Jewelry

MAGICAL STIRRUP RING WITH ANCIENT SAPPHIRE BEAD

Gold ring with D-section hoop widening toward the shoulders with fine grooves and merging into the bezel of overall triangular outline and flattened sides. The distinctive profile resembles a stirrup, from which this type of ring takes its name. The bezel is set with a rectangular sapphire bead, its drill hole still visible. The ring shows signs of wear through age and is in good wearable condition.

Provenance:

United Kingdom, The Jonest Collection, published in: Diana Scarisbrick and Sonja Butler, Marvels in Miniature, The Jonest Collection of Rings, London 2024, p. 126, no. 64.

Literature:

The term “stirrup ring” was coined in the nineteenth century for the ring type’s distinctive profile, although this shape may originally have been intended to emulate the arches of Gothic cathedrals. Popular from the twelfth to fifteenth century, with forerunners as early as the eleventh, stirrup rings were often owned by ecclesiastical dignitaries (Chadour 1994, vol. I, no. 565). Some were presented to medieval bishops as rings of office, with several surviving examples found in episcopal tombs (A. Ward, The Ring from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, London, 1981, p. 58). Sapphires were venerated in the Middle Ages for their heavenly color. In the present ring, the drill hole suggests that the stone may once have been a bead from an ancient jewel. Such piercing was itself thought to enhance the stone’s magical or medicinal virtues (C. Oman, British Rings 800–1914, London, 1974, p. 60).

A medieval source further attests to the popularity and prestige of these rings. Matthew Paris, the thirteenth-century monk, chronicler, and illuminator of St Albans, illustrated two sapphire stirrup rings in his Liber Additamentorum (British Library, Cotton MS Nero D. I, f. 146v). One was said to have been given by Eleanor of Aquitaine to her childhood friend Richard Animal around 1140. See J. Collard, “Matthew Paris, Metalwork and the Jewels of St Albans,” in Lost Artefacts in Medieval England and France, York, 2022, pp. 114–135.

Stirrup rings are featured in many important collections, including the British Museum, London (inv. nos. 1885,0615.1; 1980,1202.1; AF 1855); Museum of London (A 1274; Egan and Pritchard, Dress Accessories, c. 1150–c. 1450, London, 2002, pp. 325–327, fig. 1609); Victoria and Albert Museum, London (Oman 1930, no. 251; inv. no. 65-1871); Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Scarisbrick and Henig 2003, pl. 6, no. 1); Walters Art Museum, Baltimore (57.10986); The Griffin Collection in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Hindman with Miller 2015. no. 35, see also 2015.697 and 2021.174; Scarisbrick 2024, no. 61); Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Swiss National Museum, Zurich (Chadour 1994, vol. I, no. 565, with further parallels); and the Hashimoto Collection, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo (Scarisbrick 2004, no. 109).

R-1151