If you are choosing an engagement ring, one of the decisions you may have to make is how traditional you want to be. Do you want something similar to what your friends have done, or maybe something a bit novel?
This may be in your mind if you are considering something innovative like having a lab-grown diamond on the ring. After all, there is nothing traditional about using artificial means to grow something that used to only be found by mining in the right places.
Of course, none of your friends and family observing the ring when it is being worn will be able to guess that it came from a lab, so it may be asked whether this really matters when only you, the jeweller and your beloved need to know.
At the same time, you might ask just how far you are drifting from tradition in any case. In order to answer that question, you may want to consider the whole history of engagement rings.
What The Romans Did For Us
Simply having an engagement ring in the first place is deeply traditional and will continue a practice that goes way back. While there is some dispute over the origins of engagement rings, the first incontrovertible evidence of rings being used to signify that a woman was lined up to be married date from Roman times, in the second century BC.
This certainly wasn’t, however, a matter of great romance and love. Instead, it was a symbol of betrothal at a time when women were seen as property and when marrying for romantic love was an alien concept, one that has tended only to be prominent in the Western world in the past few centuries.
Of course, the concept that spouses would and should love each other in marriage developed long before that, but even so, there are today some feminists who see wedding rings in negative terms because of their origin.
If the motivations and meaning involved in wedding rings have changed (especially in the West), the materials used have altered even more. In the earliest days, a ring could be made from flint, ivory, bone or a non-precious metal like copper or iron.
However, there were some early instances of gold being used in rings in Roman times, with examples including recovered engagement rings from the ruins of Pompeii after the famous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The First Ever Diamond Ring
The use of gemstones, and in particular diamonds, took rather longer to arrive. Indeed, the first recorded case of any diamond ring dates back to 1477, when Archduke Maximilian of Austria had one made for his fiancé, Mary of Burgundy.
Of course, this did not mean diamonds were suddenly going to become mainstream; after all, Austrian archdukes were rather wealthy, powerful and important people. As history has shown, assassinating one tended to lead to rather serious consequences.
It was not until the late 1940s that engagement rings with diamonds became the norm. For this we can thank De Beers - and not because someone had a few drinks before coming up with the idea. Instead, it was down to the smart marketing of the De Beers mining corporation in South Africa.
Using the slogan “a diamond is forever” and aided by promotional partnerships with Hollywood stars, they started a fashion that was only going to grow as affluence increased in the post-war years.
Marrying Modernity And Tradition
That said, gleaming white diamonds on gold rings are not everyone’s choice and fashions have varied a little. Many people opt for other stones, either due to cost or because their tastes leave them preferring different colours. Some may opt for something without a stone at all, an understated ring that places its value in what it represents, not the price tag.
For all these reasons, we cater to a range of tastes and our bespoke jewellery making can provide all sorts of different solutions for the desires of today’s engagement ring buyers.
Since this is the historical context behind engagement rings, you should definitely have no qualms about getting one with a lab grown diamond. The main thing is that by getting an engagement ring at all, you are participating in a tradition that may have changed, but still has deep historic roots.
By contrast, the inclusion of diamonds is a much more recent innovation for most people, so you are certainly not betraying the great traditions behind the use of engagement rings by going down the lab route.
What matters is that, while being very traditional, you end up with a ring that looks beautiful and the two of you will be able to enjoy it for the whole of your lives together.