The work was donated to The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Joseph Hatzenbuehler in 2009. Mr. Hatzenbuehler acquired the ring in 2006 from Wolfgang Wilhelm, a dealer or agent in Germany. The seller to Mr. Wilhelm was the Daphne Collection Inc., which provided a written statement stating that it had owned the ring since 1988, and purchased it from Albrecht Frickhinger of Germany (b. 1924- d. 2003), a fossil specialist, publisher, archaeologist, who had acquired the work in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s.

REASON FOR ACQUISITION AS AN EXCEPTION TO THE 1970 RULE:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has provenance information for this work back to the 1960s but has not been able to substantiate this provenance because it has not been able to confirm the information provided by the Daphne Collection, Inc.
The work is one of the most opulent Celtic rings to survive and it fills a significant gap in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection of early European material. Coincidentally, the type of decoration on the ring seems to be partly inspired by Etruscan gold rings of the early 5th century B.C. and The Metropolitan Museum of Art has in its collection a likely prototype.