Antique jewelry glossary

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Regard ring

A type of finger ring set with a row of small gemstones of different varieties and of which the initial letters spell 'regard', such rings having been given as tokens of friendship or sentiment c. 1840. They were a type of acrostic jewelry. The stones usually used in sequence were the ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, and diamond. Such rings were generally a single hoop but in some unusual examples the stones were set individually in separate hoops that were joined, so that the stones formed a vertical row.

From: An Illustrated Dictionary of Jewelry, autor: Harold Newman, publishers: Thames and Hudson