18thC Antique Crimean Tatar Intricate Silver Ring Foil Back Glass Gem Size 8½

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Seller: ancientgifts ✉️ (5,440) 100%, Location: Lummi Island, Washington, US, Ships to: WORLDWIDE & many other countries, Item: 385404663100 18thC Antique Crimean Tatar Intricate Silver Ring Foil Back Glass Gem Size 8½.

Large Beautiful Size 8 1/2 Renaissance Era Silver Alloy Ring with a Replacement (Not Original) “Gemstone” of Unknown Composition/Origin. Six Foil-Backed Glass “Gemstones” (Presumably Original).

CLASSIFICATION: Silver/Bronze Alloy Ring.

ATTRIBUTION: Crimean Black Sea Region, Southern Russia, 17-18th Century A.D.

SIZE/DIMENSIONS (all measurements approximate):

Size: 8 1/2 (U.S.).

Inside Band Dimension: 19 1/2mm x 19mm. Overall Diameter: 23mm.

Bezel/Main “Gemstone”: Length: 13 1/2mm. Height: 13mm. Thickness: 4mm.

Four “Ruby Red” and Two “Emerald Green” Foil-Backed Glass “Gemstones” of 3mm diameter size.

Fixed Width 7mm Band.

Weight: 4.93 grams.

CONDITION: Very good! Intact, integrity unimpaired. Moderate wear from usage. No significant porosity (surface pitting caused by contact with earth while buried). Very fine finish.

DETAIL: A large and intricate silver/bronze alloy ring of late Renaissance origin, probably seventeenth or eighteenth century, provenance is Southern Russia, the Crimean Region. The Crimean, now part of present-day Ukraine, was home of the Tartars (and before them ancient Greek settlements during the first millennium B.C.), across the Black Sea from what was at the time this ring was produced, the Ottoman Empire, modern day Turkey. The ring bears a very elaborate stamped pattern on the sides of the band wrapping all of the way around to the back of the band. A similarly elaborate double beaded chain pattern embellishes all four sides of the bezel. It is quite substantial, and the design of the ring and the detailed metal work evidenced in the bezel and bands is very elaborate!

There is moderate wear to the sides and the back of the band, however the extent of the wear is not excessive. There back of the bands are a bit battered as if the owner did some sort of work with their hands which occasioned contact with a metal tool held in the hands. So aside from the type of wear which caused the metal to wear smooth, the back of the bands are also a bit dinged up. You might notice however that the double beaded-chain bezel perimeter skirt has been crushed a bit. This is because the original gemstone, almost certainly glass, was lost or removed at one point in the artifact’s life, and in its place an iridescent piece of unknown material of unknown origin substituted. It appears to be a small bit of plastic from the 1960’s or 1970’s.

You remember America’s fascination with plastic in the 1930’s, the “miracle” product that oftentimes fetched higher prices that the wood or metal material had replaced. Likewise in many parts of Eastern Europe where people lived simple, traditional lives devoid of any technology, little bits of shiny plastic such as this attracted great admiration and interest. Evidently the appeal of this bit of plastic flotsam was so great that it was set into this much older ring; in favor of the older, original glass gemstone which was presumably discarded. In any event, this piece of iridescent blue material was not nearly as thick as the glass gemstone it replaced. Consequentially as the ring was worn, it bezel skirt was crushed down a bit as it was no longer supported by a thick glass gemstone beneath, so it was crushed down to the level of the thinner material which had taken the place of the glass gemstone.

You might also notice that consequence of the bezel skirt being crushed and deformed a bit, it also shows a great deal more wear than the bands, much of the double beaded chain embellishment has been worn smooth or somewhat indistinct. I am sure that this iridescent piece of green plastic (?) had great appeal at the time it was set, in the sense of for instance a glass coke bottle discovered by an aboriginal tribe and then worshiped as a strange and magical manifestation of some great power. It is not unappealing, simply to the jaded eyes of a twenty-first century member of a western culture, little bits of shiny plastic no longer hold the appeal that they did in the 1930’s and 1940’s, when people threw out beautiful mahogany radio cabinets in favor of radio cabinets made of the miraculous modern material, plastic.

The ring itself is in relatively good condition, despite the lightly crushed bezel skirt and the wear evidenced to the bands. Of course, some signs of wear are to be expected from a ring several centuries old, especially one which has clearly had two “lives” (one with a glass gemstone, one much later with this bit of plastic installed). It was produced with the idea that someone would purchase it and wear it, and that is exactly what happened. Despite the very modest indications of wear, it remains quite intricate and substantial, and the design of the ring and the detailed metal work evidenced in the bezel and bands is very elaborate!

