Victorian cabochon sapphire ring with rose-cut diamonds

[glitterata]

Hi, everybody. I haven''t posted in a while, but I just got a new ring on eBay that I thought you might like to see.

It''s a round blue cabochon sapphire set in yellow gold, with little rose-cut diamonds set around it in triangular petals. The seller claimed it was from the 1860s, which sounds about right to me. The rose-cuts are in closed settings, with silver behind them to reflect the light better--though the silver has darkened somewhat over the years.

The seller claimed it''s a natural sapphire, and I believe him about that, too, since I see inclusions and color banding (though the stone is nice and transparent). Besides, I don''t think they had synthetic sapphires quite that early. I don''t know how big the stone is--he said about a carat, but I got the sense that that was a guess. He''s not a jeweler, he''s a general antiques dealer.

The photos I took make the sapphire look somewhat greener than it is in real life, and they make my fingers look pinker, and they don''t capture the twinkly glitter of the rose cuts, but they give a general sense of what the ring looks like.

 

[glitterata]

Okay, adding some pictures:

 

[glitterata]

Another:

 

[glitterata]

And another:

 

[glitterata]

Side view:

 

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Last one, hand shot:

 

[glitterata]

I forgot to say, it''s size 5.5.

 

[pjean]

How lovely!

 

[RevolutionGems]

That is quite the tasty little treat. May I ask what you paid for it?

 

[canuk-gal]

HI:

Gorgeous! And so nice to "see" you again!

cheers--Sharon

 

[glitterata]

Thanks for the kind words.

Nice to "see" you again, too, Sharon!

Jeff, I paid a little over $300.

 

[RevolutionGems]

I think you got quite a fine deal. The diamond are soooo nice. I do love a good rose cut diamond. And that sapphire is nothing to sneeze at either!

 

[glitterata]

Thanks, Jeff. The diamonds are teensy tiny--just a point or two, probably--but the sapphire is a nice medium blue, and the ring is well made, and it''s the real thing, over a century old, which matters to me. I love 19th century jewelry. And I''ve always wanted a Victorian halo ring, the kind with rose-cut diamonds set in petals around a colored center stone.

For some reason, my browser--firefox--ignores my paragraph breaks.

 

[Harriet]

Great find!

 

[Miranda]

What a lovely piece! I''ve had an itch for cabochons lately!

 

[coatimundi_org]

Wow Lovely find!

 

[jewelerman]

Im with Jeff on this one!Very tasty ...the old cut diamond and the cab cut sapphire are a great combination at a very nice price.Are there any hallmarks on the piece?I say its of british origin.

 

[Catmom]

Ooooooo, GREAT find! It looks beautiful on your hand.

 

[canuk-gal]

HI:

Peeking again!

I cannot get oiver in what great shape that cab is for it's age. You know how they can "suffer" with wear/time!

cheers--Sharon

 

[Fly Girl]

Beautiful piece. Love it!!

 

[Clio]

I LOVE it!

 

[Gem Lover]

That is really beautiful! Congrats on a great find!

Jess

 

[glitterata]

Thanks for the compliments, everyone!

Sharon, I''m also surprised at how clean the cab is. I don''t see any scratches at all, just inclusions, and the diamonds are in great shape, too, with no chips. One of them is slightly rotated in its setting and shows a natural on its edge, but that''s the only thing wrong with any of them (besides inclusions and tarnish to the silver underneath). So probably the ring wasn''t worn very much over the years. Or perhaps it visited a jeweler who repolished the sapphire? But I don''t think so, because the gold itself has a patina of tiny scratches, as you would expect from a century-old ring, and there''s tarnish in the crevices of the setting. Someone must have gone over it gently with a jeweler''s cloth, but it hasn''t been buffed or chemically cleaned. It seems so unlikely that someone would have the sapphire polished and leave the gold in its original state. Also, the sapphire is set with 14 itty-bitty prongs, which would make it very difficult to unset and reset it without them showing damage.

New paragraph (for some reason the computer ignores my paragraph spacing): Jewelerman, there are no markings on the ring, which is common for 19th century American jewelry, and less common for British, I believe--yes? But the ring looks as if it may have been resized at some point, so I suppose it''s possible it had marks and lost them. It came to me in an old-looking cardboard box with the name of a Delaware jeweler on it. The box looks 19th century to me, but I have no way of knowing if it''s original to the ring.

 

[jewelerman]

That is why i wanted to know about hallmarks...so it may be American in manufacture after all...The cab style cut wasnt popular in American jewelry as it was in other parts of the world.The sapphire could have been brought to America and the setting made by a jewelry factory here.The early hallmark laws in America were pretty non-exsistant,but countries like France and England enacted a hallmark system early on(if i remember correctly the 1400s) for precious metals.Now im wondering the source of the sapphire...India maybe?This is a really fun ring to talk about!if the ring is from the 1860s what source for the diamonds?India,Brizil,or South Africa?What says the forum on this little blue treasure.

 

[glitterata]

Jewelerman, you sound as if you know your stuff! What''s your opinion of the age of this little ring? Does 1860s sound right to you? Newer? I don''t think it''s older, because if it were I would expect the diamonds to be set in silver, not just backed with silver, but I''m no expert.

And I would love to hear people''s opinions of the origin of the stones. The sapphire is bluer and less greenish than it looks in the photos (at least on my computer). It''s fairly transparent, has no star, and has some large, planar, feather-like inclusions and a few needle-like inclusions. (Sorry, I don''t know the vocabulary for this!) Does that help identify the origin? I know pretty much nothing about sapphires.

As for the diamonds, I just can''t tell the color and clarity because they''re in closed settings, so what look like inclusions could be tarnish or dirt behind them. But they seem well cut, or at least not obviously shoddily cut.

 

[Linda W]

Beautiful ring. I love it.

 

[glitterata]

Oh, also, the sapphire is a quarter inch across. I was once told by a museum curator that one way to tell whether an object is of Anglophone or Francophone (or other European) origin is to measure it and see whether the measurements come out evenly in inches/feet or centimeters/meters. Of course, the quarter inch could be a coincidence or a mismeasurement on my part (I''m using a tape measure, which isn''t exactly a precision instrument) and it doesn''t distinguish between Britain and America, both of which used inches.

 

[jewelerman]

Glitterata,
Im impressed with your knowlege on weighting factors to determine age of a piece!I thought you were in the jewelry trade from your posts.Im going to do some research and see what i can come up with...im sure there are others who might like to play along to see if we can settle on some exacts about this ring if we continue to put our heads together.

 

[innerkitten]

Beautiful! I love antique jewelry and anything with rosecut diamonds too! Sounds like it was a good buy.

 

[glitterata]

Oh, no, I''m not a jeweler--just a jewelry lover. I learned everything I know about gems and jewels on Pricescope. Well, Pricescope and eBay, and a few knowledgeable friends. But I don''t have a lot of money to spend on this very expensive hobby, and I''m cheap by nature, so I have to learn as much as I can so I''ll recognize the deals when I see them. I have a large collection of jewels so weird or unfashionable that nobody else wanted them, so I was able to get them at a good price. (I don''t mean that I think this ring is weird, though I guess it''s a little unfashionable. In this case I just lucked out.)