History of Amber
Amber has a long history since the ancient times. Most older and previously discovered amber deposits were in Europe and you will still see today ho widely amber is used and cherished in Europe.

Ancient Amber Trade

Amber has been traded since earliest times and was considered a mystic and religious material. Over the "amber routes" it was distributed throughout Europe and to the entire known ancient world. Already the Phoenicians traded amber as a prime commodity with the ancient Baltic peoples. Since about 3000 B.C., Baltic amber was exchanged for goods from southern Europe and there were even ‘highways’ or trade routes crossing Europe and leading into the Far East.

In Central America, the Olmec civilization also was mining amber around 3000 B.C. There are legends in Mexico that mention the use of amber in adorning, consuming and using it for stress reduction as a natural remedy.

A Precious Substance

For thousands of years amber was regarded as a precious substance, and for its mysterious origin considered as a divine protection from harm to the bearer of amber jewelry. As such, it also became to be used as an ingredient in medicines and for religious purposes by "pagans" and "Christians". Around 58 A.D., the Roman Emperor Nero sent a Roman knight on a search for this "Gold of the North" and brought hundreds of pounds of amber to Rome.

Amber was One of the Most Sought after Treasures

In later days, from 1283 on, the Teutonic Knights, after returning from the crusades, became absolute rulers of Prussia and the Baltic sources of amber, as well as the manufacture of objects made of amber, punishing transgressors with death by hanging. For the next 500 years, amber was used again for mainly a religious purpose: Rosary beads, used by Catholics and Moslems alike.

Columbus Received Gifts of Amber in the Caribbean

When Columbus and his men arrived in 1492 at the Caribbean island of "La Hispaniola", they were not interested in amber, but in gold and for this reason the existence of amber from the Dominican Republic was little known for a long time. But history tells us that Columbus received from a young Taino prince a pair of shoes decorated with Caribbean amber, in exchange for a strand of Baltic amber beads that he had offered.

Baltic Amber was Popular for Jewelry

Baltic Amber is the most sought after and valuable for making amber jewelry. It is called succinite (from the Latin succinum) by geologists and mineralogists and it has enjoyed enduring popularity over the millennia. This is due to its many virtues, but mainly to the conspicuous beauty of its innumerable varieties. That is comparatively easy to work it with the use of many techniques is equally important. The abundance of amber’s resources in deposits and accumulations as well as its occurrence both in the form of fine grains and quite large nuggets enable a wide variety of uses. The largest nugget, excavated in 2005, weighs 5,960 grams. Such large specimens appear extremely rarely and usually end up in museum collections rather than in a jeweler’s studio.

Much more common are nuggets which weigh from a dozen grams to a kilogram, which given amber’s low density, from 0.96 to 1.096 g/cm3, are quite large. This allows them to be used not only as gemstones, but also as a highly valued artistic material for sculptures and diverse decorative objects.

Large amber nuggets are well known to have provided the material for luxury jewelry boxes and furniture, and even for compositions on an architectural scale, such as the famous Amber Room or the Amber Altar, currently being built in Gdańsk.

 

History of Amber Jewelry
The earliest known use of worked amber beads by man was between 7,000 and 11,000 BC in Denmark and southern England.

Amber Beads Starting 3,400 B.C...

Amber beads have been found in Egyptian tombs dating to 3,400 BC. It has also been found in Mycenaean (Greece) tombs. By the Bronze Age (3,000 to 1,000 BC), there was significant trade of the gemstone throughout the region of the Baltic Sea. As early as 600 BC, amber's curious property of generating static electricity when rubbed with wool was reported in Greece. The Greek word for amber was "elektron" (meaning "sun gold") and it is the root for the word electricity. In the first century AD, Roman Emperor Nero dispatched an expedition to Scandinavia to find "northern gold," which resulted in the establishment of important new trade routes for the Empire. Amber is known from lake-dwellings in Switzerland, and it occurs with Neolithic remains in Denmark, whilst in England it is found with interments of the bronze age. A remarkably fine cup turned in amber from a bronze-age barrow at Hove is now in the Brighton Museum. Beads of amber occur with Anglo-Saxon relics in the south of England; and up to a comparatively recent period the material was valued as an amulet. It is still believed to possess a certain medicinal virtue.

Baltic Amber has been used for decorative items since prehistoric times. A Baltic amber amulet has even been found in Egyptian tombs. Amber was also very popular in ancient Rome during the reign of Nero when: jewelry, ornaments, amulets, and even dice were made from amber.

Baltic Amber is Oldest

Baltic amber is perhaps the oldest stone used to decorate the human figure in the vast area of Europe. Not long ago, in the caves of the Pyrenees, home to the Aurignacian culture of 16,000 years ago, large (25 to 30 mm in diameter), round beads were found, formed of amber by human hands, belonging to those who considered this material to be so beautiful as to carry it over thousands of kilometers from a distant hunting journey to the north of Europe. Amber talismans in the form of pendants and necklaces from the late Palaeolithic, the Mesolithic and the Neolithic ages appear in numerous archaeological sites from the Ural Mountains to the British Isles. However, it was only the ancient Mediterranean culture that introduced amber in the kind of goldsmith works which we today would consider jewelry. This is certified not only by museum collections, such as the enormous accumulation of the most ancient decorations in the Archaeological Museum in Athens, but also in literary works full of admiration for the beauty of amber. A passage from Homer’s Odyssey says: “There came a man versed in craft to my father's house, with a golden chain strung here and there with amber beads. Now the maidens in the hall and my lady mother were handling the chain and admiring it, and offering him their price.

The Middle Ages

During the Middle Ages, prayer beads were exported as the main product of tooled Baltic amber. From the 16th century into the 18th century, bracelets, necklaces, containers, boxes, bowls, plates, flutes, buttons, mouth pieces for pipes, chess sets, watch cases and even luxury interior fittings were made using amber. The bulk of the amber trade took place in Königsberg and Danzig, modern Russia and Poland, respectively.

The most famous wives of the Roman emperors would wear grand sets of amber gemstones, including Livia, Messalina and Poppea, the wife of Nero, who loved amber in the reddish tint of her hair. In time amber became an uncommonly popular and expensive gemstone in the Roman Empire. It was commonly used to decorate fibulae, pins for formal dress. The great demand for fibulae with amber led to such an enormous growth in their prices that Emperor Maxentius was forced to issue an edict on their official maximum. Such limits were imposed on only a few dozen luxury products on the Imperial market.

The Amber Room in Russia

To seal a peace treaty in 1717, the incomparable Amber Chamber was given to Russian Tsar Peter the Great, from Prussia. It was constructed of six tons of amber arranged in ornate wall panels. The Nazis seized the treasure in 1944 and its whereabouts remain unknown to this day. Artists from the People's Master Artists of Applied Art, in Latvia, decided to re-create the lost ''amber room'' in 1975. This project included archaeologists, critics, librarians, archivists and many artists. A new room was created in exacting detail from photographs taken...

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Amber in Jewelry is Very Popular Today

Today, amber is used mainly as a gemstone to decorate jewelry and small objects of applied art made of silver and gold, less frequently of other metals and alloys. The ability to bring out the maximum natural beauty of the nuggets has come to the fore. Equally important is the precision of the cut, the clarifying and the obtaining of the desired tints in stones for standard jewelry.

Treatment of Amber for Jewelry

Amber gemstones are made with diverse methods of treatment. From the simplest methods, such as cutting, grinding and turning through to engravings and sculptures which produce gorgeous gems. Apart from amber cameos made of opaque varieties in a full color range, gems engraved and sculpted in intaglio at the bottom of transparent lenses, sheets, rose-cuts and many other gemstone forms are a true rarity. A picture engrave or sculpted in intaglio is adapted for viewing through the golden substance of the stone, while the curves or facets on its surface bring about an optical illusion of the movement of the depicted images and ornaments.           

In summary, we can say that amber’s comeback as a universally known and valued gemstone is perfectly justified by its tradition and valuable properties. On condition, however, that one can verify its authenticity and the positive and negative features of its treatment.

Historical Amber Trade & Amber Route

The amber trade is ancient. Scientists presume that the trade in amber started as early as in New Stone Age. Baltic amber beads were found in 3400-2400 BC pharaoh tombs in Tethys pyramid. German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann who in 1871-1890 excavated Troy in addition to other artifacts found amber beads....

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