Rings for the Finger: From the Earliest Known Times to the Present, with Full Descriptions of the Origin, Early Making, Materials, the Archæology, History, for Affection, for Love, for Engagement, for Wedding, Commemorative, Mourning, Etc.

Every civilization that ever shaped metal into a circle did more than make jewelry. They encoded power, love, betrayal, and grief into a form small enough to wear on a single finger. This is that story. Written by George Frederick Kunz the era's foremost gemologist who saw rings as windows into human civilization itself. Here are the Borgias poison rings designed to kill, the hidden portrait diamonds worn by supporters of Charles I after his execution, the legend of Solomons ring lost in a fish for forty years, and Platos famous exchange of rings with his student. Kunz traces rings from modified Egyptian seals through medieval signets and into the engagement bands and mourning rings of his own time. He explains who first carved initials into a stone to seal documents, what Romans whispered when slipping a ring onto a bride, and why Victorians covered their dead lovers hair in black enamel. Whether you wear a ring or have simply wondered why humanity agreed to circle our fingers with metal and stone this book reveals what we have always known and somehow always forgotten about these small circles of meaning.