The amber jewelry is a phenomenon among other jewelry branches. Always in fashion the amber jewelry successfully being sold everywhere around the world. I have seen stalls with amber jewellery on the Canary Islands beach on Tenerife, on the market in Delhi in India, high quality amber jewellery is widely presented in high street jewelry stores around the Europe. As a jeweller working with amber I always was wondering why such a humble stone gained a huge popularity comparable only with king of gemstones – diamond?I think, because of its origin from a live substance – tree. There is another gemstone with organic origin, - the pearl. It is very popular too, but it is cold as many minerals. The amber is only gemstone, which is warm as a tree, soft enough to be worked with and hard enough to be worn as a jewelry. First records about amber jewelry trade are dated 3000-year b.c. The ancient merchants used to bring amber from Baltic to Rome and Greece. It was mostly massive beads and necklaces, which used to have very high price. The quality necklace made of amber used to cost more expensive than a healthy slave. The prayer beads made of amber were and are highly desirable in Arabic countries. Medieval period was a blossom time for the amber trade. The craftsmen had learned all variety of techniques and tricks working with amber. Wide range of amber jewellery was created: simple bead necklaces, intricate carved amber jewelry and accessories, gold and silver brooches, hairpins and earrings. The amber is very grateful material; it looks perfectly with gold and silver, ivory and wood, leather and suede. The medieval artisans widely exploited this quality of amber creating amazing jewellery boxes, tobacco boxes, mouthpieces and walk stick handles. Silversmiths used to put amber handels to exclusive cutlery and hollowware. The top notch of amber decorative art is of course the Amber Room created in 1716, hundreds kilograms of rare quality amber were used to create this eighth miracle of the world. I’m going to write a separate article dedicated to this wonderful masterpiece.
In the beginning of 20 century the Art and Crafts movement gave birth for new amber jewelry artifacts. Stylish cameos, amber mosaic, decorative floral motives are typical for this period. Later, in the vintage period the amber jewellery became more minimalistic, large opaque necklaces often from pressed or fake amber came to fashion. Clip on earrings, massive bracelets were often combined with non precious metals as a brass or copper.
Nowadays the most common and popular is amber and silver jewellery. The casting technology allows to mass-produce affordable quality jewelry. Mostly it has traditional cabochon cut amber and modern design in 80-s style. In the “amber capital” polish city Gdansk there are hundreds of small and large companies making tons of amber jewellery per year. The jewellery is priced per kilo in wholesale, the quality of craftsmanship is in majority good and price is very affordable.
Just few companies or sole designers are different, they carefully select every piece of amber usually with nice natural colour and create little piece of art in jewelry. Of course such jewellery does not cost cheap even in wholesale. But the buyers do pay good money because it worth it. I have seen one designer who sold everything in first day of trade show; he was taking the last necklace off the model and packing it for happy customer.
The gold and amber jewellery is not so common; it is presented in approx 10% of whole amount. Usually it is 14 and 18 carat gold not massive, delicate jewellery in very high standard. Just in last couple years 9ct gold jewellery with amber started to appear. The 9-carat gold is in demand in UK and USA, but not as popular in the Europe and Asia. However it is much harder than 18ct or silver, so majority of jewelers prefer silver. The amber jewellery you can see on our website is unique combination of Baltic amber and English gold. Some of our amber is polished in Sheffield, some is being purchased from Baltic states, but all the gold settings are made in our Sheffield workshop with traditional English quality.