The ring was probably designed to be worn by a man, and is bold and handsome enough to be worn by a man today. However the design is elaborate, elegant, and intricate enough to be worn with good taste by a woman as well. Although there are unmistakable indications of wear, they are not excessive, and the artifact’s integrity is undiminished. The original gemstone, we’re speculating of course, was probably of colored, molded glass. The six accent gemstones, four “ruby red” and two “emerald green”, are foil backed glass gemstones and seem to be “original equipment”. Glass was quite commonly used during the era contemporary with the ring itself to produce ersatz gemstones, albeit expensive ersatz gemstones. Inexpensive faux gemstones were more often than not produced by artisans of the era from molded and colored amber resin. Glass gemstones were still fairly costly.

The ring itself is silver alloyed with bronze. This style of ring was popular throughout much of Eastern Byzantine Europe for centuries, so it is difficult to place a precise date on the artifact. However it is likely to have been produced sometime in the 17th or 18th century, and based upon where it was found, it was produced either in Ottoman Turkey and exported to the Crimean (which only a century before was part of the Ottoman Empire), or produced in the Crimean Region itself. In any event, this ornate piece of Russian/Renaissance jewelry is in a very good state of preservation, excepting the substituted main gemstone, and is quite wearable.

HISTORY: The Tatars of the Crimean Black Sea Region are one of the ethnic sub-populations of Russia (present-day Ukraine). Prior to the current era (before 0 A.D.) the vast lands of South Russia were home to various Proto-Indo-European tribes such as the Scythians. Between the third and sixth centuries A.D., the steppes were overwhelmed by successive waves of nomadic invasions when swept through Europe, as was the case with Huns and Turkish Avars. A Turkic people, the Khazars, ruled South Russia through the 8th century. They were important allies of the Byzantine Empire and waged a series of successful wars against the Arab Califates. The Early East Slavs constituted the bulk of the population in Western Russia from the 7th century onwards and slowly assimilated the native Finno-Ugric tribes, such as the Merya, the Muromians and the Meshchera.

In the mid-9th century, a group of Scandinavians, the Varangians, assumed the role of a ruling elite at the Slavic capital of Novgorod. Although they were quickly assimilated by the predominantly Slavic population, the Varangian dynasty lasted several centuries, during which they affiliated with the Byzantine, or Orthodox church and moved the capital to Kiev in A.D. 882. In the 10th to 11th centuries this state of Kievan Rus became the largest in Europe and one of the most prosperous, due to diversified trade with both Europe and Asia. However the opening of new trade routes with the Orient at the time of the Crusades contributed to the decline and defragmentation of Kievan Rus by the end of the 12th century.

In the 11th and 12th centuries, the constant incursions of nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchaks and the Pechenegs, led to the massive migration of Slavic populations from the fertile south to the heavily forested regions of the north. The medieval states of Novgorod Republic and Vladimir-Suzdal emerged as successors to Kievan Rus, while the middle course of the Volga River came to be dominated by the Muslim state of Volga Bulgaria. Like many other parts of Eurasia, these territories were overrun by the Mongol invaders known as the “Golden Horde”, which would pillage Russia for over three centuries. Later known as the Tatars, they ruled the southern and central expanses of present-day Russia, while the territories of present-day Ukraine and Belarus were incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland, thus dividing the Russian people in the north from the Belarusians and Ukrainians in the west.

The name “Tatars” eventually become a collective name applied to the Turkic people of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The majority of Tatars today live in European Russia, and are the descendants of the Eastern European Volga Bulgars who were conquered by the Mongol invasion of the 13th century. The original Ta-ta Mongols inhabited the north-eastern Gobi in the 5th century and, after subjugation in the 9th century by the Khitans, migrated southward, there founding the Mongol empire under Genghis Khan. Under the leadership of his grandson Batu Khan they moved westwards, driving with them many stems of the Turkic Ural-Altayans towards the plains of Russia. On the Volga they mingled with remnants of the old Bulgarian empire (Volga Bulgaria), and elsewhere with Finno-Ugric speaking peoples, as well as with remnants of the ancient Greek colonies in the Crimea and Caucasians in the Caucasus.

