old gold ring finds a new home

Well,, what a day I've had, went to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka, M.A.D.E., for the exhibition of 'BLING' goldfields jewellery. I had emailed the curator, Cash Brown, after reading about this upcoming exhibition in Gem and Treasure to find out if she knew any history of the ring that is my avatar. She was quite interested in my find and suggested I come down on the Saturday as there would be an independent expert valuer there on the day. This is the ring in the thread titled 'OLD GOLD RING' in Finds Identification on this forum. Anyhow the curator, valuer and museum staff were all very excited to see this 'WILLIAM LAMBORN' ring in the flesh and believe it to be the second oldest ring by this maker known and is of significant historical importance. We were so thrilled we could barely look at the rest of the exhibition and after being made so welcome by Cash and her staff we felt this ring needed to be on show with other similar pieces from the era, so it's on loan to the museum for the duration of the exhibition, 16th april - 4th july. So if anyone is going to Ballarat and passes through this museum, and I can thoroughly recommend it, be sure to ask to see the 'LAMBORN Bendigo ring. Oh, and as for the valuation, well lets just say it blew my socks off.

Original thread:
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=4263
Congrats on the news.

Congratulations on your advancement to being a benefactor of the exhibition.

If I get a chance to visit, I will definitely enjoy seeing it.

Stunning story and find mate, well done

Wow that's really awesome, at least you finally seem to have some decent info on it. Great that it's on display in a museum gallery too, really a great way to have it shown off.

I found quite an interesting ring also recently, not sure if you saw it in my thread but this one is from Western Australian gold rush jeweller AO Kopp, I've emailed pictures of it to the curator of the National Gallery of Australia, still waiting to hear back from him.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=241288#p241288

It's not as nice looking as your ring though but still of historical signifigance I'd say as Kopp's pieces are quite rare. Was made between 1891 and about 1904.

Gotta love this awesome hobby.

Nice ring Heatho, no hadn't seen that. Any gold is good gold and any artefact is great history in one shape or another. It's the find that just keeps on giving up little bits of it,s own story one piece at a time. Gotta luv it. Thanks for the comments.

Thanks Mark, it gives me goosebumps sometimes thinking about the history of pieces like these, who wore them, where did the people come from? The uniting factors are gold, riches and hope of a better life. Really amazing they can be lost for well over 100 years and along comes someone with a detector and unearths them again.

It seems William Lamborn and Adolph Otto Kopp both did some very similar jewellery, Kopp did a lot of gold nugget jewellery also with Rubies and other gems.

I found a PDF from M.A.D.E of the "Bling" exhibition which shows a few of the pieces on display and they are fantastic very ornate and very Australian. Here's the link for any members keen for a stickybeak.

http://made.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/BLING-MR-060416.pdf

Awesome ring and a great tale Mark. Congratulations all round.

great to see aussie stuff like that... especialy on Anzac weekend.. there would be a market for stuff like that today..

Mark,
Thanks for sharing ....
Well done on the find and the rings history....
Interesting story....

Cheers Nanjim
Jim

A great story all round. Well done.
Jaros