(bacula). Among King John's (1167-1216) jewels in the Tower of London, an inventory of 1205 lists several such baculœ, one
with 26 diamonds, two with 40 and 47 emeralds, respectively, another
shorter one with 7 " good " topazes and still another with 9 turquoises.89 Jewellers
also, were wont to keep their rings strung on such small rods, an
example of this being shown in a portrait depicting a jeweller, painted
by an unknown German artist of the sixteenth or seventeenth century.
With other royal collections of rings the classified set rings were kept already in ancient times in dactylio-thecœ, or ring-caskets, the term dactyliotheca coming
to be used later more broadly as an equivalent for " ring collection "
or even " gem collection." In 1272 the Crown Jewels of Henry III of
England included a number of these ring boxes, four of them for 106
ruby, or balas-ruby rings, two for 38 emerald rings, one for 20
sapphire rings, and another for 11 topaz rings and one set with a
peridot.90
The
following description of a jade (nephrite) ring-box of
seventeenth-century Indian workmanship, in the Heber R. Bishop
Collection, is given in one of the great folios treating of these
wonderful jades.91
A
small covered box of three compartments in the form of three compressed
plums (or similar fruit) held together by the twigs and leaves of a
leafy branch which projects to form a handle, and hollowed out to form
a receptacle for finger-rings, studs or the like. The box proper is
decorated underneath with leaves carved in slight relief, and is
flanged on the edges to receive the three upper segments of the fruit
which forms the
89 Hardy, " Rotuli litterarum patentium in tursi Londinensi asseverati," London, 1835, vol. i, pt. i, p. 55.
90 Rymer, " Fcedera," London, 1727, vol. i, pp. 878, 879. 910p. cit., vol. ii, pp. 249,250, No. 760, illustration.
