Q.: What do getting engaged and getting engaged in
ethical-wedding discourse have in common?
A.: They both start with the ring.
I know I'm getting ahead of myself here - I still have numerous ethical
principles to discuss - but we had some sparkly new developments on the ring
front over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I'm excited to blab about it. But before we get to My Ring (Ah, the suspense!), let's discuss
rings in general.
"Everything tries to be round," observed Black Elk, holy
man of the Sioux tribe Oglala Lakota, in the early 1900s. The geometric
perfection and mystery of the circle has long carried magical and supernatural
connotations; circles and cycles have been worshiped and revered in many forms
(orbits, lunar cycles, seasons, biorhythms), and have become the symbols for
many of mankind's weightiest concepts: Zen, eternity, life and death, and in
the case of the wedding ring, love.
But first, a little history. Wedding rings are the oldest wedding tradition of all, outliving by
centuries the white dress and even the "I do." The first evidence of rings as marital symbols
dates back some 5,000 years ago to the deserts of North Africa;
Egyptian art depicts wedding rings worn by both husband and wife. The circle-shape hieroglyph stood for
eternity (not, by any means, uniquely Egyptian symbology); the hole in the
middle represented a gateway or door - the wearer passed through it into a new
partnership that endured even in the afterlife. These early rings were woven from the reeds and grasses that grew along the Nile,
and typically only lasted a few months.
They wore it, as we do, on the third finger of the left
hand, believing that it intersected a
vein or artery that went straight to the
heart. This tradition passed to the
Greeks and then to the Romans, who called it the vena amoris, or vein of love. The vena amoris intersects the upper-right crease of the palm, which
soothsayers came to call the "love line."
Meanwhile, Egyptians weren't the only ones making the easy
connection between love and the circle symbol. Pre-Celtic European tribes -
builders of enduring circular monuments like Stonehenge, Newgrange and
Ireland's ubiquitous ring forts - enacted wedding rituals honoring the sun and
moon in circular temples, followed, in the Orkney Islands, by a clasping of
hands through the Odin Stone's circular fissure, which sealed their union. 
Eastern countries, on the other hand, developed
their own wedding customs, and didn't acquire European ring traditions until the twentieth
century (some traditional Japanese and Vietnamese women still stain their teeth black as a
sign of their married status).
Anyway, centuries passed, and metallurgy came into fashion,
however crudely. Rough-hewn iron, copper and brass rings were set with semi-precious
stones meant to indicate wealth rather than sentiment. The acts of
giving and accepting the ring were now legal ones - the ring was an sign of
irreversible consent to marry or of marriage itself (which was often synonymous
with the proposal), enforceable under the law.
By the Renaissance, gold and silver were popular metals for
wedding rings across Europe; indeed, the Irish believed that having a wedding
ring made of anything other than gold was bad luck, or simply illegal (gold
rings were often provided for the ceremonies of those who could not afford
them, and swiftly reclaimed afterwards). Having a separate engagement ring also came into fashion at this time.
On Aug. 17, 1477,
Mary of Burgundy became the first bride-to-be to receive a diamond engagement
ring. Her betrothed,
Maximilian of Austria, was counseled that the diamond would assuage her doubts about marrying him. By the
mid-1600s, diamond engagement rings were fashionable in Europe,
though rings set with other gems, particularly rubies, were also very common. It wasn't until the mid-20th
century that diamond rings became the icons of engagement that they are today,
when De Beers launched its infamous "diamonds are forever" campaign
in 1938, making diamonds essential to three-quarters of modern
American brides. (De Beers even tried to make male engagement rings popular in the 1950s
to generate sales, going so far as to invent a fictional historical precedent,
but the trend never took. Their next -
wildly successful - marketing scheme was the popularization of the diamond
trilogy: three stones for every ring, denoting past, present, and future love.)
And that's where we arrive at the diamond discussion. After all, before organic catering, before
nixing the garter toss, before evites, there was the ethical wedding ring, in
its many permutations - wood, titanium, recycled gold; set with conflict-free
diamonds, vintage diamonds, man-made diamonds, or no diamonds at all. For the diamond is the ultimate paradox: the
icon of value and purity, and the origin of greed and violence.
Your average diamond is pure, compressed carbon over a
billion years old, volcanically disgorged from more than one hundred miles
below the earth's crust. (Some diamonds
also form as the result of asteroid impact.) It is the hardest known naturally occurring mineral; the very word's
Greek origin, adamas, means invincible.
Diamonds have been used for tools,
decoration, sacred objects, and instruments of war for more than six thousand
years; they have been variously thought to be tears of the gods, heal sickness
and insanity, guarantee victory, and symbolize love.
These elegant abstractions bear little witness to the
reality of diamonds. Far from rare, diamonds
are mind at the rate of 130 million karats annually, largely in African mines
with slave and child labor, little mechanization, no safety standards and even
less supervision. Prostitution in mining
camps abounds, and HIV spreads rapidly as a consequence. These appalling conditions, coupled with the funneling
of mining profits into insurgent activities and terrorist organizations, went
largely unrecognized for many years before a series of regulations were passed
between 2000 and 2003, including the Clean Diamond Trade Act, attempting to enforce
mining standards, squelch illegal diamond trade, and certify individual
diamonds "conflict-free." (Recently,
Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the film "Blood Diamond," which engages
with problems surrounding the diamond business.)
