The Sheriff of London Charity Shield, 1898

The trophy that set the amateurs against the professionals, pictured for the first time.

Work: magazine engraving
Maker: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News
Date: 1898
Era: The Victorian game · 1870–1900
Source: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, British Newspaper Archive · via Wikimedia Commons

One shield, two ideas of the game.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

The Sheriff of London Charity Shield, pictured in July 1898 for what the record calls the first time. The competition set the best amateur club in England against the best professional one, and its first game had been played that spring, on 19 March 1898. Sir Thomas Dewar devised it, the Football Association ratified it, and the FA’s president, Lord Kinnaird, sat on its committee. The amateurs were usually the Corinthians. The shield in this picture was made to sit between two ideas of what football was for, and each year one of them took it home.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The Sheriff of London Charity Shield, 1898, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Sheriff of London Charity Shield, 1898 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

A reproduction of magazine engraving — Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 1898 — from the copy held by Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, British Newspaper Archive · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand