It`s time to take a new look at an old jewelry classic: amber.
You might have gaped, for example, at the spectacular necklace art collector Muriel Newman wore at the first evening party at Henri Bendel a few weeks ago. Or noticed the season`s move toward ethnic jewelry. Or picked up on the fashion notion that spice tones will be big for fall.
Each could remind us of the substance first mentioned in ”The Odyssey,” the Greek epic written somewhere between 1000 and 700 B.C. Elektron was the Greek word for this substance, which has the quality of congealed sunshine when polished.
”The Odyssey” describes amber as a radiant and rare ornamental substance on the same plane as gold or silver.
Mythical origins
The ancients had a legend that held it to be of divine origin. Phaeton was given permission by his father the Sun God to drive the Sun across the heavens. He was unable to manage the horses, however, and got too close to the Earth, setting fire to forests and threatening mankind with disaster. Zeus himself had to step in and hurl a thunderbolt at the inept driver, who fell into the River Eridanos.
Phaeton`s sisters searched all over the world for him. When they eventually found his grave, they broke into weeping. Out of pity, the gods transformed them into poplar trees; their tears dripped from the branches into the river and hardened into amber.
Touching as that story may be, amber is actually congealed, fossilized resin from prehistoric conifer trees.
A gem in the making
Some amber is still being made by Mother Nature today. ”You go up to a pine tree, you nick it and something oozes out. That`s pre-amber,” says Edward Olsen, curator of mineralogy of the Field Museum of Chicago. ”There are some very volatile organic materials in the ooze to repair cuts on the tree`s surfaces, kind of like a scab in order to grow new bark underneath. The upshot of that is, if you let it set around for 14 million years, you get amber,” says Olsen.
”There are lots of ambers around the world, and that`s your problem,”
Olsen adds. ”The amber most prized in the jewelry industry comes from the Baltic Sea area, from a 12-million- to 14-million-year-old forest that had fallen down into the sea. This amber is exposed by the wave action of the seas. Amber has a density that allows it to float in salt water, so it ends up along the shores. . . .
”African amber is much newer, younger, from a few hundred thousand to a few million years old, not considered to be the creme de la creme,” continues Olsen. ”It isn`t as light as the Baltic amber.
”Copal amber (the creamy or honey-colored opaque beads one sees in African necklaces) is another resin from another kind of tree. There`s a market for copal amber, but most people crave Baltic amber. Just make sure you know what you`re getting by dealing with a reputable dealer,” says Olsen.
Buyers beware
”A lot of stuff is marketed as African amber that is not amber at all,” Olsen cautions. ”Something like a Bakelite was used in Germany to make cigar mouthpieces at the turn of the century. This stuff was shipped off to Africa by the barrelful to be carved up as mouthpieces for cigars. A lot of raw material worked itself into the trade. You can see it in the marketplaces in Africa today. It looks like amber, but it is an awful lot denser. You put it in salt water and it goes klunk like a rock!”
Unfortunately, he says there is no easy way to tell true amber: ”Amber in particular often comes in necklaces of many beads or pieces strung together. It is not uncommon to have some good stuff and some phony stuff all together on the premise no one`s going to check out everything,” says Olsen. One test is by fire. ”If you get a tiny hot flame, like a jeweler`s torch, and blast a little corner (of a bead), smoke comes off the amber which is very aromatic. These other things are very acrid, and they really clear out your sinuses,” he adds.
Worth its salt
Another test is by water. When the Field Museum has gotten things in that are supposed to be amber, Olsen says, they are subjected to density tests.
”Things that floated in salt water were amber. Things that did not float were not.” (But watch out: Bakelite with air bubbles in it will float, too.) Still another test is one that can really ”bug” the buyer, for it is not always true that you can tell true amber by looking for an insect caught inside the bead. Olsen says the scurrilous practice exists of melting down younger resins, pouring the mix over insects and letting it harden, so that it looks really old. ”It takes an entomologist who knows enough about 14 million-year-old flies to know they`re different from modern flies” to use the insect test correctly, says Olsen.
Robert Rynor, sales representative for Marius Hansen Inc., a wholesale jewelry company in Northfield, Minn., says that ”amber is one of the oldest known forms of jewelry in the world.”
