Claddagh ring

Claddagh ring, in jewelry, a traditional Irish ring featuring a heart, a crown, and two hands symbolizing love, loyalty, and friendship, respectively. According to Irish custom, the ring’s positioning on the hand conveys the wearer’s marital status. It is also called the “friendship ring” or “hands and heart ring.”

The ring’s design originated in the Claddagh (from the Irish cladach, meaning “shore”), a former fishing village near Galway City on the west coast of Ireland. The Claddagh dated back to the 5th century and was located outside Galway City’s walls, on a stretch of shoreland between the River Corrib and Galway Bay. It was known as a deeply traditional and Irish-speaking community of about 500 families with its own locally elected “king” and thatched houses clustered along the bay. The Claddagh was razed in the 1930s after a tuberculosis outbreak decimated the community, though its name endured in the popularity of the Claddagh ring.

There are several stories associated with the ring’s beginnings, but the most common tells of a Claddagh fisherman named Richard Joyce who was captured in the late 17th century by pirates and indentured in Algiers to a local goldsmith. During his servitude, Joyce learned goldsmithing. Purportedly, he became so adept at the craft that his master offered him his daughter’s hand in marriage and half of his fortune upon Joyce’s release from indenture. Instead, Joyce returned to Ireland, set up a trade in Galway, and married the woman whom he had loved before his capture. Their wedding band was a ring he had fashioned in her honour. The design borrowed on the fede ring motif (from the Italian mani in fede, meaning “hands in faith”), in which two hands join at the ring’s bezel. In the Claddagh ring design, the hands hold a heart bearing a crown. The heart symbolized Joyce’s love for his bride, the two hands symbolized their friendship, and the crown represented his fidelity to her.

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Eventually, the design became a popular choice for wedding and engagement bands, though the ring was also prized for its decorative beauty. Modern custom claims that the wearer’s marital status can be detected by how the ring is worn. For example, wearing the ring on the ring finger of the left hand with the heart facing outward signifies the wearer is engaged. Wearing it with the heart facing inward means the wearer is married.

Tradition states that the ring was passed down from mother to daughter, but the diameter of the earliest surviving Claddagh rings indicate they were often worn by men. Despite the ring’s name, high poverty rates in the Claddagh make it unlikely that the rings were owned by Claddagh villagers. Earlier examples made of pure gold were more often owned by prominent Galway families, who could afford to keep them as heirlooms. However, hard times in the west of Ireland resulted in people selling their rings or melting them down for cash, making older examples of the ring relatively rare.

The oldest extant Claddagh ring, a gold piece dating to about 1700, bears Richard Joyce’s maker’s mark and the inscribed initials of two of its previous owners. In 2020 it was acquired by the Galway City Museum from an auction of a collection owned by Garech Browne, an heir to the Guinness brewery fortune. The collection included a number of Claddagh rings made in Galway by different makers in the 18th and 19th centuries. The high number of goldsmiths and jewelers in Galway City by the 19th century indicates that by then the city’s claim on the design was well accepted.

The Claddagh ring’s popularity beyond its country of origin is attributed to the diaspora of Irish people around the world owing to high emigration during the Great Famine in the 1840s. Queen Victoria of England wore a Claddagh ring made for her in 1849 in Waterford, a city in the east of Ireland, which suggests that the design’s fame and manufacture had traveled beyond the Galway region by the time of the Great Famine.

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With the increase in tourism to Ireland in the latter half of the 20th century, particularly by people of Irish descent, Claddagh rings became synonymous with other symbols of Irish heritage such as shamrocks and harps. The ring was often marketed as a keepsake of one’s visit to the country. Actress Grace Kelly, princess of Monaco, and U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were each presented with a Claddagh ring or brooch upon their state visits to Ireland. Today Claddagh rings are typically made of gold or silver, though many modern designs feature gemstones on the heart and crown or spaced along the band. The Claddagh design is commonly reproduced in tourist souvenirs from scarves to T-shirts and in other forms of jewelry such as brooches, necklaces, cuff links, and earrings.