Many criticisms of the diamond trade remain, however. First of all, jewel giants like De Beers (which
controls 40% of the diamond market) monopolize distribution and determine
pricing without regard to actual diamond rarity. Illegal, substandard mining and trade still abound,
and the sources of individual stones remain difficult to determine, in spite of
their "conflict-free" certification. New, certified mines with "transparency"
policies have opened up in other countries - most notably, Canada - marketing their ethical stones at increased prices; but, regardless of adherence
to worker safety and child labor laws, diamond mining still takes a tremendous
toll on the environment. Two hundred and
fifty tons of ore must be removed to find a pea-sized diamond; several hundreds
of thousands of "industrial-use" diamonds are mined for every
jewel-quality stone. Ecosystems are decimated and water sources despoiled while
heavy machinery belches carbon and other toxic pollutants into the atmosphere.
It is for these reasons that, recently, many
environmentally- and ethically-conscious couples are choosing not to use
diamonds in their engagement and wedding rings, opting for more sustainable
options ranging from synthetic stones to wood to rings made of bone generated
from their own stem cells (woah, but ew!).
Which brings me to the engagement ring I designed for
Jeremy. No, it is not made from my bones
(or anybody else's) - it's made of wood! When I first began researching ethical
alternatives for engagement rings, I discovered Touch Wood Rings, described as a
"socially just and environmentally
sustainable alternative to precious metals and gemstones" by their
creators,
David and Nicola Finch. 
David
and Nicola produce individually handcrafted rings made from gathered fallen
wood in their solar-powered workshop in British Columbia, alongside a coop of hens and a handful of
sheep. Nicola, who handles communication with clients, was incredibly warm,
informative and accommodating, and through our correspondence, I felt a real
kinship to her; she and David have the kind of life I hope to have someday - sustainable,
creative and content.
The ring I designed is
made of three kinds of wood. The outside
of the ring is a warm, burnished oak - the official tree of Jeremy's home state, Illinois, and a deciduous
tree to mark the passing of seasons, years, and cycles of life we will spend
together. A ribbon of blue spruce - my
favorite perennial tree - runs iridescent-gray through the middle of the band; I
chose an evergreen to characterize the eternal nature of our love. Inside, the band is lined with white birch, a
tree to which Jeremy and I have a personal connection (and when he
proposed, Jeremy gave me a temporary ring made out of braided birch bark, which
reminds me of those original Egyptian rings, made from braided river grass - speaking
of cycles). Inside the ring, carefully inscribed by David, is the phrase
"Dreamers in the Wildwood" - a shipment of cookies goes to the lucky
reader who can tell me where that quote comes from!
Because I hastily
measured his finger with a string while he was sleeping, the ring came out a
little big, but otherwise, utterly beautiful, and the perfect gesture of the sustainability of our values and love. At a price
befitting a lovingly handmade item - but not one that will break the bank, or,
as De Beers used to put it, cost "just two months' salary" - I
recommend Touch Wood Rings to everyone!
After we got
engaged, Jeremy and I discussed having one made for me to match his. We kept putting it off, though; it was a bit
more money that we were able to spend after other engagement-related splurges,
and we also felt we needed to decide what kind of wedding rings we would like
to have - because if we decided to have wooden wedding rings as well, Jeremy
would need a better-fitting one, and I would want one to match it. In the meantime, I wore a series of temporary
birch bark rings, lovingly braided by my darling fiancé every time I broke the
previous one.
After much
deliberating and a deep sigh of regret, we decided against wooden wedding
bands, because you're not really supposed to get them wet. If you know me, you'll know why this would be
an issue - I have a long history of losing jewelry that isn't more or less
permanently affixed to my body. Jeremy also
confessed that, while he adores his wooden engagement ring, he lives in terror
of losing it every time he washes his hands.
So, something a bit
more durable was in order. Some quick
research revealed that diamond mining isn't the only ecologically unsound
practice; many gems and precious metals, particularly gold, do significant
environmental harm during their extraction. Recycled/vintage stones and metals looked like
the way to go.
And that's about as
far as we got. We perused the sites of
eco-jewelers like GreenKarat, and we amassed a little collection of pretty
designs for inspiration - but no developments beyond that.
Until last week!
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Jeremy's mom bequeathed her wedding ring to him,
and told him/us to do whatever we wished with it. Jeremy presented it to me (a second proposal,
practically! Yay!) - and what do you know, it fits perfectly.
It's a very special
piece, obviously, with a beautiful, unique (if slightly 80's - no offense, M.I.L.E.!) (Mother-in-law-elect, pronounced "milly"...which makes Jeremy and me "Silly" and "Dilly") gold setting, and two…dare I say hefty?...diamonds
that belonged to Jeremy's paternal great-grandfather (more on their history when I learn
it). What an honor and a treasure! Since
it fits like a glove, I intend to wear it as my engagement ring; then, when our
wedding is nigh (!!!!! Misty!), I
think we'll reset the stones and melt down the gold for a band for
Jeremy. That way we'll each have a piece of it. That still leaves a lot of room
for design creativity, obviously, as well as questions about what material to
use for my setting. I'll definitely
return to this topic as we move along in our plans.
So I have diamonds,
after all that. Who'da thunk? I'll admit that it's strange to walk around
wearing something so valuable and so heavy with history - billions of years,
even. It might also be the first time
I've owned something precious that I'm concerned someone might try to take from
me. Now there's a state of being so many brides-to-be must unwittingly
enter - a constant awareness of this exposed, valuable item; having a new impulse
to protect a thing. I'll admit that it doesn't exactly jive with
my attempted nonattachment-to-material-possessions, unlocked-door lifestyle. But hey, gorgeous recycled family heirloom obviously
trumps all! Even stem-cell bones!
Whew. Thus endeth the ring diatribe. More soon. Please send me ideas!
Kate
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