An Emblem cup in wartime

By 1943 the Emblem Club cup had a category the club would not have recognised: modernistic arrangement.

Set the 1943 list beside the 1920 rule and the whole argument about this trophy is visible in two lines. In 1920 the Emblem Club cup went for “the most artistic arrangement of not less than five varieties”, a rule the club itself had written and which held word for word through 1922, 1925 and 1927. In 1943 it goes for a modernistic arrangement, in a list where the chamber of commerce trophy goes for underwater and the Garden club cup for a flower-vegetable combination.

That is what happens to a prize when the body that gave it is gone: the cup survives, the category is chosen afresh by whoever is running the show, and it drifts with the fashion. Nineteen years after the club disbanded its name is still being read out at a flower show in the middle of a war.

Mrs. E. Rasmussen won it. Mrs. Florence Spencer and Mrs. H. R. Pollard were second and third — so unlike 1933, there was a competition.