Trophy of the Week : April 2nd, 2023

The Stanley-Cup-Style Base

This is a custom option that we get asked for somewhat regularly, but this trophy was especially large. It needed 4 tiers in order to fit all the engraving and leave room for the future. The client wanted a 620 Series trophy with a base in the style of the Stanley Cup.

If you haven’t seen the Stanley Cup, it has one of the most distinctive bases in all of sports. The base has a straight-walled, multi-tiered design that raises the trophy up like it is sitting on a column. On the actual Stanley Cup, this makes room for the names of all the hockey players on every winning team to be engraved.

Our humble adaption may not be quite as iconic as the Stanley Cup trophy itself, but it definitely made an impressive appearance. It stood over two and a half feet high, and fit the engraving of the entire winning team for the past 20 years with space for 25-30 more years in the future.

Building the Base

It wasn’t the easiest thing to build the multi-layered base with straight walls. Normally, the upper base would sit on top of the lower base with room to seat firmly on top. That makes the trophy base get larger with every tier.

In this case, we used pewter to make three of the same base, but we cut the top two short. We rolled the bead right where the straight-walled engraving space usually widens into the flared bottom. Doing that made the tops stack with a straight, vertical wall, but it also made them very difficult to put together straight.

In order to solder them together, we use a welding torch to heat the seam as it spins on a pottery turntable. Centering the unstable bases perfectly on top of each other was the most difficult part of building the base.

The Anatomy of a Trophy

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