The Medieval specialist dealer, Les Enluminures, has put together a show of 45 finger rings that span four continents, from the Bronze Age to the present. Rings Around the World opens at Sam Fogg’s gallery in London (2–11 November) before traveling to the Les Enluminures space in New York (17 November–2 December).
The exhibition will show the “universality of rings… how certain ideas and forms occurred across cultures and through time,” writes Sandra Hindman, who founded Les Enluminures and co-authored the exhibition catalogue with the jewellery historian Beatriz Chadour-Sampson.
For the show, English Renaissance-era rings with religious inscriptions will be on a par with a jade Chinese philosopher’s ring (17th century) that is carved with the message ‘quit alcohol’. An ancient Egyptian ring (around sixth–first century BC) that depicts a cat and her kittens shows the enduring theme of jewellery as a talisman; the animal was thought to guard pregnant women.
The rings come from collectors that are well-known in this field, such as the New York-based diamond dealer Benjamin Zucker. They range in price from $8,500 to $150,000. One ring, by the Chinese contemporary designer Wallace Chan, is not for sale.
