An Edwardian silver two-handled trophy cup

An Edwardian silver two-handled trophy cup, by William Hutton and Sons, London 1908, of circular form with leaf capped scroll handles with central girdle, on a raised circular foot, inscribed, 'Won by Mr. S. Sassoon's Bay Gelding Cockbird Ridden by Owner', the reverse inscribed 'S.D.H Point-to-Point Heavy Weight Cup, Presented by Lt. Col. L.C. Thompson 1911', height 23.5cm, approx. weight 44oz. Provenance: Siegfried Sassoon and thence by descent to the present owner. In his semi fictional autobiography 'Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man' (Faber and Gwyer 1928) Sassoon devotes a whole chapter to 'The Colonels Cup'. He recounts how in the race he was almost unseated four fences from home but recovered and 'after that … life became lyrical, beatified, ecstatic … to put it tersely I just galloped past Brownrigg, sailed over the last two fences and won by ten lengths.... As for Cockbird no words could ever express what we felt about him. He had become the equine equivalent of divinity'.