I have had a weakness for rings ever since I found a simple silver and onyx one in the park when I was about eight years old. From that moment, finger jewellery has ebbed and flowed over my knuckles. And the last 25 years has seen a slow increase.
However, I do not really regard these rings as jewellery per se, but rather what that Wilbur Smith among jewellers Patrick Mavros refers to as “symbolic adornment”, a type of day-to-day masculine ornamentation that is more about presence and texture than it is about precious stones. The closest I have yet got to an actual piece of jewellery is probably the episcopal ring which boasts a chunk of violet-coloured glass I like to imagine is an amethyst.
But I am beginning to reconsider my position. For a long time I was one of very few men I knew who sported finger jewellery — sorry, “symbolic adornment”— of the digits. But now men’s rings are everywhere and I have been giving serious thought to, well, giving my rings serious thought.
I have never really planned my rings. Instead I have continued as I more or less began when I was eight, adding rings to my hand on the grounds that they caught my magpie eye and that I had fingers on which to put them.
Looking down at my fingers as I type this, I see a cameo of a Gorgon, and next to it another cameo depicting Socrates. A fine cameo is a source of wonder. I look at it and marvel how the lapidary peered into this stone and saw the elements that would form a picture of Socrates, albeit a Socrates who looks like a distant cousin of Lenin. Next to Socrates/Lenin is a modernist seal ring that bears the arms of Oman and was given to me by a friend who found it among an important collection of watches he bought. Then there is some sort of mythical beast concocted by Venetian jeweller Nardi in the 1950s. Moving on to the left hand, there is the aforementioned 20th-century episcopal ring (the crosier and crucifix engraved on the shank are a bit of a giveaway), an allegedly Punic-era intaglio in fossilised wood, and a well-worn ring from the Anglo-Italian jeweller Grima.
My ring awakening, if you will, began last summer when I visited the Raphael exhibition at the National Gallery. I spent a long time looking at the famous portrait of Pope Julius II. It was not so much the disillusionment and sorrow on the old pontiff’s face, nor even the glorious passementerie of his throne that captivated me, but the rings on his fingers: a sapphire, a couple of rubies, two emeralds, and a diamond the size of a piece of chocolate. Clearly these were just parts of his work wardrobe, as the coronation ring is for His Majesty.
I informally canvassed opinion as to whether I dare take the next step and embrace gemstones.
Caroline Scheufele, president of Chopard, tells me that I am not alone. “It is on the menu these days: men are wearing more real jewellery: pendants, diamond bracelets, or rings especially with black tie on the red carpet.” It began with musicians, then sports stars started wearing them and now it is becoming more widespread, she says. “Cellist Gautier Capuçon, with whom Chopard worked when developing our Full-Strike minute repeater watch, wears a diamond ring. It is a new market for us, not only for us, but all the brands.”
She suggests something “more interesting than plain white diamonds” might suit me, such as black or brown diamonds.
Cynthia Tabet, product director at Piaget, says that coloured stones are proving particularly popular among men. Generally speaking, “men’s rings tend to be cyclical as a business, but there’s definitely been a notable upswing of interest in men’s rings in the past 12 months.
“What is different this time is the growth in precious set pieces — and not just diamonds — but rainbow stone rings such as the Possession Palace Décor Rainbow ring that we launched in the winter, for which we’ve had a lot of special orders for men.”
Annabel Davidson, a jewellery editor colleague of mine, shot back with a typically forthright, “I don’t know why more men don’t wear Elizabeth Gage’s rings, she loves a cabochon.” (Who doesn’t?) Davidson also sent me a picture of Dina Kamal’s Louis pinky ring. I don’t like the term “pinky” but with its four remarkably chaste, almost architectural, channel-set baguette diamonds, it seems to be a toe-in-the-water way to test-drive diamond rings.
Rather less toe in the water, and more full immersion baptism, is the high jewellery Monete ring that Bulgari makes for men. Monete jewellery has always spoken to me in that I am fascinated by the past and I love the idea of currency from the days of classical antiquity being cleaned up and set in gold — elevating something that had been in daily use centuries ago to the status of a jewel. Bulgari has gone all out, or do I mean all in, with a men’s ring featuring a silver Thracian coin in a gold mount set with about 9 carats of diamonds. The ominous three letters “POA” tell me all I need to know about the likelihood of me being able to afford it.
I suppose that I could look at demi-fine jewellery, but if I am honest cost is not the only barrier to my entering the world of the gem-set ring. There is a fundamental difference between the way I wear rings and my wife does. For her, the point would seem to be the ability to change rings to match an occasion or an outfit, whereas mine do not change, they just grow more numerous and I either wear all or none of them. They are not accessories to be swapped in and out, they are more like companions.
And I am neither a king, nor a Pope, nor Elton John, and therefore not professionally obliged to wear gemstone rings, and without professional necessity comes the question of age. Surveying the cavalcade of craziness at the Met Gala, where Finneas O’Connell and Jeremy Pope (both of whom I was shamefully unaware of until the Gala brought them to my attention) wore Cartier diamond rings, it struck me that diamonds are a young man’s best friend — and even by the most elastic stretch of the imagination I am not young.
So, having given the matter more thought than it deserves, I have resigned myself to ageing with my rings, stacking them if necessary and ending up with Karl Lagerfeld or Peter Marino hands, encrusted barnacle-like with ornamental metal.