1781 Georgian Sepia Mouring Ring

An elegant 18th c Georgian mourning ring, the face decorated with a sepia miniature of a female mourner robed in the Greco-Roman style in a landscape shaded with weeping willow and various trees, and accompanying an intricate three-dimensional urn crafted from gum-bound hair and gold, all under a domed cover of quartz crystal. The warm rose gold setting and shoulders are decorated with various faceted and textured engravings termed “bright-cut” by jewelry scholars; this type of gold decoration was especially popular during the 1780-90s for rings with navette-shaped heads. Although mourning jewelry in the neoclassical taste would endure well into the Victorian era, this ring belongs in the first “generation” of early neoclassical mourning rings, crafted in 1781, at the opening of the 1780s decade when the neoclassical style would emerge as a novel design development, marking a departure from earlier death’s head skulls, coffins, and skeletons. As exemplified by the present ring, the new neoclassical style was ineffably light and elegant, rooted in a partly secular sentimentalism that draws inspiration from the Greco-Roman world rather than austere religious contemplation. For a urn and weeping willow mourning ring dating only three years later, consult Victoria & Albert Museum 915-1888 (also illustrated on page 69 of ‘Rings’ by Rachel Church).
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