It is crucial to choose a right material working with amber. There are two sources where Baltic amber coming from. The first historical source is Baltic Sea itself. Since very old times people used to gather amber pieces on the seacoast after storm. In order to get more they used special equipment such as net strainers and went into sea as far as they could. To get an advantage against competitors they didn’t wait until the storm ends, as a result a lot of amber hunters gave away theirs lives.
Nowadays, when amber mining got an industrial scale, this way of getting amber is not so popular. But if you will visit Baltic seacoast after storm, you can meet men with high rubber boots and big long handle strainer – it is amber hunter.
The sea amber is different from its mined relative. It is naturally washed and tumbled by sea for millions years. It has unforgettable famous “cognac” colour by itself without any temperature treatment. The sea amber is prepolished by sea, without nasty “skin” typical for the mined amber. It has not any cracks because only healthy pieces can survive millions of storms on the sea bottom. The Baltic craftsmen will never use the sea amber for mass-production. They sell it only for collectors and for “those who understand”. Majority of local woman “understand” and will never wear jewellery made from mined amber.
Under the sea, deep in the earth, there is an enormous deposit of amber. Only in few unique places this amber layer is close to surface, and former sea bottom is dry. The “blue earth”- layer of earth stuffed with amber is relatively shallow in Kaliningrad area of Russian federation. There is an Amber factory that has a mine producing tons of amber every ear. A small town was build for amber miners and factory workers. The town is called Yantarniy posiolok (Amber village). A huge excavator digs the blue earth from approx 70m deep. Then the amber is being separated from earth using water pressure. Afterwards the amber specimens are being sorted by shape and size. Every shape has its own name. For example a cube alike specimen is the best for a round bead. This kind of amber called bead amber or “busovik” in russian. Prolonged amber matching ring cabochon called ring amber or “perstniovka”. To sort by size the amber is being strained trough different grade nets. For instance the “Bead amber #23” means that this material is left after straining trough 22mm net, and has at least 23mm size. The mined amber has huge variety of colours. There are around 200 colours and tints in the palette of this amazing gemstone. Beautiful “cherry” colour, traditional “cognac”, green, white and even black. Unattractive black amber often has inclusions of rare and highly sought after blue Baltic amber. Unlike Dominican blue the Baltic blue amber has opaque nice blue colour independent of source of light. But major amount of mined amber has humble bee wax colour, some people like it, but most prefer transparent cognac or honey amber. Every craftsman has very own way to enhance colour of amber and keeps it in secret.
The amount of amber being mined is enormous, but demand is very high too, it is almost impossible to buy some amber from Kaliningrad amber factory. The best way to buy small amount of rough material is call to Polish or Lithuanian company working with amber.