The name of Tatars, given to the invaders, was afterwards extended so as to include different stems of the same Turkic-Mongol branch in Russia, and even the bulk of the inhabitants of the high plateau of Asia and its northwestern slopes, described under the general name of Tartary. This name has almost disappeared from geographical literature, but the name Tatars, in the above limited sense, remains in full use. Most current day Tatars live in the central and southern parts of Russia (the majority in Tatarstan), Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania, Belarus and in Bulgaria, China, Kazakhstan, Romania, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. They collectively numbered more than 10 million in the late 20th century.

The Crimean Tatars may still be found in Crimea, an autonomous republic of Ukraine on the northern coast of the Black Sea occupying the Crimean peninsula. The Crimean Tatars are actually descendants of a number of Turkic peoples. The ethnicity of the Crimean Tatars is quite complex as it absorbed by both nomadic Turkic and European components (in the first place, the Goths and the Genoese) which is still reflected in their appearance and language differences. A small enclave of the Karaims, possibly of Khazar (i.e. Turkic) descent but members of a Jewish sect, was founded in the 8th century. It existed among the Muslim Crimean Tatars, primarily in the mountainous Çufut Qale area.

The territory of Crimea was conquered and controlled many times through its history. The Cimmerians, Greeks, Iranians, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Khazars, the state of Kievan Rus', Byzantine Greeks, Kipchaks, and the Mongols all controlled Crimea in its early history. These were followed by the Crimean Khanate and Ottoman Empire in the 15th–18th centuries, the Russian Empire in the 18th–20th centuries, Germany in World War II, and now, the independent Ukrainian state. The Crimean Tatars were forcibly expelled to Central Asia by Joseph Stalin's government, but have begun returning to their homeland in recent years.

The ancient Greeks called Crimea Tauris (later Taurica), after its inhabitants, the Tauri. The Greek historian Herodotus mentions that Hercules plowed that land using a huge ox ("taurus"), hence the name of the land. The earliest inhabitants of whom we have any authentic traces were the Cimmerians, who were expelled by the Scythians (Iranians) during the 7th century B.C. The remaining Cimmerians that took refuge in the mountains later became known as the Tauri. According to other historians, the Tauri were known for their savage rituals and piracy, and were also the earliest, indigenous inhabitants of the peninsula. In 5th century B.C., Greek colonists began to settle along the Black Sea coast, among those were the Dorians from Heraclea who founded a sea port of Chersonesos outside Sevastopol, and the Ionians from Miletus who landed at Feodosiya and Panticapaeum (also called Bosporus).

Two centuries later (438 B.C.), the Archon (ruler) of the latter settlers assumed the title of the Kings of Cimmerian Bosporus, a state that maintained close relations with Athens, supplying the city with wheat, honey and other commodities. The last of that line of kings, Paerisades V, being hard-pressed by the Scythians, put himself under the protection of Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, in 114 B.C. After the death of this sovereign, his son, Pharnaces II, was invested by Pompey with the kingdom of Bosporus in 63 B.C. as a reward for the assistance rendered to the Romans in their war against his father. In 15 B.C., it was once again restored to the king of Pontus, but since ranked as a tributary state of Rome.

Throughout the later centuries, Crimea was invaded or occupied successively by the Goths (A.D. 250), the Huns (376), the Bulgars (6th century), the Khazars (8th century), the state of Kievan Rus' (10th–11th centuries), the Byzantine Greeks (1016), the Kipchaks (the Kumans) (1050), and the Mongols (1237). In the 13th century, the Republic of Genoa seized the settlements which their rivals, the Venetians, had built along the Crimean coast and established themselves at Cembalo, Soldaia, Cherco and Caffa, gaining control of the Crimean economy and the Black Sea commerce for two centuries.

After the destruction of the Golden Horde by Timur in 1441, the Crimean Tatars founded an independent Crimean Khanate under Hacı I Giray, a descendant of Genghis Khan. The Crimean Tatars controlled the steppes that stretched from the Kuban and to the Dniester River, however, they were unable to take control over commercial Genoese towns. After the Crimean Tatars asked for help from the Ottomans, an Ottoman invasion of the Genoese towns led by Gedik Ahmed Pasha in 1475 brought Kaffa and the other trading towns under their control. In 1774, The Crimean Khans fell under the Russian influence in the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca. In 1783, entire Crimea was annexed by the Russian Empire.

