Creations Engraving and Embroidery

Trophy History - Part 2

Little is known about awards or trophies given during the Middle Ages. Chalices, or two-handled cups, were given to winners of sporting events as early as at least the very late 1600s in the New World. An exquisite, small two-handled sterling cup in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, was given to the winner of a short horse race between two towns in New England about 1699 and is called the Kyp Cup (made by silversmith Jesse Kyp). Chalices, particularly, are associated with sport events, and were typically made in silver and given in horse racing, and later, boating and early automobile racing (which became popular over a century with the birth of the automobile). Sporting awards often take the form of a cup, including the Davis Cup, a major tennis trophy first awarded in 1900, the Stanley Cup, given to National Hockey League champs (1894), and the World Cup, given since 1967 to top male and female alpine skiers, to name a few.
Trophies are less expensive and awarded more frequently, thanks to manufactured plastic trophies. In addition to having a variety of figures from which to choose, trophies are of three primary forms: the clear plastic action figure crowning the base, the gold-colored or silver-colored action figure atop the base, or a rectangular plinth of plastic that is holographically decorated by computer with words or graphic of the event, equipment, or sport scene and placed on the plastic base.