THE AMERICA’S CUP SILVER TROPHY

The prestige of racing for the America’s Cup comes in large part from the impressive trophy. Silver, a rare and costly metal, has been chosen and cherished since hundreds of years for ceremonial objects and as symbols of authority. Silver trophies have been presented as tokens of esteem or sporting prizes for centuries. “The English retained a passion for presentation silver and an astonishing variety and range of large prizes and testimonial pieces emerged in the nineteenth century.”11 The Marquess of Anglesey (1768-1854) purchased an document by which the original winners of the trophy presented it to the New York Yacht Club. There is no schedule like the four-year cycle for the Olympics or the World Cup. The defending yacht club and a challenging club write the rules for each edition, choosing the dates, specifying the type of yacht to be raced, the venue, and the number of races to be sailed. In recent years we have seen a true revolution in the race boat technology. The yachts in the 2007 America’s Cup were seventy-five foot long displacement monohulls with a twenty-ton lead keel for stability. Elegant but slow, they sailed at about ten knots. The 2010 races in Valencia, Spain, moved to 115-foot long multihulls - monstrous yachts built at great expense that were used in only two races. Speedy catamarans flying above the water on hydrofoils raced in San Francisco in 2013 and in Bermuda in 2017. elaborately decorated sterling silver ewer (Figure 4) made in 1848 by Britain’s Crown Jeweler, R. & S. Garrard & Co., founded by George Wickes in 1735.

The designers at Emirates Team New Zealand startled the sailing world in 2018 when they showed their concept for a wild new race boat. Remarkably, the concept works! The AC75 is a 75 foot long monohull, but it has no heavy keel for stability. Instead, a fifteenfoot long arm with a surfboard-sized hydrofoil is raised and lowered on each side of the boat. The lift generated by the hydrofoil raises seven tons of boat and crew clear of the water. Speeds over fifty knots have already been registered. The races have thrilled the sailors and the audiences. The America’s Cup Match in March 2021 provided the fastest racing in the most technically audacious sailboats ever to race anywhere. Reliability played a key role in determining the winner. These boats are so complex that the shore teams - like the pit crew in Formula One - are under constant pressure to keep the boats ready to race and fixing breakdowns by working all night between races.

One of the most renowned silversmiths of the nineteenth century, Garrard was run by three brothers at that time, Robert Garrard II (17931881), who apprenticed in 1809 with his father, along with his siblings James (1735- c.1886) and Sebastian Garrard (1798-1870). The three brothers managed the silver manufactory after their father’s passing (Robert Garrard

I, 1758-1818) in 1818 and operated under the name of R. J. & S. Garrard until James’s departure in 1835, when his initial was accordingly dropped from the company’s name. Garrard employed renowned painters and sculptors, such as Edmund Cotterill (1795-1860), who became the chief designer of the company.12 During the mid-nineteenth century, the firm was known as one of the leading silver manufacturers of elaborate presentation silver and centerpieces, servicing the aristocracy and the court. In 1843, Queen Victoria

(1819-1901) appointed Garrard as the first official Crown Jewelers of the United Kingdom, serving six successive monarchs. Garrard kept this title until 2007, when an era changed.

Garrard’s sterling silver ewer, known today as the America’s Cup, was produced as a representative stock item, weighing 134 ounces (3.8 kg) and measuring 27 inches (69 cm) in height.13 It was created for speculation sales.14 This Cup was one of a series of silver ewers with similar design offered for sale.15 These ewers were assembled from the pieces with the same design, and decorated with the same motifs, with slight variations, which resulted in multiple designs.

As already mentioned, the America’s Cup was named after its first winner, the yacht “America,” which won the 1851 race. However, the trophy has often mistakenly been attributed to other names. John Cox Stevens referred to the trophy as the “Hundred Guinea Cup,”16 instead of its correct name, the “RYS £100 Cup.” One hundred guineas would have been equal to £105. Another erroneous attribution was “The Queen’s Cup.” This inaccurate term to describe the trophy appears to haveoriginated in a speech given by John Cox Stevens during the New York Yacht Club dinner at Astor House on Wednesday, October 1, 1851, on the victorious return of America’s owners.17 Astor House was then a very fashionable hotel on the corner ofBroadwayandVesey StreetinLower Manhattan, but all trace of it was lost in 1913 to make way for a larger building. The Queen presented a cup each year, but for a race that was only open to RYS yachts: in 1851, specifically to cutters between 50and 100 tons.18 She did present cups toother yacht clubs and America was initially entered to race for The Queen’s Cup of the RoyalVictoria Yacht Club at Ryde on the Isle of Wight, just across the water from Portsmouth. This mayhave been the source of the Americans’ bafflement about the Cup’s name.19 Alternatively, the courseround the Isle of Wight was known as The Queen’s Course, so that also may account for theconfusion.

