Vintage wedding and engagement rings are more popular than ever – but it’s easy to make mistakes. With help from celebrity ring-maker extraordinaire Neil Lane, here are our top tips for selecting the perfect vintage ring.
All images courtesy famous vintage ring emporium Lang Antiques, San Francisco.
Get sized.
Before you embark on a vintage hunt, you’ve got to get measured by a contemporary jeweller (they’ll have a medieval-looking device with different rings on it).
Vintage rings can be sourced from anywhere in the world, so here’s a guide to ring size standards. The UK and Australia have the same system: letters of the alphabet. The US has a system of single digits – 4, 4.5 and so on.
And Europe? They do it by exact circumference measures in millimetres. So you can be a 52, an L 1/2 and a 6 at the same time.
Confusing? Yes, but also useful – particularly if you’re looking overseas for your perfect vintage ring.
Know your gold (and other materials.)
You’ll narrow down your search a lot if you know what material you want the ring to be made of, even if you don’t have a clue about styles or stones.
Engagement and wedding rings are typically made of heavy-wear gold that’s lower than 24-carat, so it doesn’t bend or wear. The higher the carat, the more yellow it is.
Try on different shades of gold against your skin to determine which one suits you – very, very yellow shades look best against darker skin, while lighter golds suit paler hands.
If you’re looking up platinum, check the alloy level, which significantly affects value. Silver jewellery has to be at least 92.5% silver to be classified as ‘sterling’, and is often stamped 925 to declare that.
Identify a period style.
Celebrity jeweller Neil Lane, who’s designed every celeb engagement ring worth mentioning in the past 10 years, is all about the vintage style. “More than ever,” he says, “I am seeing a continued interest in rings that have vintage inspiration but also modern appeal.”
So when finding your antique ring, look for a classic period style that will still hold up to modern scrutiny.
There are many different styles in antique rings. Victorians loved big stones ringed with smaller ones, star shapes, lockets and cameos. They also loved the ‘orange blossom’, traditional plain bands printed with a pattern of flowers.
Edwardians were all about big, elaborate settings rather than one huge stone, and the rings are often huge confections of intricate silver and platinum. Art Deco rings are a bit sleeker and crisper, with a lot of symmetry and angular shapes.
From the 1950s on things start to get more recognisably modern, with big diamonds, baguettes and cushion cuts, and matching ring sets. If you want a solitaire from the past, this is the decade to look.
Go for colour.
All about the pure white diamond? Antiques may not be for you.
There are a great deal of beautiful traditional diamond rings from early periods, but Neil Lane says, “Coloured stones are difficult to go with diamonds – they’re not easy to match or wear. Less than 1% of my business is people buying coloured stones.”
Coloured stones are, in other words, not a modern trend – they’re much more vintage, and antique rings are the place to look for a gorgeous coloured ring.
Emeralds, opals, pink sapphires and sapphires in vintage settings are highly prized, and you’ll have a broader set of options if you go into antique ring shopping looking for something other than clear stones.
Explore unexpected places.
It’s no longer just about your city’s antiques street – though do go there and browse, armed with your ring size and prepared to deal with bossy dealers. (Antique dealers are a different breed to jewellers and are often ruder!)
Even if you’ve never trusted the internet before, go online to look for your vintage ring.
Start with trusted antique emporiums with a large collection of jewellery and a respectable track record. Look for auction houses and places that sell ‘estate’ jewels.
Sellers on Etsy and eBay are sometimes a step down from this professional level, but the one-on-one nature might mean they’re more willing to help you and give you more information.
Request more photos, exact sizing and a record of the hallmarks, plus all other paperwork, before you invest in a vintage ring. You want to get what you pay for.
Be prepared for alterations to be difficult.
Found the perfect vintage ring, just in the wrong size?
No problem – you can get it altered, as long as the ring allows. Right?
Wrong, sometimes. Some complex designs are impossible to alter without significantly changing the design of the ring.
A classic example? What’s called ‘eternity’ rings – bands that are a ring of diamonds the entire way around. Resizing those is notoriously difficult and many jewellers will refuse to do it.
It’s best to get the size right the first time. If it isn’t, the most easily resizable ring is one in a common metal, with a plain band – most alterations take part on the ‘underside’, the bit you don’t see from the top.
Then you might be in business – but don’t chance it.
Invest in cleaning and insurance.
Speaking as a woman who had a stone fall out of her vintage ring two weeks after she got married (true story), you cannot invest enough in insurance and care for your ring. Seriously.
Insurance with the jeweller who sold it meant that they took it back, replaced the stone for free, and issued a guarantee from the craftsman who repaired it that there would be no further ‘incidents’.
If this hadn’t existed, the ring would have been stoneless forever, or at least until I could afford to get it fixed. Not the best start to married life.
Reputable antique sellers will have a professional jewellery maker check all items before sale to make sure that they’re ‘secure’ (the technical term for none of the bits falling off). Make sure they have this, so if anything goes wrong you can take it back to them immediately.
Get tips from your seller about how to clean your ring (antique rings may need to be taken off occasionally to be properly cared for, so be aware of this if you’re superstitious about removing your ring).
Happy shopping!
