English Ruby, Diamond, 18ct Gold Antique ring. The date stamp of this ring is a boxed old format capital E; that particular form of the capital E is a Gold date stamp shared by both Birmingham and Chester, used for the year 1929 in Birmingham, for the year 1888 in Chester. The stamp of provenance is damaged, worn, so it devolves to an educated guess as to which date applies. The cut of the Rubies, and of the centre star-set Diamond, “old cut” with small faces, was a cut already superseded in the post-WW1 period, in favour of the more modern cut with larger faces. It is the cut of the smaller Diamonds in the shoulders of the ring, however, which definitely indicate the considerably earlier date, for they are not really “cut” but rather cleaved.
Diamond has excellent cleavage, meaning that the crystal is so structured as to allow the expert to strike it in just the right place, at just the right angle, and with just the right force, to simply shear a portion off along a completely flat plane. By the late 1800s that method of producing facets in Diamond was already dated and by the early 1900s was no longer in use.