Posy Ring
A posy ring is a gold ring, in use from the late Middle Ages into the eighteenth century, bearing an inscription engraved on its inner face - a relic in words, worn directly on the finger as a promise of love, friendship or remembrance.
Written by Dr. Helene Vasall
The posy ring is Europe's oldest jewellery form personalised through writing. Before the photograph, the fingerprint or the daguerreotype existed, the word was the primary carrier of individual meaning - and the posy ring was its most compact form. A simple gold band, an engraved inner face, a motto of four to twelve words. For three centuries (roughly 1450 to 1750) that was the standard gesture of personal attachment in Europe.
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Occasions
Posy rings were given on a broad range of social and private occasions:
- Betrothal and marriage - the most frequent function. The motto carried a promise of fidelity or love; in English usage posy rings were often exchanged in place of a plain gold wedding ring without inscription
- Friendship rings - between women, between men, between family members; with mottoes of friendship, fidelity or remembrance
- Bequest rings - like the mourning ring, the posy ring could be distributed by will to named beneficiaries; in this case it carried a memento mori or remembrance motto (see Memento mori)
- Religious and mystical rings - with biblical verses, saints' names or Latin formulae of protection
- Political and courtly gesture - occasionally as royal or princely marks of distinction bearing motto devices
- Modern historicising commissions - a wedding, a milestone birthday, the memory of a deceased person, a family gesture across generations
Personalisation
The personalisation of a posy ring is concentrated in the inscription. The outer face was traditionally plain - the density of meaning resides in the word.
Love mottoes.
- I like my choice
- In thee my choice
- Love is heaven, heaven is love
- Vous et nul autre - "You and no other"
- Mon coeur est à vous - "My heart is yours"
- Treu und beständig - "True and constant"
- Ich liebe was ehrlich ist - "I love what is honest"
Mottoes of fidelity and marriage.
- Not two but one till life is done
- God above increase our love
- Une foi, un coeur - "One faith, one heart"
- Une volonté - "One will"
- In Liebe verbunden - "Joined in love"
Memento mori and mourning mottoes.
- Hodie mihi, cras tibi - "Today me, tomorrow you"
- Memento mori - "Remember that you must die" (see Memento mori)
- As we live, so dye
- Nicht vergessen - "Do not forget" (see Forget-me-not)
- Doch nicht für lang getrennt - "Yet not long parted"
- In memoriam, with initials and a date of death
Religious mottoes.
- In te Domine speravi - "In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust"
- Soli Deo Gloria - "To God alone the glory"
- Wer Gott vertraut, hat wohl gebaut - "Who trusts in God has built well"
Personal or family devices. Common among the nobility and the upper bourgeoisie - a motto formula that assigns the piece unmistakably to a particular family.
Modern commissions generally choose personal texts: a wedding date, a quotation from the wedding sermon, a declaration of love, a mourning motto spoken by the deceased.
Material
Posy rings are almost without exception made of gold. Three types of material can be distinguished:
Yellow gold (the standard material). Alloys of 580 to 750 parts fine, in the English tradition often 22 carat (917). The soft gold makes the fine interior engraving easier. The colour of the gold carries the connotation of love and fidelity.
Rose gold. More frequent in French and southern German pieces; a redder tone through a higher copper content, visually warmer.
Silver. Rare, but documented - above all in vernacular, less affluent circles. Silver posy rings often have simpler mottoes and coarser engraving.
Bicolour pieces. Very rare - a double ring band of yellow and rose gold with an inscription on both inner faces. Above all in the late seventeenth century.
The choice of gold depends on the patron's wealth. Aristocratic and upper-bourgeois pieces are 22-carat gold; bourgeois pieces usually 18 carat; vernacular pieces 14 carat or silver.
Final formats and design variants
The formal variants of the posy ring are few:
The plain gold band (the principal format). A simple, slightly rounded gold band, 3 to 6 mm wide and 1 to 2 mm thick. The inner face carries the engraved inscription. The outer face is smoothly polished.
The two-line gold band. A somewhat wider band with two parallel lines of inscription on the inner face - for longer mottoes or bilingual inscriptions.
