A ROMAN SILVER & GARNET GEM STONE RING, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D.

拍品描述

A ROMAN SILVER AND GARNET RING, CIRCA 1ST-2ND CENTURY A.D. Of broad band form with a faceted, polygonal exterior profile, the hoop constructed from a flat strip of silver hammered to a substantial gauge and closed at the shoulders. The outer face is set at intervals with cabochon garnets, each stone held within a raised circular bezel collar soldered to the band, the collars themselves finished in a warmer metal that reads as a gilt or brass wash against the silver ground. Four such settings are visible across the visible arc of the ring, evenly spaced and of near-uniform diameter. The silver surface retains a mottled patina of grey and purplish-black tones with warmer ochre passages where the underlying metal shows through, the interior of the hoop unadorned and preserving traces of the original hammer work. The cabochon garnets sit almost flush with their collars, presenting a low domed profile characteristic of Roman lapidary practice, in which stones were worked to follow the natural form of the rough rather than being cut to a standardised geometry. The polygonal faceting of the hoop itself, rather than a smooth circular section, is a distinctive feature of a class of Roman finger rings in which the band is worked in flat planes to provide seats for multiple bezels around its circumference, producing a ring intended to be read from every angle rather than from a single principal face. Garnet held a particular place in Roman personal ornament. Imported into the Mediterranean along established trade routes from Sri Lanka, India, and, in the case of the darker almandine varieties, from sources further east and north, the stone was valued for its deep saturated colour and its perceived apotropaic and medicinal properties. Pliny discusses the carbunculus at some length, grouping under that term the several red stones that Roman lapidaries treated as a class, and the material appears widely in rings, earrings, and pendant settings of the first two centuries A.D. Silver, less prestigious than gold but far from common, was the standard medium for rings of the equestrian and municipal classes, and the combination of silver hoop with multiple garnet cabochons places the present ring within the register of substantial private ornament rather than the highest court production. The multi-stone band, as distinct from the single-bezel signet or intaglio ring, belongs to a wider Roman taste for polychrome jewellery that developed through the first century A.D. and reached its fullest expression in the second and third, when coloured stones and glass pastes were used in increasingly complex combinations. The present ring, with its rhythmic sequence of garnets set around a faceted silver band, is an early and restrained example of this direction in taste, still governed by the sober geometry of earlier Republican and Augustan work. This ring exemplifies the transitional moment in Roman jewellery when the plain silver hoop of the earlier Imperial period began to admit the polychrome cabochon settings that would define the later Empire, and it preserves the workmanlike substance and unforced geometry of provincial or municipal production rather than the refinements of the metropolitan workshops. Dimensions: Internal diameter 2 cm

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