Antique Memorial Ring of Gold, Hair and Rock Crystal, Scottish, 1782

All That Remains

Antique Memorial Ring of Gold, Hair and Rock Crystal, Scottish, 1782

€ 1,790.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

Description

This description was automatically translated from German. If you have any questions about this piece of jewellery, we will be happy to help!

It is a rare stroke of luck for the art historian to be able to offer a piece of jewellery that reveals the occasion for which it was created through an engraving: In the case of the present ring, it was the passing of Glasgow resident Alexander Speirs, Esquire of Elderslie, who was born in Edinburgh in 1714 and died in 1782. Speirs had ten children and is recorded in old parish registers as a tobacco merchant. It is also known that he had Elderslie House built, a neoclassical building by the architect Robert Robinson. In Great Britain in particular, it was common for the middle and aristocratic classes of the time to wear commemorative rings in memory of certain people. It was not necessary to be related to the person in question, as it was often stipulated in advance in wills how many mourning rings were to be made in the event of death and who among friends, family or acquaintances was to receive such a ring. Numerous reports have survived according to which these memorial rings were handed out to those present at the funeral services. As a pars pro toto, the hair of the person whose memory was to be kept alive with the piece of jewellery was often used. An elaborate weave of hair has been preserved in the piece of jewellery over the last 244 years or so and we encounter it in two ways: Once as a motif of solidarity in the form of a belt that surrounds the image field and is visually closed by a golden clasp, and once as a mourning motif in the form of a large, gold-decorated urn. Protected by a cabochon of cut rock crystal, laid on mother-of-pearl, it has survived the perils of history. Even today, the ring still touches us directly. It provides an intimate insight into the spiritual life of a bygone era and impresses with its finely conceived design language. https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/managingimperiallegacies/sites/vitruvius-britannicus/

Size & Details

All That Remains

€ 1,790.00 ^*

Content 1 piece

Incl. VAT, Shipping

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