This is an extremely well made and attractive ring made by a talented carver, showing on the flat top an American eagle with an inlaid eye and a silver shield on its chest, clutching arrows and olive branch, all in raised detail, with the initials inscribed in script, “W.H.R.” to its upper left, likely those of the carver. The wood has a pleasing, warm brown tone, finish, and grain indicating burl. The inlaid shield in silver, as is likely the eye.

The loop itself is convex, with a raised US shield on either side having a scalloped upper edge, the vertical stripes indicated by narrow incised lines, with one shield having the added touch of small, studs, again likely silver, set into the union at top to indicate stars.

One edge of the ring is carved in raised letters “LOOK OUT” in an arc. The other is carved, also in raised letters, “APr 21” 1864.” Two possibilities come immediately to mind. One is that it is made from wood cut on Lookout Mountain as a battlefield souvenir of the fight in November 1863 that helped lift the siege of Chattanooga, and made by a soldier in camp on the eve of the Spring 1864 campaigns. A second possibility is that it refers to Point Lookout, Maryland, best known as the site of a Confederate POW camp, but also the location of Hammond U.S. Hospital, a large complex of 16 main buildings arranged like radiating spokes of a wheel, along with many subsidiary buildings and in operation from 1862 to the end of the war. Needless to say, a wounded Union soldier recovering there was more likely to have carved the ring, given its ornamentation, than a Confederate prisoner. Whoever made it and whatever its exact location, it is a great example of Civil War folk-art or camp-art carving.  [sr][ph:L]

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