Featured Amber Necklace & Bracelet

Idly perusing a local auctioneers listings (never a good idea!)these were listed simply as ‘Chunky Bracelet’ with a totally out of focus tiny photo.
I took a wild leap of faith that it might be amber just by the colour and put a blind bid on of £20 (£25 with fees)
Won them and collected today and they are indeed Amber. Phew.
The necklace is very substantial and the bracelet is indeed chunky!.Thats a £1 coin for scale.
My question is how do I know about quality or origin?. I see Amber selling at wildly different prices so what makes the difference?
The bracelet is badly strung too tight on nasty green elastic - I think I’ve got some amber beads I could use as spacers as it’s child’s size at the moment?
What do you think?
Thankyou

 

I does look like amber, but could it (or some of it) also be copal?

 

It fluoresces strongly so I think it is amber.

 

Nice, K. You are right, they are amber.
The necklace is natural Baltic amber, so good quality. Necklaces of specific colours and regular bead shapes are more sought after nowadays. But I like the natural look of these rough and ready chunks.
The bracelet looks reconstructed/pressed, but from pure amber. Those bracelets usually are made from reconstructed amber, so no problem. It is Art Deco.

 

That is likely to be a mark for the hinge only. These bracelets were mostly made in Königsberg, East Prussia, a fascinating part of the world which is now Russian and called Kaliningrad.

 

Check over closely with your loupe in case there are any tiny insects or foliage embedded in the Amber, they are always worth more.

 

Copal is a "type" of amber too, just not quite as old ..maybe it fluoresces too?

Not saying yours isn't amber, but copal can be pretty convincing sometimes.

 

Necklace is relatively recent, imo.

 

Copal is not amber. There is an enormous age difference, and the regions where copal is found are generally not those where amber is found. KSW's items are both Baltic amber, with the warm colours caused by the source, conifer resin, and 3-8% succinic acid. Copal is not found in the Baltic.
Copal from countries where most copal is sourced, in the Americas, comes from resin from deciduous trees, with a lower percentage of succinic acid. It has a very slight greenish tinge.

The 'amber countries' have very strict rules about what is and isn't allowed to be called amber.
Copal being sold as amber is a real problem among bonafide amber sellers as well as jewellery and fossil collectors.

 

I agree, more recent than the bracelet.

 

Will do!

 

That’s great info.
So what about these huge price differences?. I can see the reason for antique/ proper vintage amber jewellery but is it weight?, clarity? Or just savvy sellers?

 

Most of the copal I have seen comes from New Zealand. It was the main export of NZ during the early years of colonization, and it was dug from the ground. That's why people from NZ are affectionately known as "diggers". This NZ fossilized copal (kauri gum) can look a lot like amber and can be a very convincing facsimile.
BTW, it doesn't come from deciduous trees, but conifers, mere thousands of years old - which is just a flash in the pan, as true amber is likely millions of years old.
A great deal of this stuff made it's way to Europe - I have a large chunk of it (4" x 5") and it looks just like amber.

The history of the NZ copal (kauri gum) trade paints a fascinating picture of colonial exploitation, check it out here if you have a minute:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauri_gum

 

I grew up in Australia, where we also had the term Diggers for nationalists. It came from the gold diggers, and came to be associated with the Eureka stockade, where the diggers set up an independent state. The Eureka diggers were defeated, but the dream lived on, although sometimes in a less savoury way.

I know kauri gum does, because it is resin from the kauri tree. But I was talking talking about copal from the Americas, quote:

The thing is, kauri gum is rarely seen outside NZ. If it is seen, it is in NZ crafts.
KSW lives in the UK, where the likelihood of finding either kauri gum or copal jewellery is negligible. Baltic amber is much more likely, simply because of the proximity.
And if it looks exactly like Baltic amber, and it is made in a jewellery style native to the eastern Baltic region, it is like 'if it walks like a duck' etc.

 

Simply fashion and taste.
For instance egg yolk amber is much more sought after than cognac amber. Strange, because egg yolk amber only looks well on a few skin tones, whereas cognac amber looks great on anybody. But there you go.
Dark brown and black amber seem to be the least popular at the moment.
Shaped beads, especially round and 'olive' ones are more popular than rough beads. Facet-cut beads, which were popular during the 19th and early 20th century, seem to be out. I have a few lovely antique facet-cut cognac amber necklaces with gold clasps. I am an old-fashioned girl, so I wear them.

Another fashion is rare blue amber, which is generally found in the Dominican Republic, Chiapas in Mexico, and Sumatra in Indonesia. In most regions that blue is the result of early forest fires discolouring the resin before amber was formed.
There is an extremely rare blue variety in the Baltic, which is the result of pyrite dust in the resin that formed amber.

 

The egg yolk/butterscotch thing has cultural drivers, hm? Prayer beads, for example, so being massively prized in the Middle East. And in China for other cultural reasons.

There's a lot being sold as blue amber which is dyed.

 

True.

Apparently there is even 'blue' amber with simply a layer of translucent paint over it. Not even heated or modified in some more sophisticated way, but a layer of paint!

 

I like the varied sizes of the beads on the necklace. And it has the screw clasp that is still used today on amber necklaces. Has that type of clasp been used for many years? How can you tell how long ago the necklace was made?

How hard would it be to restring the elastic in the bracelet?