black and gold school colors of Brenau College is not available at this time, but the name of the college was derived from the German word brennen (“to burn”) and the Latin word aurum (“gold”). The motto of the college is “As Gold Refined by Fire”. This name and motto were adopted in 1900, so this may have been when the black and gold colors were chosen.
Brenau’s “gold” is a distinctive brownish-orange shade, which is why the college’s colors have sometimes been described as black and orange or black and old gold. This is also why vintage Brenau memorabilia from the early 20th century appears to be black and dark orange (or burnt orange) even though the official college colors were black and gold.
