Wieslaw Gierlowski
Qualifying criteria
The present study assesses the usefulness of fossil resins from the point of view of their usefulness for the production of gemstones, works of art and ornaments. Therefore, we disregard the possibility of using resins in chemical processing and / or as fuel.
Workable fossil resins, i.e. amber in the broad sense of the term, do not include sub-fossil resins, usually called copal (although in Polish, the name suggests ‘digging’), because in fact the name copal is derived from the language of South-American Indians and means resin juices. Hardened contemporary resins are not considered fossil resins either.
Both copal and contemporary resins have long been used to make amber surrogates, almost always marketed as surrogates for succinite, i.e. Baltic amber – see overview of methods, sidebar.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, when a shortage of natural Baltic amber emerged on the market, the production of its surrogates from copal in autoclaves (stoves filled with neutral gas under high pressure) took on a mass scale. Copal which is repeatedly roasted in various temperatures and a changing mix of gases becomes deceptively similar to thermally improved amber, both in terms of appearance and in terms of scent and resistance to solvents. This has led to attempts to market copal chiefly as amber gemstone forgeries. Thermally modified copal does not become a supplement but a threat to the amber market due to consumers’ fears as to the authenticity of the real thing. Hardened copal products flake on the surface after a dozen years or so (resulting in the so-called “dandruff” effect).
The criteria which determine the success of fossil resins on the global market remain as follows:
- age and deposit conditions which allow full fossilisation
- natural beauty of the gemstone
- processing potential
- durability of finished goods
- size of reserves in the deposits, especially significant extraction scale.
The age threshold which divides most fossil resins (or amber in the broad sense of the term) from copal is arbitrary and usually set at 1 million years. The age of resins which are practically suitable for jewellery is much longer than this threshold and usually exceeds over a dozen million years, most often fluctuating between 40 and 50 million years.
The quality of the resins depends on the impact of seawater at the early stage of fossilisation. Succinite’s unique qualities are the result of, among other things, its being transported in resinous tree trunks from the land via rivers to the great delta by the Eocene Sea, which is known today as the Gdansk Delta. The deposits formed in the delta still contain most of the world’s resources of amber fit for artistic purposes, although much of them was transported by glaciers over vast stretches of Europe. Over the last few thousand years, the amber from the Gdansk Delta was rinsed out by the undulation of the young Baltic Sea and deposited on its beaches. This natural journey helped to form the best varieties: clarified amber cleansed of its surface weathered layer.
The Baltic beaches and coastal lagoons were the earliest source of raw amber for local processing and long-distance trade, which caused the name “Baltic amber” to be coined for succinite, even though its origin is linked to another sea, which was 40 million years older.
Amber extraction in various regions throughout the world
Fossil resins occur all over the world, while the number of their types and varieties reaches several hundred. Only a small fraction of this number is useful for processing. Even fewer places are fit for the actual mining of deposits and accumulations.
Succinite (Baltic amber) and amber from Borneo are the only varieties to be extracted on a large scale.
Besides these two resins, we will also describe several other varieties which appear on the market in small numbers, such as burmite, which was popular a hundred years ago, but has since has lost its significance. Burmite products sometimes appear on the market, however, so it would be wrong to disregard them completely.
Amber from Borneo
This amber comes from the state of Sarawak, in the northern, Malaysian part of the island. It is extracted on an impressive scale of two to five thousand tonnes per annum as a by-product of brown coal mining. However, it is yet to play an important role as a material for the production of gemstones, while being only of local significance as artistic (sculptural) material. It is clearly inferior in beauty and workability to all other fossil resins used for similar purposes. Perhaps the role of amber from Borneo will rise quickly as new improvement technologies are being developed, analogous to those used for copal. This issue is described in more detail in a separate article on this portal by Janusz Fudala, who is an expert on resins from the Sunda Islands and the Philippines.
Offers for the supply of amber from Borneo have appeared on the Polish market. These offers, however, are not very attractive price-wise, with USD 225 per 1 kg in batches no smaller than 100 kg. In terms of quality, this offer has the advantage of large granulation size (20 – 100 g per nugget), while its drawback is an excessive 50% share of dark nuggets with organic impurities.
Baltic amber (succinite)
The dominant, in fact almost exclusive position in the supply of the world amber market is held by Baltic amber, or succinite. In recent decades, its share in the market has ranged from 98 to 99% of the total supplies for processing.
Succinite is extracted chiefly in strip mines on the western coast of Sambia (Yantarny settlement in the Russian Federation’s Kaliningrad Oblast) and mines on the border between the Ukraine’s Volyhn and Polesie regions (Volyhn and Rivne Oblast).
