Ukrainian Soviet Trench Art Ring

Some curious trench art ring that gives more questions than answers.
We found this ring 20 years ago in a village field next to our summer house in Ukraine. The ring has inscriptions in Ukrainian: in front "Andriy (name): 19-8-44 In captivity; left side: In seclusion; Right side: 29-3-42. I have looked for similar objects, but didn't find anything reminiscent of this ring, it doesn't look to me a regular WWII memorabilia.
It is obvious that it was made by someone who was in military captivity at the moment, but it remains unclear to me why the ring has such a fine finishing. And I don't know why it has an end date (19.8.44). The Soviet government frequently arrested militaries returning from the captivity so it would be strange to commemorate this with a ring.
20 years and still puzzled

 

What metal type is the ring?The ring itself looks like a commercial signet ring with a man's name.The dates and other words are crudely done and a section of the ring shank has been removed.

 

Looks like basically a commercially-produced stainless steel ring made so any name could be inserted as has been done using a copper strip. Art Deco style design. I wouldn’t consider it trench art, which must be made from discarded military-issue objects. Soldiers in the field don’t have the tools to fashion a ring from notoriously hard-to-machine stainless steel. Nice ring anyway!

 

It looks to me a combination of steel and some copper alloy.
The inside has concentric scratches as if from machine polishing.
It is very smoothly made, but I doubt it could be commercial unless someone could decide to give this to the grandpa in the 1990s as a memory of his captivity in the 1940s.

 

The deco style may indicate it was made in the 1920’s-30’s, so some soldier owned the ring to which his name had been added either by himself or whomever gave him the ring. Presumably the soldier engraved the ring during or after WWII. I’m just guessing, I’m not sure when stainless steel was used for rings in USSR. Does that make sense?

 

It may look "deco" style,but the same designs were available in the 60's and 70's.If you wanted to go through a number of catalogs of 25,000 plus wax ring patterns you would find a number of similar styles.

 

Thanks, do you think it could be Soviet? Or maybe German?

 

Without a makers mark it is impossible to say where the ring originated.

 

The fact that the ring is made of stainless steel cuts the possibilities way down, since the ring would be machined, not cast from a pattern. If it was made using CNC milling machines it dates from say 1970’s or later. If made on a manual mill or hand-filed it could date from whenever stainless first became available to the public. It takes more knowledge than mine to tell what method was used to manufacture it. The unusual gap in the thin part of the ring may help prove that it was hand-made from some salvaged item, assuming that gap is very uncommon in such rings. I know almost nothing about rings.

 

Since I'm not familiar with working with stainless,after a little research and looking at the thickness of the ring..... it was probably die stamped,Not sure how the copper was applied from the photos and then the amateur "engraving".

 

May we see some very close-up aka macro photos of the very back of the ring showing the gap clearly please? It looks like there may be some numbers there that may tell us something.


Lassie: “Woof woof.”
Timmy: “Mom, I think she’s trying to tell us something.”

 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andriy_Atanasovych_Melnyk
April, read thoroughly, he was imprisoned in 1944.
In 1944 Melnyk was briefly imprisoned by the Gestapo during a crackdown against the Ukrainian independence movement.
Maybe ?

 

If we had better photos of the inside and back it may show the ring was soldered together from at least 3 pieces.

 

Thanks! I have a doubt if 29-3-42 is the date of imprisonment and 19-8-44 is the date of release.

 

Thanks, I will try to take photos and post them here. The inside is solid.

 

Hi, it took me a while to take the photo

 

The way the two sides of the gap are moved, I can imagine they were a solid piece once

 

On re-inspection, I see that the “cartouche” squarish piece on top/front is aluminum, and the diagonal insert appears to be copper. The basic ring is stainless steel. Some idea of age since assembly can be gained from the appearance of the copper and aluminum. It looks like the basic stainless steel ring body was something you could purchase with the cartouche cavity empty, then have someone produce a cartouche to fit the cavity. I don’t know enough about the history of that geographic area to interpret the markings. (Cited from: https://www.antiquers.com/threads/ukrainian-soviet-trench-art-ring.26913/)

 

Hi thanks, i thinks that is the photo that makes that aluminium effect. The square cartouche is part of the ring, and looks steel. However , I detected the way the copper insert was done - on the photos of the sides you might see small lines on the side of the carouche - that is ehere copper connects to steel. It looks like to me that the copper insert was then covered again with a small piece of steel, to "block" it on the sides, and also on the front part of it, as if making a frame, not sure how this process can be done technologically.