Oscar Wilde`s stolen ring found by Dutch `art detective`
(Artdaily.org)

A golden ring once given as a present by the famed Irish writer Oscar Wilde has been recovered by a Dutch `art detective` nearly 20 years after it was stolen from Britain`s Oxford University. The friendship ring, a joint gift from Wilde to a fellow student in 1876, was taken during a burglary in 2002 at Magdalen College, where the legendary dandy studied. At the time it was valued at £35,000 (40,650 euros, $45,000). The trinket`s whereabouts remained a mystery for years and there were fears that the ring -- shaped like a belt and buckle and made from 18-carat gold -- had even been melted down. But Arthur Brand, a Dutchman dubbed the `Indiana Jones of the Art World` for recovering a series of high-profile stolen artworks, used his underworld connections to finally find it.