3-043-846 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Ascot Prize Plate, 1871. 'The designs of the gold and silver plate...for the chief prizes this year at the Ascot races, were remarkably well conceived. That of the large shield offered instead of the Ascot Cup consists of a series of bas-reliefs and medallions, illustrative of great events in the history of England under King Henry V. and other Plantagenet reigns...This shield was designed and modelled by Mr. W. F. Spencer, for the manufacturers, Messrs. R. and S. Garrard and Co. They also manufactured the prize for the Queen's Stand Plate, a tankard with a dragon surmounting the lid. The sculptured groups on its sides represent incidents in Tennyson's Arthurian poem of "Enid." The two seen in our Illustration are...that of the insolent behaviour of a stranger knight, Edyrn, who struck with his whip at Queen Guinevere's waiting-maid when she asked his name of the attendant dwarf...[and] the combat between Geraint and Edyrn...The plate for the Royal Hunt Cup is an equestrian group, in silver on a bronze ground, representing Henry VIII. at a hunt in Epping Forest when the death of his Queen (Anne Boleyn) was announced to him by a signal-gun. It is the work of Messrs. Hunt and Roskell'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.