Jewelers Of Renaissance

(via 5000 Years of Gems and Jewelry) Frances Rogers and Alice Beard writes:

- Fancy Or Gadget Rings

It seems probable that a great number of gadget rings perished along with the charm of their novelty. Nevertheless some types of these hybrids still exist to rejoice the hearts of collectors. Among them may be listed such items as the pugilist’s ring intended to be used as a weapon, something akin to ‘brass knuckles’; the compass ring, self-explanatory; the puzzle ring, ornamented with a rebus, and the tobacco stopper.

Tobacco had been introduced into Europe during the latter part of the sixteenth century, but it was too costly a luxury for any but the very wealthy. It was smoked in a small pipe and the smoke was expelled through the nose, not through the mouth. One may picture the young exquisite of the day daintly packing tobacco into his pipe with his golden ring, and breathing smoke from his nostrils—a strange new fashion—a sight to provoke awed admiration tinged with alarm! The tobacco stopper no doubt served its purpose well enough but it must have been an awkward ring to wear.

Then there was the ‘writing diamond’ ring. Vivid among our childhood’s memories of English history, as taught in schools, is the threadbare and doubtless unauthenticatic story of Queen Elizabeth and the aspiring gentleman who wrote upon the windowpane with his ring:

Fain would I climb but that I fear to fall.

And the Queen trying her hand at diamond writing, followed with:

If they heart fail thee, do not climb at all.

We used to think diamond writing must have been a difficult feat and that the ring was made for the sole purpose of writing messages or names on windowpanes. Probably it was used to greater advantage in the new fad for engraving glass tableware.

It Italy, the makers of fine glassware had recently invented a new mode of decorating a thin crystal goblet by covering it with an intricate and lacy design made up of a myriad of fine dots. The engraving tool was a diamond point. Presently glass-men of other countries took by glass-stippling, and before long the layman followed suit. He made a hobby of stippling fairy-like pictures on drinking glasses, and since it was a dainty art it appealed to the ladies, and a pointed diamond set in a ring was a charming tool.

There are many rings of the Renaissance whose bezel is made in the form of a little case with a hinged lid, or with a sliding panel beneath the bezel, thus providing a small space where perfume or poison could be kept. An ingenious form of poison ring borrowed its idea from the rattlesnake. A small hollow tube with a sharp point like a fang was connected with a reservoir of poison. When the point was turned inward, a tiny but fatal pucture could be made merely by clasping the hand of an enemy with warm enthusiasm.