Good Evening! Mark, thanks for writing in and attaching an image of your ring. A very interesting men's antique ring! The mark 14 k is common gold hallmark, in the US and worldwide. I'm not going to comment on the initial marks,without seeing them, they could be unregistered marks.
It does have an At Nouveau "New Art" look to it. Art Nouveau design embraced figurative and naturalistic motifs, like the fauna, especially dragonflies, flora - botanical style elements, like the design motif on your ring, and lest we forget, the feminine divine, with long flowing hair.
Around the 1900s, the date your antique jeweler has assigned to this piece, there was a great divide in the jewelry world. One camp such as Cartier, Boucheron, and Chaume thought that large stones were the reason of a jewel and that they were shown to the best advantage in a setting adapted from the most successful designs of the past.
On the other side of the great divide, a revolution in jewelry design led by Rene Lalique of France, was taking place. In Lalique's camp it was held that a piece of jewelry should be appreciated for its intrinsic worth and valued for its artistry rather than the materials used.
Art Nouveau rings are the rarest Art Nouveau jewels, because the narrow band and bezel were too small an area for design proportions. The Men's larger ring size would be a definite advantage. Mark, men also wore rings all through the 19th century and the sophisticated man about town especially liked to wear naked beauties with long flowing locks on his finger.
Not only was her hair rendered naturalistic but so is the mane of the lion. The presence of the lion might indicate the wearer's zodiacal sign. The most attractive of these men's rings, ornamented with women, were a revival of the figurative themes of the Renaissance.