As it’s been for centuries, amber is still gathered on sea beaches, especially those of the southern Baltic, and in large amounts on the strip between Gdansk and Klaipeda. Fishing for amber in the inshore area of the Baltic Sea has diminished but not disappeared. On the other hand, Russian and Polish attempts to work the floor of the Gulf of Gdansk using various vessel-based methods proved unsuccessful.
Certain amounts of Baltic amber are still obtained from post-glacial accumulations in Poland and its neighbours, but only during field work and forest management activities and as a by-product of mining for other minerals (for example, in gravel pits and slag heaps in brown coal mines). Today, no mines are operated on post-glacial amber accumulations, which was the case in the 19th century. The famous Amber Mountain, just outside of Gdansk, is a reserve. Today, in the wilderness by the River Narew, where as many as 3,000 amber diggers would go to work each day in the 1820s, amber is dug only occasionally and illicitly by Kurpie folk artists.
Amber rinsing in the Vistula River Delta
Hydromonitor amber rinsing in the Vistula River Delta has yielded significant results. The greatest yield (about 150 tonnes) was obtained in 1972, when 14 extraction teams were licensed, and in total legal rinsing produced 416 tonnes of excellent raw amber from mining beaches lying at an average depth of 5 metres under the current ground surface in the 1972-1989 period. Amber from the Vistula River Delta is of excellent quality because it underwent the stage of natural purification during its journey from the sea and even today it still stays in the preserving water environment. At the moment, 6 – 8 prospecting and extracting licences are in use for small private lots.
Unfortunately, most of the amber from the Vistula River Delta is extracted illegally (in 1970-2006 to an amount of ca. 600 tonnes). This is caused by red tape, the high fees involved in obtaining permits to use the natural environment and the high lease fees on lots. This especially concerns the area within the Gdansk city limits, where red tape and conflict of interests between amber extraction and transport or industrial development has for years precluded legal access to well-documented amber accumulations.
Sambia: the primary source of succinite
Illicit extraction and the theft of mine output is also a fundamental problem in the Russian Federation’s Kaliningrad Oblast. The Oblast has numerous deposits which are not operated in an industrial manner, with outcrops of amber-bearing “blue earth” in the seaside cliff and extensive areas where amber lies 2-3 metres underground. Several thousand “poor man’s shafts” were dug in this area. Extraction from these places reached as much as 25% of the output of the mines, with a greater usability for processing, as the diggers throw away useless raw amber fractions.
Until recently, two legal state-owned strip mines had been operating in Sambia, both located on the same Palmnicken deposit in the settlement of Yantarny:
- Plazhova, on the very seacoast; a shallow mine (up to 11 metres), very high-yield and profitable, yielded an annual official output between 500 and 700 tonnes in the 1990s, even though a large number of the largest nuggets would get stolen away;
- Primorskaya, 2 km from the seacoast; a deep mine (up to 60 metres), low-yield but very large with an annual output of 150 to 300 tonnes.
In total, 600 to 850 tonnes of amber were deposited in the storehouse of the Amber Factory in Yantarny in the 1990s, while the part of the output which was stolen or illicitly extracted totalled from 100 to 250 tonnes.
All told, Sambia exported from 800 to 1,100 tonnes of amber per year.
After 2001, when the efficient Plazhova mine was flooded, supplies collapsed. Today, only Primorskaya mine is open and its output is six times smaller than that of record years. In 2005, 218 tonnes were extracted, with only 133 tonnes in 2006. However, Sambia still remains the primary source of raw amber on the global scale.
The growing importance of succinite extraction in the Ukraine
The role of extraction in the Ukraine is growing, although the state-owned strip mines, opened on the Volyhn and Polesie frontier in 1993, still remain at the experimental stage. Their output is only 3 tonnes per annum.
On the other hand, the region has seen a rapid rise in illegal extraction. Various sources estimate its scale at 10 to 50 tonnes per year. Raw amber from Volyhn stands out with its good large granulation, making it useful not only for jewellery, but also for sculptures and ornaments.
Up to the end of 2006, the state had a monopoly on amber extraction and processing in the Ukraine. In 2007, the Ukrainian government has announced radical changes, chiefly giving private prospectors licences for several dozen sites with non-industrial amber deposits (small lots, limited resources). These accumulations lie very shallow in swampy areas on the Polesie frontier and can be extracted using an efficient hydraulic method (as in the Vistula River Delta).
A walking excavator and dumping conveyor was introduced in the state mine in Klesiv, on the Pugach deposit, to increase the output manifold and improve the mine’s economic results.
In spite of a severe shortage of supply, Baltic amber still constitutes the lion’s share of the material which the world’s amber industry has at its disposal. About 140 tonnes of raw amber come from the mines in Sambia and Volyhn every year, with about 55 tonnes coming from illegal rinsing and digging in Poland, Russia and the Ukraine, and some 5 tonnes gathered on beaches and from post-glacial accumulations. So, in total we have 200 tonnes of Baltic amber per year. How does this compare to the output of other fossil resins (see sidebar)?
