Philly-based artist completes his World Cup trophy made of finger and toenails

Love Philly? So do we. Let’s be friends. Sign up for the Billy Penn newsletter today.

Ahead of the FIFA World Cup, artist Clancy Philbrick had a muse, a vision and a few thousand finger and toenail clippings. 

The muse was the most famous trophy in international sports. The vision was a scale replica that critiques colonial labor exploitation and the wealth divide. I think you can guess what the nails were for. 

Last week, a few days before the final games, Clancy revealed that he had finished his trophy.

And here it is. If the “Hellraiser” film franchise had a World Cup, this looks like what Pinhead would hand the winners to lift. 

The trophy lifted by the Spain national team after its hard-fought 1-0 win over defending champions Argentina is a 18-karat solid gold and green malachite trophy that weighs just shy of 14 pounds. It has been awarded to the men’s national team that has won the global competition since 1970 and has an estimated value in the tens of millions.

Philbrick’s trophy is made up of around 8,000 nails, donated by over 200 people from around the world. It weighs roughly a pound. Philbrick had been saving his own nail clippings for almost 10 years — eight years were for this project.

He put a call out for people to mail their — clean — nails, and also gathered donations at a table in Rittenhouse Square in April. The project has even landed him on Philly Mag’s “Best of Philly” list for 2026.

When asked about the time spent just working on the trophy, he replied that it was “probably more healthy to not tabulate the hours,” but guessed it easily crossed 1,000.

Philbrick said one of the hardest parts was the “wiliness of the material.” he estimated that at least one out of every 10 nails he tried to pick up with tweezers would shoot out and land on the floor, leaving him to “shuffle around for some nail that isn’t mine” more than anyone ever has.

The trophy’s depiction of the Earth took longer than he expected, trying to articulate the land masses while also selecting and saving the smaller, skinnier nails for the ocean. The clear glue he used began to unexpectedly yellow, which Clancy said he didn’t like at first. He grew to appreciate the visible markings of where his work went into it.

“It’s sort of its own demarcation of the labor,” he reflected.

One thing Clancy was impressed by was the strength of the trophy once it was put together. The thousands of connection points seem to serve as joints that can absorb a level movement or force. He said it even dropped a couple times and remains in one piece. He saw ties to the idea of collective support symbolized in the resilience of the work.

Philbrick’s art often incorporates found objects and trash. He said his aim is to investigate “the transformative power of community, cultural dimensions of sports and play, and disassembling harmful patriarchal norms.” His work also tries to offer new rituals and be part of the solution.

“All these people’s different nails sort of holding each other up – that idea of being stronger together, I guess – would be the basic concept,” he said. “It’s cool to see that physically pan out, too.

Another remarkable thing? The flow of donations kept coming up until the last week of the tournament, with some even still waiting in reserve after he finished.

“I slept a little easier knowing that there were more nails coming in and I wouldn’t have to put too much effort into going back out and collecting them,” he said.

There were obviously plenty of people who let Clancy know how grossed out they were about the project, and he had an answer for them.  

“I just mentioned the ‘ickness’ of the extractive capitalist system we live in,” he said. “It’s doing its job, the piece is working and it’s semiotics in that it is gross, it is disgusting in that way. It can be related to that commentary.”

When not making art, Philbrick also organizes and moderates Sad Boy Fanatics Group, a peer support group for sports fans that helps them talk through the tough times, as well as the jubilant ones. After the Eagles’ 2023 Super Bowl loss, he contributed to Billy Penn’s recovery guide with advice on how Bird’s fans can pick themselves up after a sorrowful Super Bowl Sunday. 

Philbrick spent much of his time working on the trophy while watching the World Cup games. Throughout, he maintained a cognitive dissonance of enjoying the athleticism and physical skill on the field while still being hyperaware of the corruption, pageantry, jingoism and hypocrisy surrounding the games. 

“[Presdent] Trump even calling [FIFA president Gianni Infantino] to get the [U.S. striker Folarin Balogun’s] red card rescinded and the way it all functions played out on a grand scale how I think a lot of people who think about soccer, FIFA, or sports on a large scale in that way are able to just notice the parallels and imperialistic colonial forces that dyed a lot of the world.”

Clancy has reached out for programming and places to exhibit the trophy, but hasn’t had any accept yet. He’s not looking to sell it or turn it into anything resembling a brand. He even floated the idea of filling out the lattice-style design with more donations next tournament.

“The joy of art is people getting to experience something and form their own opinions and let it inspire what it will,” Clancy said. “Right now, I just want to share it and let people experience it. If conversations can be had around it, great.”

Despite how well the World Cup went, in terms of exciting matches, a bigger format and memorable fan moments in Philly and the other host cities, there was plenty of off-field controversy the sportswashing couldn’t conceal. 

Along with the Balogun scandal, ticket prices were exorbitant compared to previous tournaments. The added hydration breaks were a thinly veiled excuse for more TV ads. The Trump administration’s immigration policies restricted several populations from coming to see their nations play, and even those involved in the tournament itself, including Somali referee Omar Artan, Iraq star striker Aymen Hussein and the team’s photographer, Talal Salah, and the entire Iran delegation. Meanwhile, the French national team were travelling in a plane that’s also been used for ICE deportations.