The mid-nineteenth century, in which the America’s Cup ewer was produced, namely in 1848, marks a period of expansion in industrialization and technology. The middle classes’ purchasing power strengthened and individual wealth surged, creating a demand for elaborately designed silverware. At the same time, with the rise of the middle class, a less expensive version of silverware emerged – that of silver-plated items for the mass market. The industrial and technological development also became visible in the production methods of silver, which included mechanized casting, rolling, and electro-plating among other techniques.20 The division of labor changed the prestigious silversmith’s profession. It separated the conception from the execution of a silver piece, resulting in a new interpretation of the highly skilled craftsman, formerly known as a gold- or silversmith to namely that of the artificer.21

The America’s Cup was very likely designed by Garrard’s chief designer Cotterill and executed by the Garrard team of silversmiths. With each stage being highly specialized, such as casting, engraving, chasing, assembling and polishing, several silversmiths worked on this one ewer from conception to the realization of the object itself.

The Cup wears the following five British hallmarks (Figure 5): (1) maker’s mark of Robert Garrard, “R.G.” in script under a crown; (2) town mark corresponding to the mark of the assay office that has verified the piece – here a leopard’s head uncrowned for London; (3) the standard mark, a hallmark for the quality of the metal, a lion passant for sterling silver (925); (4) a date letter mark, which identifies the year in which the piece was verified by the assay office – in this case the letter “N” for the years 1848-49; and (5) the duty hallmark, a sovereign’s head, certifying the payment of duty (this mark was used in the period of 1784 to 1890).

Despite the growing mass production during the midnineteenth century, along with the growing industrialization, English silver remained at a general high standard of craftsmanship.22 It is also significant to point out that despite the many technological and technical advancements and new construction techniques, especially the silver-plating of a lower standard of “imitation silver” for the mass market, the America’s Cup was conceived in sterling silver—a quality standard of the minimum fineness of 925 silver, an alloy of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper mixed with nickel. This denotes that the Cup was not just an ordinary machine-made cup of that time, but one that was handcrafted in the highest quality and was therefore unique.

The silver ewer was produced during the Victorian era, named after the period of Queen Victoria’s reign in England (1837-1901). It embodies a typical design of eclecticism, sourcing mainly from the Renaissance. Eclecticism was a manner of combining diverse historic, naturalistic, and exotic styles and mixing them with a creative approach to reflect stylistic diversity. This diversity, featuring its own definite and original style representative of the Victorian era,23 is visible in the design, the construction, and the application of decorative motifs on the ewer. The Victorian era culminated with the Great Exhibition of 1851, the same year that this silver ewer was presented as a prize for the race won by the America

Various traditional silversmithing production techniques were applied in the design of the America’s Cup, including hand-raising, forging, repoussé, chasing, engraving, stamping, soldering, casting, and polishing.24 Stylized leaves, scrolls, medallions and flower motifs are visible as appliqués. These decorative motifs were cast and pierced separately using metal die cutting punches and subsequently applied by traditional soldering to the main body of the ewer.

The stem, from which protrudes a simple rounded column, is decorated with low relief ornaments, and four empty cartouches, oval medallions set in a scrolled frame, above a simplified beakhead fret, a repeating vertical ornamental design resembling the head of a bird, crowned by a beaded pearl band

(Figure 6). Slightly atop the naked column is a wide angular ring representing more cartouches connected through floral garlands. This angular ring is surmounted by several scrolled brackets25 (Figure 6), a type of projecting shelf support. The next ornamental level brings to attention a wide concave ring divided into several vertical sections through low relief decorative motifs, termed strapwork, that end in grotesque masks, also referred to as mascarons (Figure 6).

