The Sexuality of Wedding Rings
Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss
Major Work by 18th-century Sculptor
Canova
Musse Du Louvre
Like Psyche revived by Cupid's kiss, Jewelry revives the senses. When words fail us, when words are inadequate or when open expressions of love were forbidden, Jewelry comes to the rescue. The sexuality of wedding rings is not obvious, often hidden from view to those new to Antique Jewelry Investing, but once it's pointed, you will wonder how you ever missed these subtle but powerful expressions of love, sometimes loss, and often deep yearning that's survived over all these decades, hidden in the metals and antique stones of the Antique Jewelry today.
Tracing the Jewelry in History we gain information on Antique Jewelry, 20th century & Costume Jewelry by the Hallmarks. With the aid of a 10x Jewelers Loupe, we may examine external features but may overlook the rings most important quality, the actual Meaning of the wedding ring itself.
Intimate meanings hidden in the Jewelry of Antique Wedding Rings have been deciphered in both English and French.
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In both French and in English, the sexuality of a wedding ring is obvious and unmistakable. Many of the same words serve to designate certain parts of the ring and of the human body.
We refer to the body (Fr: corps ), the head (Fr: tête ), the shoulders (Fr: épaules), the shank (Fr: pied), and the size (Fr: taille) and recognize sexual allusions among other French terms for parts of the ring (e.g., jonc , tige or "shaft," panier , chaton or "pussy," corbeille ).
The vocabulary of rings borrows from both male and female sexual parts. Certain English words common in ring terminology have, like their French counterparts, similarly have rather crude sexual connotations, e.g., box, head, shaft, etc.
Wherever we may be in the world, people are attracted by the outward form of the object, the antique ring setting, the old-cut diamonds or perhaps the Gemstone Meaning in Gemstone Jewelry Lore and in doing so overlook the wedding rings main contractual purpose and the underlying implicit declaration. Consequently, the sexuality of wedding rings is not recognized, overlooked or sidelined.
The sexuality of wedding rings may embody a subtle sexual reference and intimate expression of love between the owner of a wedding ring embedded into the actual betrothal ring itself. And it's in these expressions of love, loss and yearning attached to the physicality of antique wedding rings, that a good Antique Jewelry Investor finds so especially intriguing.
Just like the meaning of flowers in Jewelry, the meaning of wedding rings, reveals a quality we cannot see or touch or even name precisely, and nowhere does it thrive more profusely than in the garden of Antique Jewelry that roars quality. There is Power in Oldness!
Antique wedding rings are anything but Antique! In the History of Wedding Rings, betrothal rings were always tied to the central idea of totality and completeness.
Different stories in literature from that of Gyges in Plato's Rebublic (Bk. II, 359) to Aladin in The Thousand and One Nights focus on the idea that the person who possesses a ring has "everything." The ring signifies a "totality." In Herodotus (Bk. III, 40-43) the story of Polycrates who decides to give up what he values most, His Finger Ring, confirms this notion.
The fact that it is a ring that is offered or exchanged during engagement and marriage ceremonies, in contracts that engage the body is significant and confirms the idea that there is a correspondence between the wedding ring and the body.
For example, in a poem by Guillaume VI de Poitiers (1071-1127), the lover declares "she gives me a great gift, her love and her ring." The same comparison is used in an erotic fable, L'anneau Hans Carvel, by La Fontaine (1621-1695)
Here we see again that the sexuality of wedding rings and the correlation to jewelry is unmistakably in both English and French languages.
Another example of sexual expression is the familiar phrase, the "family jewels" ( Les Bijoux de Famille ) referring to the male genitalia. Similar metaphors exist in English; in Victorian times, Information on Pearls reveals that the word 'Pearl' was equated with the clitoris. (cf. Content, The Pearl and the Dragon, 1999, p. 29).
In the current copy-paste digital renaissance, Antique & Estate Jewelry which includes Antique Wedding Rings are anything but Auld Lang Syne!
References:
1. Dr. Reine Hadjadj , Independent Scholar, France [translation by Sandra Hindman]
2. http://www.signetrings.com
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