Antique Georgian snake ring. 18k yellow gold, a touch of silver, enamel, rose-cut diamonds, and rubies. Made circa 1830, most probably in England. See note on dating and origin below.
Can be worn by a man or a woman — unisex.
Measurements:
Weight is 9.9 grams. A little over a US size 6.
Description :
A truly exceptional snake ring. The head and neck are followed by eleven articulated segments forming the body and tail, which curve around in a circle to meet and pass the head. Each segment is individually made and finely joined to its neighbors, allowing the whole to move as one continuous, flexible form. The segments are richly enameled in a bright royal blue, with high-karat gold tracing the reptile-skin pattern between them. The tail narrows to a point and is pavé-set with seven diamonds, set in silver — the customary practice for diamonds in the 19th century.
The neck begins with a raised cylindrical gold band, followed by a raised ring of pavé-set diamonds, also set in silver with millegrain borders. The head, enameled in the same rich blue, is set with rose-cut diamonds both on top and along the front, forming the nose. The eyes are navette-shaped rubies of a wonderfully deep, glowing red. The gold mouth is slightly open.
The quality of workmanship throughout is outstanding.
Marks and Metal:
No visible marks. Electronic testing confirmed a very high gold content; we guarantee at least 18k.
Condition:
Good, with negligible wear commensurate with age. Please see enlarged photos and don't hesitate to ask questions — we're happy to help.
THE STORY:
Snake jewelry — rings, bangles, necklaces — has been made and worn for thousands of years. However we may feel about the creature in real life, snake jewelry has long captivated collectors. In most traditions the snake symbolizes eternity and eternal love, since a circle has no beginning or end.
The design saw a particularly famous moment in 1839, when Prince Albert gave Queen Victoria a snake ring as an engagement present — sending demand for snake jewelry soaring across the following decades. But the motif was already well established before that, and it has never really gone out of fashion since. All antique snake jewelry is sought after, but this ring stands well above the ordinary: the quality of its materials and its construction are exceptional.
Date and Origin:
Because snake rings were made continuously across more than a century without a major shift in style, dating them precisely is genuinely difficult — and this ring is a good example of why. When I first acquired it, I believed it to be Victorian, and slightly later than it now appears to be.
That changed when I came across a strikingly similar ring pictured in Georgian Jewellery 1714–1830 by Ginny Redington Dawes with Olivia Collings — a blue enamel and gold snake ring with a rose-cut diamond head and the same flexible, segmented body, dated by the authors to circa 1830 (see the final photo for a side-by-side comparison of the two bodies). The articulated segmented construction is a genuinely rare and distinctive technique, uncommon enough that finding it duplicated so closely is compelling evidence the two rings were made by the same hand, or at least the same workshop. On the strength of that comparison, I've revised my attribution from Victorian to Georgian, circa 1830.
A second small mystery involves origin rather than era. I purchased this ring in Paris, and the French seller assumed it was French — but there are no French assay marks, and French jewelry of this period was reliably assayed. That absence is the first hint the ring isn't French. More telling still is the enamel work itself: this lavish, saturated royal blue is a hallmark of English enameling of the period. Taken together, the evidence points to English origin, though I leave a little room for you to draw your own conclusion — it's part of what makes this ring so fascinating.