Stylized strapwork, a decorative motif from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century originated in Antwerp, Belgium, and had a revival in the late nineteenth century, and was most commonly applied in architecture and decorative arts.26 Strapwork is characterized by intricate patterns of interlaced lines and scrolls diversified with geometrical figures. In modern terms it is also referred to as the prismatic ornament (Figure 7).27 The Cup presents strapwork dominantly to a great degree.

The main body features large bulbous lobes (Figure 8). On the upper connection of the lobes are placed cartouches with three-dimensional high relief female busts coiffed in braids, wearing a single strand of pearls (Figure 8). Above them we discover another strapwork motif (Figure 10). Traditionally, the bulbous lobes were crafted by the technique of hand-raising and repoussé work, and then attached to a precut ring connecting them. The female busts are finely crafted and produced through the process of wax casting, subsequently soldered between the bulbous lobes’ upper section. The strategic placement of the female busts and strapwork ornament above serves as decorative detail, but also as reinforcement of the soldering segments between the lobes and the ring, simultaneously concealing the soldering segments.

Above the main body is a wide band of high-relief oval medallions covered with geometrically stylized motifs, depicting renaissance style flower buds (Figure 9). Following this row, a plain ring connects to the baluster-shaped and with strapwork decorated neck (Figure 10). The strapwork here depicts stylized lotus flowers alternated by grotesque masks of satyrs and floral decorative motifs. Another plain thin ring connects the baluster neck with the spout (Figure 5). The Cup’s widely open spout presents a chased border of a fret with profile view of conventional flowers, such as chrysanthemum or daisies, each alternating with a triangle pointing down (Figure 5). Below this asymmetrical spout opening some areas show stippled fields and more strapwork with foliate scrolls.

The baluster handle (Figure 11) of the silver ewer is comprised of five individual pieces. The lower part features an inverted S-scroll element with a stylized C-scroll, attached to the baluster and upper body of the piece. This element is connected through a decorative baluster pillar terminating in

1. 5 Minute History website, “10 Fascinating Facts about the Great Exhibition of 1851,” https://fiveminutehistory. com/?s=great+exhibition (accessed February 15, 2021).

2. RYS poster for Annual Regatta of 1851. Source: Royal Yacht Squadron.

3. Herbert L. Stone and William H. Taylor, The America’s Cup Races (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1958), 16.

4. Michael D’Antonio, A Full Cup: Sir Thomas Lipton’s Extraordinary Life and His Quest for the America’s Cup (New York: Riverhead, 2010), 147.

5. Anglesey, “Paget, Henry William, first marquess of Anglesey (1768–1854),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, (September 2004); online edition, (January 2008), (accessed January 24, 2021).

6. Doug Riggs, Keelhauled: The History of Unsportsmanlike Conduct and the America’s Cup (Newport, Rhode Island: Seven Seas Press, 1986), 10.

Notes

12. Kristiane Frank, “Cotterill, Edmund,” in: Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon, State Museum in Berlin – Berlin State Library website, https://www-1degruyter1com-10072a6v5022e.erf.sbb.spkberlin.de/document/database/AKL/ entry/_10173160/html (accessed February 8, 2021).

13. Winfield M. Thompson and Thomas W. Lawson, The Lawson History of the America’s Cup (Boston: Privately printed by Thomas W. Lawson, 1902), 44.

14. Royal Yacht Squadron website, “The Yacht America,” https://web.archive.org/ web/20170206213125/https:/www. rys.org.uk/about/the-yacht-america/ (accessed January 28, 2021).

15. W.H. Summers, Garrard’s Director. Letter of May 20, 1985, to the owner of an original ewer in a private collection.

16. Stone & Taylor, The America’s Cup Races, 16-17.

17. Montague Guest and William B. Boulton, Memorials of the Royal Yacht Squadron, London: John Murray (1903), 218, 222-223.

25. Dora Ware and Maureen Stafford, An Illustrated Dictionary of Ornament (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1974), 42.

26. Ibid., 205.

27. Ibid., 205. Also refer to Lewis & Darley, A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1986).

28. Thompson & Lawson, The Lawson History of the America’s Cup, 44.

29. It has not yet been determined when and by whom the bottom was added to the neck. Research is ongoing.

30. Elaine Bunting, “Things you never knew about the historic ‘Auld Mug’ America’s Cup Trophy,” Yachting World magazine, (May 16, 2007).

