Posy, gimmel and Claddagh rings: jewels that speak of love

Before the solitaire became the dominant design, Europe knew an extraordinary variety of love rings. Some carried words, others came apart into several hoops, and others told a whole story through a single emblem. Three types in particular have left their mark in museums and in literature: English posy rings, gimmel rings popular between the Renaissance and the Baroque, and the Claddagh ring, linked to the west coast of Ireland.

The hidden words of posy rings

The name posy comes from poesy, meaning «poetry», and refers to a ring with a short engraved motto, often on the inside, against the skin. A great many English and French examples survive, dating mostly from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century. The inscriptions were simple, in English, French or Latin: promises of fidelity, good wishes, plays on words. The message remained a secret shared between the giver and the receiver.

Shakespeare knew these objects well. In Hamlet the prince, hearing the players' very brief prologue, asks ironically whether it is a prologue or the posy of a ring. In The Merchant of Venice Gratiano recalls the inscription on the ring he received, «Love me, and leave me not», comparing it to the cutler's poetry engraved on knife blades. For an Elizabethan audience the reference was immediate.

Gimmel rings, two hoops in one

The term gimmel comes from the Latin gemellus, «twin». These are rings made of two, sometimes three hoops that fit together so perfectly that they look like one. According to the most frequently cited custom, during the betrothal each partner wore one part, and the parts were reunited at the wedding. These rings were widespread in Germany and England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Many examples show two hands that clasp over a heart when the hoops are brought together, or a double stone that is completed only when the ring is closed. Some bear internal engravings of a religious or moralising kind, at times genuine memento mori. The object thus combined the goldsmith's ingenuity with a very clear idea: two distinct lives which, once joined, form a perfect whole.

The crowned heart of Claddagh

The Claddagh ring takes its name from an old fishing village on the edge of Galway, in Ireland. Its emblem is a heart topped by a crown and held by two hands. In the traditional reading the hands stand for friendship, the heart for love and the crown for loyalty. The earliest known examples date from the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and bear the marks of Galway goldsmiths.

A legend has blossomed around the ring, told in several versions. A young man from Galway, captured by corsairs and sold into slavery in North Africa, is said to have learned the goldsmith's craft in captivity and, once freed, to have forged the first ring for the woman who had waited for him. It is a romantic tale, probably partly reworked, but it helped the design's fortunes during the Irish emigration of the nineteenth century.

Placed side by side, these three rings tell of a way of understanding jewellery as a language. A secret motto, two hoops that come together again, a heart between two hands: each entrusted the metal with a precise message, understood by those who knew the code. It is a tradition that goldsmiths continue to imitate and that European museums carefully preserve.