Wimbledon Trophy Guide: The Cup, the Dish and the Pineapple

Wimbledon awards two singles trophies each year. The Gentlemen’s Singles Trophy is a silver-gilt cup topped with a pineapple, first presented back in 1887. The Venus Rosewater Dish is an ornate silver salver, first presented a year earlier, in 1886. Neither trophy is ever kept by the champion who wins it. Both remain the permanent property of the All England Club, and each winner instead receives a three-quarter size replica, engraved with their own name, to keep.

The men's trophy: the Gentlemen's Singles Trophy

The Gentlemen’s Singles Trophy is a silver-gilt cup, 18 inches (46cm) high with a diameter of 7.5 inches (19cm). Two handles sit on either side of the bowl, each with a winged helmet beneath it, and a pineapple finial tops the lid.

The inscription reads “The All England Lawn Tennis Club Single Handed Champion of the World”. It was made by Elkington & Co of Birmingham, a firm whose silverwork was among the finest produced anywhere in the country at the time.

The trophy was first presented in 1887, bought by the All England Club for 100 guineas. Every champion’s name from 1877 onwards was engraved directly onto the cup, until 2009, when the club finally ran out of room and added a black plinth with an ornamented silver band to carry the names instead.

The museum’s own curator describes the plinth as arguably the biggest change made to the trophy since it was first made, and given how little else about the cup has changed since Victorian times, that holds up. Every name from Spencer Gore, the very first champion in 1877, through to the present day is preserved somewhere on the cup or its plinth, a continuous physical record spanning nearly 150 years of the tournament.

Why is there a pineapple on the Wimbledon trophy?

The honest answer is also the most interesting one. The museum’s Collections Manager states plainly that there is no documented reason for the pineapple’s presence on the trophy.

What is known is the context around it. A pineapple was a Victorian symbol of luxury and hospitality, rare and expensive enough that a single fruit could be hired for an evening just to be displayed at a dinner table, then returned unopened the next morning. It was a common decorative motif on silverware of the period generally, with no connection to tennis, cups, or sporting trophies of any kind.

The same curator makes one further point: whatever its original reason for being there, the pineapple has a genuine connection to tennis now. It has sat on top of the world’s most recognisable tennis trophy for well over a century, despite what anyone intended when it was first put there.

The women's trophy: the Venus Rosewater Dish

Formally the Ladies’ Singles Challenge Trophy, but almost universally known as the Venus Rosewater Dish, the women’s trophy is a partially gilded sterling silver salver, 18.75 inches (48cm) in diameter.

It was made in 1864 by Elkington & Co, the same firm that later made the men’s cup, and was first presented at Wimbledon in 1886, when the challenge round was introduced to the women’s event.

The design is Renaissance in style. At its centre sits a figure of Temperance, holding a lamp and a jug, surrounded by representations of the four classical elements: air, water, earth and fire. The outer rim carries a series of plaques representing the seven liberal arts, astrology, geometry, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, dialectic and grammar, each overseen by the goddess Minerva.

Champions’ names were originally engraved on the front of the dish, then moved to the back as space ran short, and now appear on a plinth added in 2016, the same solution the men’s trophy adopted seven years earlier.

The iconography was never really about tennis. It was designed to display the intellectual and artistic aspirations of the late nineteenth century, which is the reason a tennis trophy carries the seven liberal arts rather than anything related to sport.

Why is the women's trophy a plate?

The dish reflects a Victorian convention, not a tennis one: more decorative prizes were considered appropriate for women’s competitions of the period. Early women’s prizes at Wimbledon included flower baskets and bracelets, and the salver was chosen within that same tradition rather than as a tennis-specific design.

It has long since outgrown that origin, and that convention shaped a great deal of Victorian sport, not just tennis, saying more about the era than about the women who competed in it. Whatever the reasoning behind its original selection, the Venus Rosewater Dish is recognised today as a championship trophy in its own right, on equal footing with the men’s cup rather than a lesser companion to it.

Do Wimbledon winners keep the trophy?

No. Both original trophies remain the property of the All England Club, in perpetuity.

Champions hold the trophy on court immediately after the final, and again at the champions’ dinner on the tournament’s last night. That is the full extent of their time with it. Each winner instead receives a three-quarter size replica of their trophy, engraved with their own name, which they do keep permanently.

The originals return to the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, where a team of conservators cleans and polishes them every year, ready for the next Championships.

On value: the trophies are not commodities, and no market or insured sale value exists for either of them. Both are made of precious material, silver-gilt for the men’s cup and partially gilded sterling silver for the women’s dish, but their worth is historical rather than financial. There is no credible figure for what either would fetch if sold, and none should be treated as fact.

What champions do take home, alongside the replica, is a substantial prize. See how much each round was worth in our Wimbledon prize money article.

Two trophies won outright: a short history

Before the trophies used today, Wimbledon’s men’s champions competed for the Field Cup, under a rule that anyone winning three years running would keep it outright.

William Renshaw won in 1881, 1882 and 1883, and kept the Field Cup as his own. The club made a new Challenge Cup, under the same three-in-a-row rule. Renshaw won again in 1884, 1885 and 1886, and kept that one too.

By 1887, the All England Club had had enough. It commissioned a new, perpetual trophy, explicitly intended never to become the property of any winner again, no matter how dominant. That is the cup presented at Wimbledon today, and it has never left the Club’s ownership since.

The original Field Cup was not the club’s own creation. It had been donated by The Field, a sporting newspaper of the day, in the Championship’s earliest years, and it still survives, on display today in the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum alongside the trophies that eventually replaced it. Renshaw’s run through the 1880s, often played alongside his twin brother Ernest in doubles, is part of why the club moved so decisively to close the loophole for good.

Engraved before the champion leaves the court

The moment the winning point is played, a small team of specialist hand engravers, working in a room beneath the Royal Box on Centre Court, begins etching the champion’s name onto the trophy or its plinth. The work is finished by the time the winner returns to court to be presented with it.

The same team engraves every Championship event across the fortnight: singles, doubles, mixed doubles, and the wheelchair and quad competitions, working to a script style that deliberately echoes every engraving that came before it.

Where to see the Wimbledon trophies

Both trophies are held at the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Museum, on the grounds of the All England Club, for the great majority of the year. For a few weeks each summer, replicas take their place in the museum while the originals move across to the Clubhouse, ready for the engravers and the presentation ceremony at the end of the tournament. Entry to the museum is included with every Keith Prowse Travel package, so anyone attending on a match day can stand in front of both objects described in this article, rather than only seeing them on a screen. Explore our Wimbledon travel packages for the full list of options.