HISTORY OF SILVER: After gold, silver is the metal most widely used in jewelry and the most malleable. The oldest silver artifacts found by archaeologists date from ancient Sumeria about 4,000 B.C. At many points in the ancient world, it was actually more costly than gold, particularly in ancient Egypt. Silver is found in native form (i.e., in nuggets), as an alloy with gold (electrum), and in ores containing sulfur, arsenic, antimony or chlorine. Much of the silver originally found in the ancient world was actually a natural alloy of gold and silver (in nugget form) known as “electrum”. The first large-scale silver mines were in Anatolia (ancient Turkey) and Armenia, where as early as 4,000 B.C. silver was extracted from lead ores by means of a complicated process known as “smelting”. Even then the process was not perfect, as ancient silver does contain trace elements, typically lead, gold, bismuth and other metals, and as much as a third of the silver was left behind in the slag. However measuring the concentrations of the “impurities” in ancient silver can help the forensic jewelry historian in determining the authenticity of classical items.

From Turkey and Armenia silver refining technology spread to the rest of Asia Minor and Europe. By about 2,500 B.C. the Babylonians were one of the major refiners of silver. Silver “treasures” recovered by archaeologists from the second and third millenniums demonstrate the high value the ancient Mediterranean and Near East placed upon silver. Some of the richest burials in history uncovered by archaeologists have been from this time frame, that of Queen Puabi of Ur, Sumeria (26th century B.C.); Tuankhamun (14th century B.C.), and the rich Trojan (25th century B.C.) and Mycenaean (18th century B.C.) treasures uncovered by Heinrich Schliemann.

The ancient Egyptians believed that the skin of their gods was composed of gold, and their bones were thought to be of silver. When silver was introduced into Egypt, it probably was more valuable than gold (silver was rarer and more valuable than gold in many Mesoamerican cultures as well). In surviving inventories of valuables, items of silver were listed above those of gold during the Old Kingdom. Jewelry made of silver was almost always thinner than gold pieces, as indicated by the bracelets of the 4th Dynasty (about 2,500 B.C.) queen Hetephere I, in marked contrast to the extravagance of her heavy gold jewelry. A silver treasure excavated by archaeologists and attributable to the reign of Amenemhat II who ruled during the 12th Dynasty (about 1900 B.C.), contained fine silver items which were actually produced in Crete, by the ancient Minoans. When the price of silver finally did fall due to more readily available supplies, for at least another thousand years (through at least the 19th dynasty, about 1,200 B.C.) the price of silver seems to have been fixed at half that of gold. Several royal mummies attributable to about 1,000 B.C. were even entombed in solid silver coffins.

Around 1,000 B.C. Greek Athenians began producing silver from the Laurium mines, and would supply much of the ancient Mediterranean world with its silver for almost 1,000 years. This ancient source was eventually supplemented around 800 B.C. (and then eventually supplanted) by the massive silver mines found in Spain by the Phoenicians and their colony (and ultimate successors) the Carthaginians (operated in part by Hannibal’s family). With the defeat of Carthage by Rome, the Romans gained control of these vast deposits, and mined massive amounts of silver from Spain, stripping entire forests regions for timber to fuel smelting operations. In fact, it was not until the Middle Ages that Spain’s silver mines (and her forests) were finally exhausted.

Although known during the Copper Age, silver made only rare appearances in jewelry before the classical age. Despite its infrequent use as jewelry however, silver was widely used as coinage due to its softness, brilliant color, and resistance to oxidation. Silver alloyed with gold in the form of “electrum” was coined to produce money around 700 B.C. by the Lydians of present-day Turkey. Having access to silver deposits and being able to mine them played a big role in the classical world. Actual silver coins were first produced in Lydia about 610 B.C., and subsequently in Athens in about 580 B.C. Many historians have argued that it was the possession and exploitation of the Laurium mines by the Athenians that allowed them to become the most powerful city state in Greece. The Athenians were well aware of the significance of the mining operations to the prosperity of their city, as every citizen had shares in the mines. Enough silver was mined and refined at Laurium to finance the expansion of Athens as a trading and naval power. One estimate is that Laurium produced 160 million ounces of silver, worth six billion dollars today (when silver is by comparison relatively cheap and abundant). As the production of silver from the Laurium mines ultimately diminished, Greek silver production shifted to mines in Macedonia.

  • Condition: Please see detailed condition description below (click “see full description” button on your cell phone or tablet, or "view all details" on your laptop).
  • Color: Silver
  • Material: Glass

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