Venus Rosewater Dish

The Venus Rosewater Dish is the Ladies' Singles Trophy awarded at The Championships, Wimbledon, and was first presented to the Champion in 1886.

The 50 guineas trophy is an 18+3⁄4-inch (48 cm) diameter, partially gilded, sterling silver salver made in 1864 by Elkington & Co. of Birmingham, and is a copy of an electrotype by Caspar Enderlein from a Renaissance pewter original in the Louvre.

The central boss depicts the figure of Sophrosyne (not Venus), the personification of temperance and moderation, seated on a chest with a lamp in her right hand and a jug in her left, with various attributes such as a sickle, fork and caduceus around her.

The reserves around the rim show Minerva presiding over the seven liberal arts: astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, rhetoric, dialectic and grammar, each with relevant attribute.

[1] The remainder of the surface is decorated with gilt renaissance strapwork and foliate motifs in relief against a rigid silver ground.