The gold band with an outer pattern. Rare, but documented - the outer face carries a simple geometric punched pattern or a discreet scrollwork motif. The inscription remains on the inside.
The gold band with a gemstone. Very rare - a small table-cut stone (diamond, ruby) sits at the centre of the band; the inscription is on the inner face. Above all in late Elizabethan and Stuart-period pieces.
Bequest posy rings with an additional external inscription (a date of death, the initials of the person remembered) are the form in which the posy ring passes over into the mourning ring (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)).
Inscription technique
The interior engraving of a posy ring is a specialised piece of goldsmith's work. Three methods:
Hand-graving. The traditional method. A goldsmith with graver and loupe cuts the inscription letter by letter into the polished inner gold band. The lines are irregular and the letters individually set - every piece carries its own trace of a hand. The standard until the nineteenth century (see Engraving and Inscriptions).
Punch-striking. In more vernacular pieces - letter punches are struck individually into the gold band. The letters are more even, but frequently slightly distorted, because the blow deforms the ring.
Laser engraving (modern). In contemporary posy rings: the inscription is cut into the inner gold band by fibre laser in a single pass. The lines are perfectly even - which was historically impossible, and which many workshops therefore deliberately avoid in order to preserve the handmade character.
The historical hand-graving technique is mastered today by only a few specialised workshops; it is markedly more expensive than laser engraving, but for patrons seeking a historicising piece it is the gold standard.
History
The history of the posy ring can be divided into three phases:
The late Middle Ages (c. 1300–1500). Early inscription rings with Latin or Middle French sentences; often religious or courtly in character. The inscriptions frequently sit on the outer rather than the inner face - the later interior format only becomes established from 1400 onwards.
Renaissance and Baroque (1500–1700). The heyday. English posy rings are made in hundreds of thousands; the mottoes circulate as printed anthologies (posy books). French, Dutch and German pieces follow similar patterns. The function is broad: love, fidelity, mourning, religion, friendship.
Late Baroque and Enlightenment (1700–1800). The posy ring loses its dominance. New jewellery forms take over its function - the mourning ring with a date-of-death inscription, the sentimental ring with a portrait miniature, the mourning locket with a hollow setting for hair. By around 1800 the posy ring is no longer standard within the new jewellery of rank.
The nineteenth century and the modern era. The posy ring survives as a collector's item and as a historicising revival - above all in the Pre-Raphaelite movement of the late nineteenth century, and in present-day workshops that reconstruct historical jewellery forms.
The collectors' market
Posy rings are an established field of collecting:
- Plain gold bands with a legible inscription: €400 to €1,500
- Pieces with rare mottoes or unusual languages: €1,500 to €4,000
- Early pieces (15th/16th c.) with provenance: €4,000 to €10,000 and above
- Pieces with royal or well-known aristocratic provenance: considerably higher; individual auction peaks above €50,000
The most important collections are held by the British Museum (over 1,000 posy rings), the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford) and specialised private collections.
The posy ring today
In the current jewellery market the posy ring occupies a small but growing niche. Three principal applications:
Wedding rings with an interior engraving. The most frequent modern commission. Couples have their wedding rings given an interior inscription on the posy model - usually the wedding date, sometimes a quotation or a personal motto.
Memorial posy rings. After a death, a posy ring is commissioned with a mourning inscription - often a quotation from the deceased, a shared phrase or a classical memento mori formula. A restrained, historicising form of modern remembrance jewellery.
Partnership and family devices. Pieces bearing family mottoes or generational sayings, passed on from parents to children.
Workshops making posy rings today generally work in one of two ways: either as a deliberately historicising reconstruction (hand-graving, classical mottoes, a plain gold band) or as a modern adaptation (laser engraving, a personal motto, a contemporary ring profile). Both keep the tradition alive - one of Europe's oldest jewellery traditions, and one whose core form has not changed substantially across six centuries.
Questions about this entry
- Where is the inscription engraved?
Classically on the inner face of the ring band. The outer face is usually plain - a simple gold band without ornament. The inscription is therefore visible only to the wearer, when putting the ring on and taking it off. This gesture of concealment is constitutive of the posy ring: the promise is private, not public.
