Trophy of the Week : May 14th, 2023

Haskell Stakes Trophy Replica

The Haskell Invitational Stakes is a prestigious horse race with an intricate trophy inscribed with its location, Monmouth Park. A while ago, one of the winners who had a share in the horse, approached us with a request to make him a replica of the trophy for his personal collection.

The trophy was quite a challenge because it has a lot of small, delicate pieces that all had to be hand-carved. In order to get the horse and jockey just right, we had to start from scratch. We weren’t able to get the dimensions from the actual trophy, so we had to work off photos of people holding it. Once we approximated the size of the jockey, we had it sculpted by an artist from clay. After that, everything was sized from the jockey to make it look proportional.

The wood base was handmade from walnut to look like the outside of a figure eight which complemented the top silver platform with concave sides. The hole in the center is for mounting the top.

The metal parts of the trophy were made from a variety of different metals depending on the properties needed. Most of the structural pieces were made from brass which is very strong and lends itself well to gold and silver plating. We also used aluminum and pewter for some of the other parts, but one of the amazing things about this trophy is that we made all the pieces to screw together.

Many times parts like these are cast and soldered which makes them solid so that they can’t come apart. We experimented with that method, but in the end the cast pieces just didn’t have that sharp, crisp look that we wanted. Casting always introduces porosity in the metal, and it has to be taken out using grinding and polishing wheels. This changes the character of the metal, causing it to have more of a wavy reflection with rounder corners.

We wanted this trophy to be one-of-a-kind, so we decided that it should all be machined piece by piece. In the picture below you can see what it looks like when it’s disassembled.

Once the pieces were all machined, they had to be either gold or silver plated. This was another reason we elected to make it in a way that could be disassembled. The gold and silver pieces had to be plated separately and assembled afterwards.

Oldani Brothers Custom Trophies

If you’re interested in any of our handmade custom trophies or the engravable pewter and sterling trophies and giftware that we make for a variety of sporting events, you can find more information on our website. All of our trophies are handmade in the USA. We offer a variety of different personalized options like engraving, custom 3D medallions, and replicas.

Please contact us at sales@oldanibrothers.com with any questions.

This post was written by Peter Oldani. Find out more about the author.