Dominican amber
The eastern part of Hispaniola Island, within the borders of the Dominican Republic, has long been known for the beautiful fossil resin hidden in its mountain ranges: La Cordillera Septentrional and Cordillera Oriental (see map). The amber is not easily accessible, as the nuggets have to be extracted from hard sandstone on steep mountain slopes, not from loose sediment formations as succinite in Central Europe.
There are no industrial-size mines here, rather widely dispersed individual shafts, trenches and drifts, cut by hand with pickaxes and chisels. The drifts can often be long narrow tunnels cut horizontally into the depths of the mountains, even to a length of 70 m.
The diggers, with their current number estimated at 3,000, are obliged to sell their entire output to the landowners. They can extract as much as several kilograms in a single day, but can also end up digging fruitlessly for weeks. This is why it is difficult to estimate the total annual output. This must surely mean that one to two tonnes of workable raw amber are excavated here each year.
The amber has to be worked on site, as the Dominican government put a ban on the export of raw amber in 1987. The range of products covers various ornaments: necklaces, bracelets and pendants, as well as jewellery with base or sometimes precious metals. Most of the products are sold on site, with only a trace amount exported.
Dominican amber is much less workable than succinite: it sticks when dry-filed and when ground on a high-speed abrasive disk. When polished vigorously it “stretches” and cracks under the surface. However, people with the requisite experience are able to master the appropriate grinding, sculpting and polishing techniques. That said, the sheen of the surface of Dominican amber products is a far cry from that of products made of Baltic amber.
In terms of the degree of transparency, amber from the Dominican Republic is clearly superior to mined succinite, which has a predominance of waxy opaque varieties. 90% of raw amber from the Dominican is transparent. For this reason, the technology of thermal clarifying, which destroys the diversity of amber varieties, has not spread there. Although the golden colour saturation is usually much lower in shades of lemon, but it is usually retained in its natural state in finished goods. Intensely colour nuggets: of orange, honey, all the way to red, are also found.
The most sought-after, distinctive and valuable variety is amber in naturally fluorescent nuggets with a blue tint. Finished products retain this quality for a relatively long time, although, just like products made of all other varieties of Dominican amber, they have a tendency to produce a mesh of cracks on their polished surface after about 10 years, which hinders the fluorescent effect. In his book Dominican Amber and its Inclusions, published in 1988, Rafael Jie Chang Wu, a Dominican collector, estimates the monthly output of blue fluorescent products at about 2.5 kg, i.e. 30 kg per annum.
Dominican amber gemstones are currently much more expensive on the global market than Baltic amber gemstones. This applies not only to the fluorescent variety, but also to thermally improved gemstones. The price per 1 gram is over 20 euros in Europe, whereas succinite gemstones cost 2-3 euros.
Mexican amber
Mexican amber comes from Chiapas, the country’s southernmost state. This area is populated by Indians, who cultivate the ancient traditions of the Mayas to some extent. The extraction is done by the local population, who do not allow strangers to access the amber deposits, which they deem a gift from the gods to belong only to them. The scale of the output remains completely unknown. The extraction methods are the same as in the Dominican Republic, as the amber in Chiapas is deposited in similar geological conditions.
The local products are not exported, while raw specimens are exported only occasionally. Europe usually receives quite large nuggets, with a unit weight of as much as 2 kg. Their price is about twice higher than in succinite nuggets of the same size and can reach 5 euros per 1 gram for nuggets larger than 1,000 g.
Mexican amber’s properties are practically identical to those of the Dominican variety, with only its colour range darker. While this range of colours might begin with light-yellow and light-greenish, just as with Dominican amber, it has a large share of red or even crimson nuggets with a characteristic greenish fluorescence. The red varieties were surely formed as a result of being warmed up in rock in volcanically and seismically active areas.
Burmite - amber from Burma
Burmite, which comes from northern Burma and its neighbours, was long popular as an artistic material in China. When Burma became a British colony, burmite products also reached Europe, although not on any significant scale. They met with scientific interest as products made of a heretofore unknown material. As early as in the 1810s and 1820s, T.D.A. Cockerell wrote a number of studies on Burman amber nuggets, which were later donated to the Museum of Natural History in London. The largest burmite nugget in the Museum’s collection was purchased in 1860 in Canton (now Guangzhou), China.
