Bronze Age, Penannular ring, first millennium BC, so-called ‘Ring-Money’, thick solid band of two-tone striped gold with blunt terminals, 17mm, 7.77g (van Arsdell 1-3; Taylor pl. 33, f and g). Very fine with well-defined banding, very rare £500-1,000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Chris Rudd Collection of Bronze Age and Roman Coins.

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Collection

Provenance: Shamrock Collection; C. Hamlyn Collection; M. Richards Collection.

These so-called stripey rings or tiger rings, perhaps worn as nose-rings or tress-rings, were items of high status. Richard Hobbs of the British Museum states “Close scientific examination of the penannular rings shows that some were very carefully constructed: the striped ones in particular had much time and skill invested in them. On these, a silver-rich gold wire, whitish in colour, was wound around a rod of yellow gold which had been spirally grooved to take the inlay. This was then heated and burnished or gently hammered to fuse the silvery wire to the gold, and then bent into a ring shape. These striped rings must have been more valued than the plain ones, and when worn would probably have marked out these people as being exceptional individuals in the community” (Treasure: Finding our Past, British Museum Press, 2003, pp.105-7)