Silver Trophies from 1866 to 2014

The Mulholland Cup (1866)

Greg Denieffe writes:

I really enjoyed the recent coverage that HTBS has been privileged to give the new silver trophy for the Newton Women's Boat Race. In 2011, HTBS posted my history of The Mulholland Cup (1866) and also mentioned a project by the Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University, Belfast, called Silver Sounds.

Silver Sounds was a project that suggested that sound might be a way of uniting and reinterpreting Queen’s University’s silver collection. The soundscapes created for the project respond to the provenance of a particular piece of silverware and explore the reasons for its creation, donation and use and combine with the silver objects to create a new immersive artwork.

Jason Geistweidt is a sound artist currently based in Chicago. He was one of the twelve artists commissioned to create a piece for the project and he based it on The Mulholland Cup. His piece responds to the continual transformation of the sporting trophy as dates and names were added every few years as well as its static embodiment of particular events and memories etched in metal. Wishing to create a kinetic complement, he has incorporated elements which provide this object with a living context: the working of metal, the pull of the oar through water and the encouragement of the coxswain.

Newton Women's Boat Race (2014)

Entitled Stroke, the work incorporates the various ‘strokes’ encapsulated in the Mulholland Cup: the stroke of the silversmith, the stroke of the oar, the name of the crewman that sets the pace and the stroke of the clock marking the passage of time.

Unfortunately, the sound piece created by Jason was not available when HTBS originally posted the article back in 2011 but I have recently discovered a copy and have uploaded it to the online audio distribution platform SoundCloud. You can listen to the six minute recording here.

I would like to think that Rod Kelly, the silversmith responsible for the new Newton trophy, would appreciate what Geistweidt created as much as we at HTBS appreciate what he has produced for the sport of rowing in 2014.