Hands in jewelry: fede, claddagh and mizpah

Two hands clasped in a handshake, worked around the shank. The gesture is the same one used to seal an agreement, which is exactly the point: it was a betrothal and marriage ring across Roman, medieval and Renaissance Europe.

Antique fede rings are often plain gold, with the hands modelled in relief and worn soft with centuries of use. Some carry cuffs or sleeves, which can help place them regionally.

A gimmel, from the Latin gemellus, twin, is a ring made of two or three interlocking hoops that swing apart and close together as one. Fede hands are often combined with a gimmel so that the hands part and rejoin.

These are scarce and heavily reproduced. Treat any gimmel offered as sixteenth or seventeenth century with real caution unless it comes with documented provenance.

Two hands holding a crowned heart, named for the fishing village of Claddagh near Galway. The conventional reading is friendship in the hands, love in the heart and loyalty in the crown. Documented examples date from the eighteenth century onward and Irish makers' marks are a good place to start when dating one.

The wearing convention, heart pointing out for unattached and in for spoken for, is a modern popular tradition rather than a documented historical rule.

A pointing or holding hand appears throughout Victorian jewelry: a hand holding a wreath, a hand pointing upward on a memorial brooch, or a hand clasping a whip or a flower. These are commemorative and sentimental devices rather than betrothal ones.

Mizpah jewelry, usually a brooch or ring engraved with the word, comes from a biblical verse used as a parting keepsake between people separated by distance. It became especially common in Britain in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.