A Study on the Motifs and Forms of Bands and Center Stones in the Contemporary Ring Making of Mashhad, Iran

Jewelry comes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The purpose of using jewelry, decoration and the beauty of appearance or beliefs enumerate. Men’s rings in Iran are among the ornaments that, in addition to beauty, convey a kind of thought and character. Ring making is one of the original Iranian arts with a long history and varied uses. Ring is sometimes a stamp, a commandment message or one of the most iconic jewels and it expresses the covenant, heritage, personality, ideas, and religious beliefs. The ring centers in Iran are Mashhad and Qom. Mashhad is one of the most important ring making centers in the modern era with its active workshops. Rings made in this city have always been considered as souvenirs by neighboring countries, especially Arabic speakers. Therefore, studying such ornamental objects and their documentation in order to improve the productivity of this field seems necessary. The purpose of this article is to study the form, decoration and inscription of contemporary rings in Mashhad. The questions are as follows: What is the contemporary form of Mashhad rings? What are the themes and motifs? The research method is descriptive-analytical and the statistical population is contemporary ring makers of Mashhad, and the sampling method is purposeful. In this method, those samples were considered that could provide the most information to authors. Here, those cases with multiple differences were selected that were estimates of the statistical population. Therefore, the works have been studied at different artistic levels. The findings show that there are three types of rings in the market: First, machine-made rings which are popular and reasonably priced, with no artistic aspect. The second category is lattice rings, on which the designs are made of mesh with semi-artistic and semi-precious aspect. In this category there are some subcategories. The third category is fine, engraved rings. These rings are sold as art objects at a higher price than others and they have artistic aspect and are more laborious and elaborate in terms of quality and design. The decorations of the rings in question include designs and motifs such as animals, birds, plants, sacred places, as well as inscriptions with the theme of divine names, names of holy Imams, prayers, and verses from the Quran. These inscriptions are engraved in Nasta’liq and Thuluth pens. Rings with agate and turquoise jewels are mostly adorned with Shiite hadiths and narrations.