31. New Zealand Herald website, “Man who smashed the America’s Cup sells ‘souvenirs’ of his actions,” (August 19, 2016), https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ man-who-smashed-the-americas-cupsells-souvenirs-of-his-actions/CWPW56V5LVS2VX4KDQCSBOZORM/ (accessed February 8, 2021).

an urn-shaped finial to another inverted stylized C-scroll, ending in a half-penny snub point. The handle makes this silver vessel a ewer, namely a water pitcher. Its symbolic function has been clearly brought to light as a yachting trophy.

Originally, the America’s Cup was a bottomless vessel,28 but a bottom was added to the small baluster neck area in order for the cup to hold a small amount of liquid.29 This is evident in some images where winners are seen drinking champagne from the Cup.

Over time and to accommodate the results of 170 years of racing, two sterling silver bases have been added to accommodate engraving of the results from 1958 onwards (Figure 4b). The first base was added by Tiffany & Co., at the request of the New York Yacht Club, then the holders of the Cup. The second base was added by Garrard’s in 2000, for the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron. This second base was remanufactured and re-engraved in 2018, to allow room for more engraving. Several engraving techniques have been used on the bases of the Cup, including hand-engraving, individually punched letters and machine and laser engraving (Figures 13a, b, c & d). Through the addition of the bases, today the trophy measures 43 inches (110 cm) in height and weighs more than 30 pounds (14 kg).30

The America’s Cup as it appears today has undergone occasional restoration. The most dramatic resulted from the September 1997 sledgehammer attack on the Cup by Ben Nathan, a Maori protester in Auckland. Nathan saw the silver trophy as a symbol of oppression by Caucasians. His attack led to significant damage to the Cup, necessitating major repairs by renowned silversmith Rod Hingston at Garrard & Co 31 Garrard’s restoration process required several months to reconstruct the trophy to its original appearance.32 Further repairs were made in 2010 by the silversmith workshop Biro and Sons Silversmiths in San Francisco,33 and again on the base by Garrard’s in London in 2018. Despite the significant damage in 1997 and other major reconstructions, the America’s Cup has survived as an emblem of heritage, representing the sport of yachting worldwide. A paradox emerges: Although the historic value of the antique presentation silver ewer itself may have diminished as an original example of the silversmithing craftsmanship during its tormented life and refurbishments, given the fortunes that have been spent pursuing it, the America’s Cup trophy may be the most costly silver trophy in history. Yachting aficionados will always associate the America’s Cup with a sentimental value and as a symbol of power and tradition pertaining to the grandeur of the sea and master yachtsmen.

7. Bob Fisher, An Absorbing Interest. The America’s Cup, A History 1851-2003 (Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, 2007), 20.

8. George L. Schuyler, Deed of Gift (1852, amended 1887). Original document: New York Yacht Club archives, reproduced in: Deed of Gift of the America’s Cup and Related Manuscripts from the Archives of the New York Yacht Club, edited and annotated by Ryoichi Steven Tsuchiya.

9. Fisher, An Absorbing Interest, frontispiece.

10. For further information about the Deed of Gift, please refer to: Hamish Ross, The America’s Cup Deeds of Gift, Ph.D. dissertation, (The University of Auckland, 2017).

11. Philippa Glanville, Silver: History and Design (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), 111.

18. Refer to poster in Figure 6.

19. Guest & Boulton, Memorials of the Royal Yacht Squadron, 222.

20. Graham Hood, American Silver: A History of Style, 1650-1900 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1971), 213.

21. Ibid., 213.

22. Oliver Chadwick, English Silver (London: Merlin Press, 1975), 53.

23. Ibid., 55.

24. For more information on the individual silversmithing techniques, please refer to: Klaus-Dieter Lietzmann, Joachim Schlegel and Arno Hensel, Metallformung, Geschichte, Kunst, Technik (Leipzig: VE Deutscher Verlag für Grundstoffindustrie), 1984.

32. Tim Jeffrey, “Well, that’s a relief then,” in Seahorse Magazine, (January 2007), 31.

33. San Francisco Gate website, September 5, 2010, www.sfgate.com (accessed February 7, 2021).Anglesey, “Paget, Henry William, first marquess of Anglesey (1768–1854),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press, September 2004, (accessed January 24, 2021).