The cup, Australia’s earliest surviving race trophy, would appear to be a significant piece of history.
Relatively humble yet functional and elegant, it is 21cm high with out-turned lip and gadrooned lower section, raised on a knopped stem, the interior being gilded. It is inscribed “The Junius Cup, presented to Robt Fitzgerald, as the winner by his horse Creeper...” while the reverse bears the wording “NSW, Parramatta Racing Fund, October Meeting 1827”.
This great rarity is Lot 1 among a collection of Australiana to be offered by the long established firm Raffan Kelaher and Thomas in Leichhardt on November 29.
It is the second major piece of silver with a strong Australian association to turn up in a Sydney saleroom in November. An English silver wine bottle coaster apparently owned by NSW governor Lachlan Macquarie and dating from circa 1807 was offered by Aalders on November 7. A sale is expected to be negotiated at around $45,000.
The Junius cup has been documented in literature including “Australian Silver 1800 to 1900” by John Hawkins, the catalogue for a 1973 exhibition held by the National Trust of Australia. Further background has been researched by RKT’s Jonathan Alford.
The cup bears pseudo-British hallmarks, as was common, and a maker’s mark for James Robertson. But since Robertson was mainly a clockmaker and not known as a silversmith – certainly not for the skills needed to rise such an object from the flat – it is suggested he was simply the retailer of the cup. Robertson employed Dick from 1824, when he arrived as a free settler, until 1825 when Dick set up his own business in Pitt Street. The marks closely resemble those of Dick’s, as seen on the fine pair of chalices he made for presentation to the Scots Church in 1826 by the Rev John Dunmore Lang. Indeed the cup is a similar shape to the chalices.
The Junius Cup comes from the estate of the late Richard Kelynack Evans of Rylstone, a direct descendant of the original winning owner, Robert Fitzgerald.
Mr Evans , whose war service with the RAAF won him the DFC, was a former Liberal member of the NSW legislative council and president of Rylstone shire council. He died in 2008.
Robert Fitzgerald, to whom the cup is dedicated, was the son of Richard Fitzgerald, a convict turned rich pastoralist who became a close friend of Governor Macquarie and his wife. Aged only 20 when his horse Creeper won the cup, the son went on to become one of the colony’s biggest landowners, an MLC and a director of the Bank of NSW.
The decision to hold the races on October 3 and 5 in 1827, to fit in with the Parramatta Fair, was taken at a meeting at Parramatta’s Woolpack Inn – which still trades today. The Woolpack’s licensee, Andrew Nash, owned the original Junius, which was renowned in the colony, and even issued his own pound notes featuring an image of the horse.
The Junius Cup was the third race on Day One, and Creeper won it “in fine style”, according to The Monitor of October 8.