Real Tennis Racket By Brouaye
Real Tennis Racket By Brouaye
25324
A Rare Brouaye Presentation Real Tennis Racket.
A rare presentation real tennis prize racket, manufactured by Brouaye, France, with the original two-tone course gut stringing. The lopsided ash head racquet has a red velvet grip, silver braided wire-work to the top of the grip and a heavily decorated butt cap engraved 'J.A. Pepys Ch:Ch'. The convex wedge is covered in blue leather with fine embossed gilt tooled decoration to both sides, one side dated 1860. The racket comes in its original mahogany presentation display case with a fitted blue velvet interior lining.
The giving of a prize-racket at Oxford in the annual matches amongst the undergraduates was started in 1850, and has been regular every year since. The prize was a small gold racket for the first six years of the event being replaced by a silver-mounted racket of ordinary size there after.
Playing in the Oxford and Cambridge Doubles in 1860 J. A. Pepys & F. J. Ponsonby beat C. Weguelin & E. C. Austin-Leigh, 3 set to 1. Pepys also won the following year playing with J. St. V. P. Jervis, as stated in the Annals of Tennis by Julian Marshall.
John Alfred Pepys was born on 16th April 1838, Marylebone, London, England, and died in 1924. He also played cricket for Kent, Marylebone Cricket Club and Oxford University.
Dimensions:
1850-1899
1860
Ash
France
Brouaye
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