The mourning ring is the most prevalent form of gold jewelry surviving from colonial America. It is a tangible reminder of the elaborate funeral services staged in the period. For instance, in 1752 when Sarah Dennie died in Boston, her funeral expenses totaled more than six hundred pounds—or approximately 30 percent of the estate. These rituals often included the presentation of gold rings to the most prominent mourners as a token of remembrance. At various times the Massachusetts legislature attempted to limit these extravagances, but their efforts were never entirely successful. In the Bayou Bend ring, Houghton Perkins incorporated the symbolic death's head on the band.

Related examples: While no other mourning ring bearing Perkins’s stamp is known, this example relates to two others, one by Jacob Hurd and the other by his son Nathaniel, in Bohan 1963, pp. 20–21, no. 98; and Kernan 1966, p. 569, no. 4.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.