The Pueblo Bonito ruins in New Mexico have furnished us with a fragment of a jet ring. The portion remaining of this ring shows that it must have had a diameter of about 2.3 centimetres, the width of the band being 1.4 centimetres. Apparently some accident befell the original ring, causing part of the brittle material to chip off, for in the section that has been preserved a piece of jet, as wide as the band and 9 millimetres across, has been inlaid in the body of the ring. This was cut away to a depth of a millimetre, and the concave-convex inlay was then glued on.[179]
The gold-plating of bronze rings dates back to the Mycenæan period, and Ionic silver rings with gold plating were made in the sixth century B.C.; Cypriote bronze rings of about the third century B.C. have also been found. Where, as in many cases, mere gilding has been resorted to, only traces of this may remain after the lapse of centuries.[180] We note elsewhere the gold-plated iron rings worn by some Roman slaves to evade the penalty imposed upon those who illegally wore gold rings.
Glass rings are frequently made at Murano and other places in Italy of the so-called “gold stone,” aventurine, or Venice gold stone. They are very inexpensive and are generally worn by children or young girls. Mosaic rings are those in which the upper part of the ring contains either a Byzantine mosaic made up of colored glass or other material, or a Florentine mosaic, in which shell, marble and other materials are set in slate or marble settings.
Bohemian garnet rings are generally made of facetted, rose cut, or cabochon cut garnets, set usually in 8 to 14 carat gold. They are made in Prague and other cities in Bohemia, the garnet material, of the pyrope variety, coming largely from the mines at Meronitz, Bohemia.
Among the cheap materials that have been used on occasion for making rings, are horseshoe nails, which may perhaps be supposed to possess some of the wonderful talismanic power accorded by popular fancy to the horseshoe. The nails are more or less skilfully twisted into a ring form, and are at least as durable as other forms of iron rings.
An extraordinary material combination for the substance of rings, is that of dynamite and pewter. At present when the war-fever has seized upon almost all civilized peoples, we might accord to the dynamite in this composition a symbolic martial meaning. What risk there might be of the painful results of war befalling the wearer of a dynamite ring through its detonating unexpectedly because of some powerful shock, is perhaps too slight to deter those who are in eager pursuit of novelties.
The pale alloy of gold, known as electrum,[181] was favored for ring-making in Oriental Greece, and is termed “white gold” in ancient inventories. Thus in an inventory of the temple treasures of Eleusis, made in 332 B.C., there is mention of “two plain gold rings of white gold.”[182] Some Ionic rings of the fifth century, B.C. from Cyprus are also of this metallic composition. Of gold rings set with stones, a Parthenon inventory of 422 B.C. lists one with an onyx, perhaps a scaraboid, and in a Delos inventory of 279 B.C., there is one with an anthrax, probably a garnet. The variation of the phrasing in these two mentions, the former naming an onyx having a ring of gold, while the latter speaks of a “gold ring having a garnet,” might be taken to indicate that the onyx was a large object compared with the hoop, and the garnet a relatively small one.[183]
In the masterpiece of ancient Greek romantic prose literature, the Æthiopica of Heliodorus (fl. ab. 400 A.D.), perhaps Heliodorus Bishop of Tricca, the writer describes a splendid ring given by Kalasiris to Nausikles. This was one of the royal jewels of the King of Ethiopia. The hoop was of electrum, and in the bezel was set a beautiful amethyst engraved with a design showing a shepherd pasturing his flock.[184] Heliodorus especially dwells upon the fact that this was an Ethiopian (probably an Indian) amethyst, this variety far surpassing those from Iberia (the Spanish Peninsula) and Britain. In the very successful rendering of this Greek passage by Rev. C. W. King, the contrast between the former and the latter is thus gracefully expressed:[185]
For the latter blushes with a feeble hue, and is like a rose just unfolding its leaves from out of the bud, and beginning to be tinged with red by the sunbeams. But in the Ethiopian Amethyst, out of its depth flames forth like a torch a pure and as it were Spring-like beauty; and if you turn it about as you hold it, it shoots out a golden lustre, not dazzling the sight by its fierceness, but resplendent with cheerfulness. Moreover, a more genuine nature is inherent in it than is possessed by any brought from the West, for it does not belie its appellation, but proves in reality to the wearer an antidote against intoxication, preserving him sober in the midst of drinking-bouts.
In his “Rape of the Lock,” Pope writes of Belinda’s golden hair-bodkin, that the metal had originally been worked up into rings and then into a gold buckle, thus the gold was