Trophies Trophy News

Trophies have been used to signify some sort of victory since ancient times. In fact, the modern word “trophy” originated from the Greek word tropaion, which is derived from the verb meaning “to rout.” In ancient Greece, the first trophies reflected wartime victories. These were erected on the battlefield where the enemy had been defeated. These first battlefield trophies were fabricated from captured arms and standards and were placed on a large stake or hung on a tree. They were made to resemble the figure of a warrior, and were inscribed with details of the battle and dedicated to a god or gods. Naval trophies followed the same pattern of construction. They were constructed of entire ships (or what remained of them), and laid out on the nearest beach to the conquest. The deliberate destruction of one if these wartime trophies was considered a sacrilege since it was given in thanks and tribute to a god.

The ancient Romans kept their trophies closer to home. Instead of a tribute to the victors and gods in the vicinity of the victory, the Romans had their commemorative trophies constructed in Rome. These trophies were often magnificent, and included columns and arches atop a foundation. Outside Rome, there are huge stone memorials that were originally crowned with sculpted stone trophies…remnants of these trophies from long ago.

There is little knowledge about awards of trophies given during the Middle Ages. However, in the New World, chalices, or two-handled cups, were given to winners of sporting events as early as at least the very late 1600s. An exquisite example of this is a small two-handled sterling cup in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, that was given to the winner of a short horse race between two towns in New England about 1699. It’s named the and is called the Kyp Cup as it was fabricated by silversmith Jesse Kyp . Chalices were primarily associated with sporting events, and were typically made in silver. They were awarded in horse racing, boating and early automobile racing. Sporting awards still 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.