One of the most impressive things about the FCI is that, being a hundred-year-old federation, it can be considered as one of the probably restricted number of existing international organisations being able to legitimately claim to be an authentic witness of the last 100 years of contemporary history!
How lucky we are to have access to the full FCI archives! They constitute a treasure of documents, pictures and historic testimonies, not only of FCI’s history, but also of the FCI members’.
Today, we would like to introduce you to a very nice piece of art which has its place in our modest museum: the FCI bronze plate.
In 1928, the FCI decided to have bronze plates produced: two of them were offered to the organisers of every CACIB show and CACIT trial. The organisers then chose among all the winning dogs of a CACIB or a CACIT to offer them a bronze plate. The FCI also kept a stock of plates which were available for sale. 154 were sold in 1937 and 333 in 1938. The FCI stopped the production of the plate in 1947…
The nice thing about it is that a few years ago, in 2009, the FCI Office was contacted by a Dutch person, dog lover, who informed us that he had found such a plate on a flea market in The Netherlands! The current FCI staff was not aware of the existence of this plate and research had to be made in the very old minutes of the Assemblies; that is how we found information about its creation in 1927!
The plate had been made by a famous Belgian caster called Léon Batardy. Our thrilling research allowed us to find out that the plate is a reproduction of a painting: one of Saint Hubert’s Miracles, conserved in the Belgian chapel Saint Hubert à la Converserie, in Champlon.
The Dutch dog lover kindly accepted to send us the plate he had bought on the flea market and the FCI Office had it reproduced in its original format, shape and look. Such a plate was offered to one of the winners of the FCI Centenary World Champion of Champions held in Brussels in November 2011, on the occasion of the FCI centenary.