- Which mottoes are typical?
Short rhymed couplets or single-line sentences. Love mottoes: I like my choice, In thee my choice, Love is heaven, heaven is love. Mottoes of fidelity: Not two but one till life is done. Mourning and memento mori mottoes: Hodie mihi, cras tibi ("Today me, tomorrow you"), In memento, As we live, so dye. The mottoes derive from anthologies - so-called posy books listed hundreds of ready-formulated inscriptions from which patrons made their choice.
- How does a posy ring differ from a mourning ring?
The posy ring is the generic historical form of the inscription ring. It may carry a meaning of love, friendship, betrothal, marriage or mourning - the motto defines the function. The mourning ring is a specialised form with a fixed mourning function and generally unambiguous mourning markers (black materials, an inscription with a date of death). Posy rings are older (from the late Middle Ages); mourning rings in the form known today emerge from the sixteenth century onwards.
- Are posy rings still made today?
Yes, in a small but stable niche. Workshops in England, Scotland and the German-speaking countries make posy rings to commission - usually as a deliberately historicising gesture for a wedding or a partnership anniversary, or as a memorial ring after a death. The workshops often work with mottoes chosen by the client, or with quotations from the historical posy anthologies.
- What does a historical posy ring cost?
On the collectors' market, simple gold bands with a legible inscription lie between €400 and €1,500. Pieces with especially rare mottoes, with documented provenance or from particularly early periods (15th/16th c.) fetch €2,000 to €6,000. The most important collections are held by the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Further reading
- Posy Rings - The Catalogue of British Examples - Joan Evans (1931)
- British Museum - Posy Rings Collection
- Sentimental Jewellery - Shire Library - Ann Louise Luthi (2007)
- Renaissance Jewellery - Yvonne Hackenbroch (1979)
Related entries
- Core conceptsSentimental Jewellery
Sentimental jewellery is the jewellery of the age of sensibility between 1760 and 1840 - pieces in which love, friendship and grief share the same imagery, and in which hair, miniature painting and personal inscriptions first become the load-bearing form.
- Core conceptsMemento mori
Memento mori is the Christian-Stoic exhortation to be mindful of one's own death - and at the same time the iconographic soil from which European mourning jewellery of the 17th century grew.
- Core conceptsMourning Jewellery
Mourning jewellery is body adornment that signals a death, binds the memory of a deceased person, or does both at once - since the 17th century a jewellery type in its own right, with a material language of its own.
- Jewellery formsMourning Ring (Memorial Ring)
A mourning ring - also called a memorial ring - is a finger ring that carries the memory of a deceased person, usually in the form of an inscription, an image, a lock of hair or a fingerprint.
- Jewellery formsMourning Locket
The mourning locket is a pendant worn on a neck chain with an interior compartment - a concealed carrier of hair, photograph or inscription that keeps the memento close to the body and has been, from the eighteenth century to the present, the most important private form of mourning jewellery.
- Techniques & craftEngraving and Inscriptions
Engraving is the oldest personalisation technique in memorial jewellery - from the Baroque memento mori ring to modern laser micro-engraving, which today inscribes initials, dates of death and even photographed handwriting into metal.
- Symbols & motifsSerpent (Ouroboros)
The serpent biting its own tail - the ouroboros - is one of the few Baroque memento mori symbols to survive the passage into the Victorian age: an image of eternity that was reinterpreted in the nineteenth century from admonition into a gesture of hope.
- People & cultural historyTudor Mourning and Stuart Bequest Rings
The Tudor and Stuart era in England (1485–1714) is the birth period of the modern mourning-jewellery system - from the memento mori ring of Henry VIII's day, through the *funeral ring* bequests of the Elizabethan aristocracy, to the Stuart mourning ring following the execution of Charles I (1649) and the death of Charles II (1685).
- PeriodsThe Georgian Era (1714–1837)
The Georgian era spans the reigns of the four kings George I to George IV and of William IV in Britain. In mourning jewellery it is the epoch in which sentimental jewellery was invented - sepia hair painting, the lover's eye, the miniature portrait on ivory, and the posy ring in transition to the memento mori ring.