The Takeaway
Cherished Trophies Have
Commonwealth Connections
by BILL KAMENJAR
Williamsburg craftsman.
Fresh out of college and perhaps a bit
starry eyed, Mark Frankel gazed upon the
first of several world-famous golf trophies
in the late 1970s. The scene was London,
England, where he was in the midst of a
silversmith apprenticeship.
“I was working in one of the workshops
when we heard a knock on the door,” the
New York native recalls. “One of the master
silversmiths came in with the actual Ryder
Cup (trophy for the biennial Ryder Cup team
competition). He was fixing it since it was
broken. He brought it down for all of us to
Mark Frankel has done work on the much-coveted Wanamaker Trophy.
look at and we gathered around. It was like,
‘Wow.’ I vividly remember that day.”
SILVER LININGS
It wouldn’t be the last time Frankel and the
famed trophy—which was on full display at
this fall’s Ryder Cup Matches at Gleneagles
in Scotland—would cross paths. The next
encounter, however, would turn out to
be much more intimate. It was a reunion
that actually took place thousands of miles
back across the pond in Virginia where he
was working in a shop that made silver for
Colonial Williamsburg.
As fate would have it, the Ryder Cup
project landed on the doorstep of the
production silversmith in 1983. The original
cup, crafted in England in 1926 and made
of nine-karat gold, was in need of mor