Burmite is a very old Cretaceous resin, which was formed some 100 million years ago. Its workability and visual assets are a far cry from succinite. Nonetheless, large-scale burmite extraction and processing has been going on from the beginning of the 20th century, mainly for use as sculpting material (ca. 40 tonnes). However, it was soon supplanted by the deliveries of succinite to Asia from the Konigsberg Stantien & Becker company. This is why even religious sculptures, such as figurines of the Buddha from one hundred years ago, were usually made of Baltic amber.
Today, any burmite sculptures on the market must be confirmed by an individual test certificate, even when its stylistic features and motifs indicate Burman origin.
There is no data on the current extraction of burmite or about its processing, so we also have no data on its prices.
Simetite - Sicilian amber
Simetite has been known since ancient times and has always been highly valued. In the 16th and 17th centuries it was worth its weight in diamonds. It comes from deposits in central Sicily, from which it is rinsed out by mountain rivers, especially the River Simeto, which flows to the sea on the eastern coast of Sicily near Catania. It has long been gathered on the banks of this river following heavy rain, especially on the sandbar by its mouth. However, the simetite resources were slight and never covered the demand from even the richest collectors.
Sicilian ornament makers imported succinite, which, as we know, can be treated to take on simetite’s characteristic colour of red Falernian wine.
Simetite is very easy to work and its beauty is on a par with succinite, while the products made of it are durable. Unfortunately, these pieces can be seen in but a few museums. Some varieties of simetite have fluorescent properties, which fade away when the specimen or product is exhibited for some time and ultimately this resin becomes like succinite.
In Poland, for 40 years after World War II, the state-owned Desa jewellery shops would sell necklaces with a characteristic cherry colour as made of Sicilian amber, whereas in fact they were made of a surrogate called galalite. This practice has yet to fully come to an end.
Japanese amber
This amber is found in many places on all the main islands of Japan, from Hokkaido in the north to Kyusyu in the south, over a distance of over 2,800 km. The mine in Kuji on the Pacific coast in the north-eastern part of Honshu has long been the main source of extraction and remains the only such source today.
Thirteen tonnes of amber were extracted in Kuji both in 1937 and in 1938. Two very large nuggets weighing 19.875 kg and 16 kg survive from the interbellum period. There are records of enormous nuggets weighing 45 kg and 60 kg extracted in 1905. The nuggets themselves, however, are lost.
The colour range of Japanese amber includes numerous varieties with colours from green to black. There are also striped varieties similar to agate. Japanese amber gives off a peculiar smell, similar to camphor. Japanese amber has been used to make clothing accessories and ornaments for the body, as well as religious objects for centuries and is still used for these purposes today.
Today, Japan is one of the few countries where industrial amber processing takes place. The business is dominated by the Belouna joint-stock company. For economic reasons (high cost of work in the mountains), the company has greatly limited extraction from the slopes of Mount Kuji. It uses the raw amber from Mount Kuji exclusively for its own production and does not export it. The local amber meets only 10% of Belouna’s processing demand and its stock management in fact relies on succinite deliveries from the mine in Yantarny, Sambia to the amount of 2-3 tonnes per year.
Japanese products made of succinite and Kuji amber are sold almost exclusively on the domestic market and cater to this market in terms of their function and design. The only point of sale abroad is the gallery at Catherine’s Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, in return for the supplies of raw amber from Russia.
Cedarite
Cedarite is one of the oldest fossil resins, but is completely new on the market. Until recently, it was described as unworkable. In fact, its workability (in terms of filing, polishing, cutting, rolling and grinding) is equal to succinite. The fine granulation of the nuggets and crumbs gathered on the banks of the lakes and rivers in the Canadian province of Manitoba is its negative feature. No extraction from underground accumulations is carried out and due to its low supply, cedarite has yet to impact the market and to acquire a universally accepted price. This is, however, the material of the future. Cedarite takes its name from its deposit by Lake Cedar in Manitoba.
Workable fossil resins which are little known or of local importance
Apart from the fossil resins described above, there is a wide array of other fossil resins which are used in the production of jewellery and artworks.
Today, given the common practice of roasting succinite from mines in order to clarify it and make it uniform for processing, autoclaves are filled with unidentified resins which accompany succinite in its deposits, chiefly: succino-gedanite, gedanite, glessite and others. As a result they are not treated as a separate item in commodity science. It is worth knowing, however, that they are of significant scientific value, and being sensitive to these resins when screening the mined output, selecting for processing and especially before roasting them in autoclaves, which causes irreversible changes.
Today’s market does not offer rumenite products, even though only a hundred years ago this beautiful fossil resin, which is found not only in the southern Carpathians (and was made into ornaments in a number of regions of Romania) was quite fashionable. Rumenite is found in many places which are far away from each other, for instance in Azerbaijan and in Sachalin, and may yet again enjoy the favour of consumers. Just as other interesting but now forgotten fossil resins.
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