Where mortarboards come from

Matthew: What lunatic designed the mortarboard, and why are people still wearing them in the 20th Century? — Gary in La Mesa

We don’t have the lunatic’s name, but he sort of ripped off the idea anyway. It’s an ancient tradition for people to put things on their heads to let everybody else know who they are. Or at least what they are. Consider tiaras, war bonnets, hard hats, halos, powdered wigs, dunce caps, and the headgear made out of sewn-together beer cans for sitting around the RV park. So, too, people who think for a living have had recognizable skull coverings for nearly as long as people have had skulls and thoughts. The mortarboard evolved out of the dome rug worn by medieval scholars who worked in cold, drafty monasteries. To keep the synapses toasty under their hooded robes, they wore wool felt skullcaps, usually with a floppy, four-cornered square on top. A tuft of fuzz sprouted up in the middle of the square, which evolved into the mortarboard tassel sometime in die early 1700s in England, maybe the result of a “my tuft’s bigger than your tuft” showdown between campuses.

As an item of secular, graduation day get-up, the soft-form mortarboard dates from the 1520s. The University of Paris. Oxford University immediately grabbed the idea, and the floppy, four-cornered cap became part of its everyday professorial gear. According to my sources, the “board” was added to the mortarboard in the 1700s, again in England, and only served to keep the ends from drooping. There were many styles of scholars’ and graduation caps, and this was just one more, apparently. Maybe someone thought the grads looked sharper and more alert with pointy corners sticking out of their heads rather than the saggy, beanie-and-pot-holder look. It’s been the U.S.’s cap of choice since the 1890s, when a committee met to standardize graduation duds. Chairman of the group was a cap and gown manufacturer, who pretty much threw the vote in favor of his company’s design.

The tradition of winging your cap in the air has spawned two new bits of mortarboard , technology: the $3.00 disposable cap and the soft-foam-core board. The first is practical because you don’t have to locate your own once you’ve thrown it. According to the Collegiate Cap and Gown Company, the second came about when a graduate sued for injuries suffered when hit by a falling mortarboard.

Of course, the name “mortarboard” only evolved as a sort of nickname during the 19th Century, after the flat top came into fashion. (Need I explain — it looked like the board masons used to carry mortar?) Before then the cap was referred to as a pilleus quadratus, a four-cornered skullcap, interesting, though, the Latin pilleus referred to a style of felt cap worn by Romans at rowdy feasts and awarded to slaves when they achieved their freedom. That’s one historical note every graduate can relate to.

Why do we still wear them? Can you say “tradition”? Got a better suggestion? Propeller beanies? Big yellow-and-blue foam lightning bolts? Steve Martin skull arrows? Well, now that you’ve graduated, you’ll have plenty of time to dream something up while you’re standing in the unemployment line.