The Sexuality of Wedding Rings

Antique wedding rings, were associated with intimacy and sexuality!

The sexuality of wedding rings isn't that obvious to the beginner antique jewelry collector, but once it's pointed out, it's as plain as the nose on your face, and not just in one language either!

The intimacy connected with antique wedding rings is explicit in both English and French languages.

As we trace jewelry in history, and gain knowledge about antique jewelry and the different gold hallmarks that appear on jewelry with the aid of a 10x jewelers loupe, we tend to overlook the rings most important feature, the actual meaning of the wedding ring itself.

We might be attracted by the outward form, the antique ring setting, the old-cut diamonds and perhaps even the gemstone meaning in gemstone jewelry lore and so become in danger of overlooking the wedding rings main contractual purpose and the underlying implicit special sexual reference - the sexuality of wedding rings is often sidelined.

The sexuality of wedding rings embodied subtle sexual reference and intimate expressions of love between the owner of a wedding ring and the actual betrothal ring itself has almost disappeared from memory.

And it's in the meanings and the memories attached to the antique wedding ring, that a seasoned antique jewelry collector, and a sensitive person, finds so especially appealing.

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, but it exists, and nowhere does it exist and thrive more profusely than in the garden of our antique jewels...... it's time to refresh and re-think antique wedding rings anew.

Antique wedding rings are anything but antique! Vintage wedding rings, during the history of wedding rings, were always tied to the central idea of completeness, which probably explains the often recounted burning desire to possess it.

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 ring--confirms this notion.

Both in French and in English, the sexuality of 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). Many of us will recognize explicitly 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.

The fact that it is a ring that is offered or exchanged during engagement and marriage ceremonies, that is, in contracts that engage the body is significant, and confirms the idea that there is a correspondence between the 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 d'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 explicitness is the familiar expression, 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 clitoris. (cf. Content, The Pearl and the Dragon , 1999, p. 29).

Phew... that's all pretty érotique stuff, and for anyone who thought that Antique jewelry and vintage wedding rings were old-hat and boring, well, maybe you should ask them to visit this page - Antique wedding rings and Natural Pearls are anything but Antique!

References:

1. Dr. Reine Hadjadj
, Independent Scholar, France 
[translation by Sandra Hindman]

2. http://www.signetrings.com

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