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A skull, coffin or hourglass on a ring, worn as a reminder of mortality.
Also known as: Memento mori jewellery, Skull ring motif, Death's head ring
Memento mori motifs — a skull, a coffin, a skeleton, a winged hourglass — appear on rings and other jewellery from the sixteenth century onward. They were worn as a discipline rather than as a threat: a reminder that life is short, in a period when that was a devotional commonplace rather than a morbid taste. Later mourning jewellery is a related but distinct tradition, commissioned after a specific death and often carrying a name, a date and a lock of the dead person's hair.
Reminds the wearer of mortality as a devotional discipline rather than as a threat or a taste for the macabre, which is how the motif was understood in the period that produced it.
Europe · Sixteenth to eighteenth centuries · Contexts: Jewellery, History
A small skull, a coffin outline, a skeleton or an hourglass with wings, enamelled or engraved on the face or the shoulders of a ring.
The same motifs appear on rings and on gravestones.