Toward An Art History Of Medieval Rings

Toward an Art History of Medieval Rings gives a full survey of Merovingian, Byzantine, Medieval, and Renaissance rings ranging in date from around 300 to 1600 AD. They include marriage rings, seal rings, stirrup rings, tart mould rings, iconographic rings, merchant rings, and gemstone rings, and are arranged chronologically.

What are the origins of the imagery and designs on common jewelry and portable artwork between late antiquity and the Middle Ages? These dynamic centuries encompass the transformation of the Greco-Roman world into the nascent kingdoms and medieval states upon which most modern European nations are based. The choices of jewelry and other forms of personal expression among the lower classes in ancient times is notoriously difficult to contextualize for a number of reasons. Nonetheless, these precious articles were expressions of individual identity as well as signifiers of rites of passage. As such, they reflect not only the people who wore them, but also the social milieu and artistic trends at that moment in time. This new study assists in identifying the types, origins and routes of transmission of personal artwork, particularly finger rings, across Europe and Byzantium, an area of study that has been neglected in previous works. Some of this material represents the first time relevant research from Central and Eastern Europe has been translated and made available to the general reader in the English-speaking world.

The interdisciplinary volume Devotional Interaction in Medieval England and its Afterlives examines the interaction between medieval English worshippers and the material objects of their devotion, with chapters that extend the temporality of objects and buildings beyond the Middle Ages.

Rings are at once the most intimate forms of jewelry and personal forms of art. This book focuses on approximately fifty rings from a distinguished private collection, tracing the ways that rings of the Middle Ages and Renaissance came to be meaningful. From the mine to the modern collection and through the forge, the goldsmith's shop, and the hands of successive generations of owners, these rings underwent journeys that lent them multifaceted and often multilayered resonances. This book explores these pathways and examines how people throughout history have interacted with multiple aspects of these small but remarkably complex objects. An introduction by Diana Scarisbrick supplements this biography of rings by investigating five prominent ring enthusiasts whose lives, interests, and collections have played prominent roles in the development of the modern appraisal of rings, while providing a chronological sequence for the rings in this book. A catalog of the rings, including their technical details, accompanies the text.

Ancient finger rings made of base metals and low-grade silver alloys are increasingly being unearthed and sold through a growing assortment of marketplaces worldwide. Reference material on ancient rings has focused mainly on historic and "high-end" pieces--the precious metals and stones of royalty and the wealthy--while little has been written on the evaluation of common rings. This guide describes their composition, structure and imagery, thus providing merchants, collectors and researchers with a comprehensive reference on these ancient artifacts that, until now, have gone unexamined.

Forges innovative connections between monastic archaeology and heritage studies, revealing new perspectives on sacred heritage, identity, medieval healing, magic and memory. This title is available as Open Access.

Anglo-Saxon England is the only publication which consistently embraces all the main aspects of study of Anglo-Saxon history and culture - linguistic, literary, textual, palaeographic, religious, intellectual, historical, archaeological and artistic - and which promotes the more unusual interests - in music or medicine or education, for example. Articles in volume 37 include: Record of the thirteenth conference of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists at the Institute of English Studies, University of London, 30 July to 4 August 2007; The virtues of rhetoric: Alcuin's Disputatio de rhetorica et de uirtutibus; King Edgar's charter for Pershore (972); Lost voices from Anglo-Saxon Lichfield; The Old English Promissio Regis; 'lfric, the Vikings, and an anonymous preacher in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College (162); Re-evaluating base-metal artifacts: an inscribed lead strap-end from Crewkerne, Somerset; Anglo-Saxon and related entries in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004); Bibliography for 2007.