Tennis-lovers all around the world watch the match points of Wimbledon finals with bated breath. The nerves are tangible. Hearts thump in empathy with players on the brink of being declared champions. One can hardly imagine the tension, the potential slipperiness of sweaty hands, the hyperconsciousness of all the sounds around a hushed show court.
One slip, one hesitant moment, one unexpected off-stage drama and a perfectly plotted point could go awry. But then, bang, phew, the winning shot!
Watching these moments intensely on a large TV screen in a room just behind Centre Court are the highly skilled trophy embellishment team, led by master hand engravers Samantha Marsden and James Neville, co-founders of Sam James Engraving, based at the Goldsmiths’ Centre in Clerkenwell, London.
To outsiders, the hand engravers’ role induces an unthinkable level of nerves. Working very quickly, their job is to engrave for perpetuity – in letters just 2.8 millimetres in height – the names of the newly crowned champions and runners-up.
While Iga Swiatek and Amanda Anisimova are holding up their respective prizes, Samantha or James – deciding on who is feeling
the most confident in the moment – will be engraving the champion’s name on the plinth
that supports the Venus Rosewater Dish in a room jostling with security guards, a
film crew and Club officials.
The names of winners from 1884 to 1957 are inscribed on the inside of the Venus Rosewater
Dish; those from 1958 to 2015 are on the outside. From 2016 onwards, a plinth was
commissioned with a sterling silver band to allow space for further engraving. "The
singles' trophies pose the biggest challenges," says James. "The Ladies’ Singles trophy
because of its shape and the Gentlemen’s trophy because it’s gold-plated. You can’t
make a slip cutting through to the silver or it would have to be plated again.”
On Day 13, the Sam James team will be focused on seven finals and 22 players, all of whose names will be immortalised on replica trophies or plinths, runners-up salvers and each competition’s perpetual (the trophy kept in the Clubhouse showcase, with the victor’s names added year by year).
“We try to replicate what has been done before to keep in harmony with the history,”
says James of the style of the script, though each hand-engraver has a style unique
to them, something so nuanced it is only discernible to the practised engraver’s eye.
Headlined by the ladies’ singles final between Anisimova and Swiatek, the action on
Saturday also featured the Championship matches for the gentlemen’s doubles, the gentlemen’s
wheelchair doubles, the boys’ doubles, the girls’ singles, the Ladies’ Wheelchair
Singles and the Quad Wheelchair Doubles.
That amounts to almost 200 individual letters and ampersands that will be engraved onto silverware by the day’s end. Some names are phonetically straightforward such as David Pel and Julian Cash in the men's doubles; others require careful enunciation, such as Iga Swiatek and Ziying Wang. By the end of the tournament, the hand engraving and polishing team – which also includes Louise Sorrell, Celeste Heathcote, Isabel Freeman and Jared Robertson – will have embellished 86 pieces.
This is the fourth year that the team has transferred their workshop to the All England
Club in the second week of July. Their pop-up workbench consists of four stations,
each equipped with a specialist light, a box of small chisels known as gravers to
pare away the metal, leather sandbags to support and stabilise the silverware, and
drawing tools such as scribers and dividers to mark on each individual letter of a
name.
Nerves do run high but we all find it an absolute privilege.
Beautiful green leather presentation boxes are lined up on the other side of the table, each containing silverware that will be forever prized by today’s competitors.
“The names of all the finalists are typed out and spell-checked,” says Samantha. “Once drawn on the trophy, they are spell-checked again. Nerves do run high but we all find it an absolute privilege to be part of these occasions at Wimbledon.”