Rynor sells to a variety of shops here, such as Eye on Design, 35 S. Washington, Hinsdale, and to the gift shops of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture.
The Baltic connection
”Commercially,” says Rynor, ”the best amber comes from the Baltic Sea area and the Dominican Republic. Some amber from Sicily and Burma is made into jewelry. The most desirable amber from a monetary point of view is the Baltic amber. The Dominican Republic amber does not take the polish. Comparing Baltic amber to the Dominican is like comparing an Australian opal to a Mexican opal.”
”It`s on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea where amber is mainly found,” says Olsen. ”After a storm, it is kind of a fun thing, people go out and pick it up. In the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad, there is a whole room done of nothing but amber.”
Lavinia Tackbary, owner and designer at Eye on Design in Hinsdale, is more generous than those purists about the honey- or tea-colored African copal amber. ”I kind of like it,” she says.
”I think it is dramatic. People in fashion want the big, powerful copal. I have it all, both Baltic and African copal,” says Tackbary, referring to the stock in her ethnographic jewelry shop. ”I think it is all gorgeous.”
She likes to string the large copal beads with black coconut shell beads, or with white agate and silver.
Out of Africa
Patrick Saingbey Woodtor, a native Liberian and importer of authentic African art and owner of the Window to Africa shops in Harper Court and Evanston, says, ”Most people consider African amber to be copal, or what is called Mali amber-the opaque, honey-colored stuff, which is not fossilized.” But that`s not so, he adds.
”There is new and there is old African amber,” he says. ”You have some African amber that is just as old and good as Baltic amber. On the east coast of Africa, near Ethiopia, there`s amber that is fossilized just like Baltic amber. People find it after heavy rains, just like Baltic amber.” However, he adds, ”African amber does not have the same consistency as Baltic amber.”
There is also man-made amber in Africa today, he says, ”a mixture of glass and amber resin from the pine tree. Most of that is in Morocco, and other parts of North Africa and Egypt. It would fool anybody. An expert can be fooled by some of the things I`ve seen.”
A necklace of Mali amber, he says, will not have every bead the same color. ”If the color in every bead is consistently the same and has the same kind of lines, then you have to be suspicious,” he says, and should test it before you buy.
Many forms, many functions
Crude amber is cut into all forms of jewelry, from rings and pins to tiny faceted teardrop earrings. But it is most common in necklaces of graduated beads, whether tiny faceted ones from Denmark or big melon-shaped beads from the Soviet Union or large spheres or discs from Africa.
Rynor`s prices for Baltic amber jewelry range from $20 retail (for small earrings) on up to ”the thousands, depending on the cut.”
Even African copal amber has risen in price. Less than 10 years ago, says Tackbary, ”I used to pay $33 for a strand of 33 copal amber beads” from an African runner or middleman who brings things from Africa to dealers here.
”And now I pay $400 for the same. So it has gone completely out of sight.”
At any price, amber runs the gamut in color, from an opaque white to practically black. Cherry amber, with the exception of some found in Burma, is very scarce.
`Like finding a diamond`
Finding ”cherry amber is like finding a diamond,” says Tackbary. ”It`s very valuable, black amber not as much. The problem with black amber is that people don`t know what it is. They think it`s plastic. But when you hold it up to the light you can see it`s very clear and very beautiful.”
Amber can be matte, opaque or clear and translucent. One large chunk or piece can have one part that will be really clear and another part that is opaque, Rynor says.
”Eastern Europeans like matte amber. The Japanese like it as light and clear as can be. The Americans like honey-colored amber,” he says.
Others like it for more than ornamental reasons. ”It is still used in some parts of the world today as a medication, for aches and pains, asthma-anything of the respiratory type,” says Rynor. ”In central Asia, they grind it up in alcohol and drink it. It`s also supposed to be very soothing, like crystals,” says Rynor. ”Some people burn amber and inhale it for medication. In fact, in German it is called bernstein, or burning stone.”
One of the nicest things about it, he says, is that when it`s worn it picks up warmth from the human body and ”it just feels good on.”
Tackbary says amber`s renewed popularity ”is mainly because of Ralph Lauren, who did some khaki and safari things and then had the models in magazines wear amber wih it.”
”People are coming in and buying it like crazy now.” –
