How Amber Guilds Operated in Cities of the Baltic Coast

Antoni Romuald Chodynski

The Gdańsk Amber Guild vs. Bunglers

Amber craftsmen (Paternostermachere, Bornsteindrehere), just like goldsmiths and pearl embroiderers, belonged to the association of luxury goods craftsmen. In Gdansk, they would settle in the Main Town (Rechtstadt) since 1350. In 1526, there were known to be 46 amber craftsmen, which was a high number for the profession; therefore, the guild’s authorities reached out to the City Council to limit the number of workshops to 40. The excessive, in the guild’s opinion, number of amber master craftsmen led to restrictions in accepting new members. Membership would open only upon the death of an old master, when the next in line could apply for membership in this, after all, elite guild. Such a situation took place for instance in May 1558. Many apprentices would never become masters. It was not just about vacancies, but also about at least a minimum of affluence because membership was expensive. And so, extra-guild amber handicraft flourished, especially in the 17th century, when the art form was in its heyday. Non-guild workshops were set up in suburbs and outlying hamlets, e.g. in Gdansk on land owned by the Bishops of Kuyavy (Szkoty), to the Abbots of Oliva and to the city’s monasteries. In 1637, one of these workshops was situated at the monastery of the Dominican Friars.

It is also worth noting that master Christoph Maucher, builder of the world-famous grand Malbork coffer, who was not a member of the guild, was considered a ‘bungler’ and as a craftsman working for the royal court was not a member of the guild. The guild authorities would raid the bunglers and take over their workshops. It was not so much about their admittedly modest equipment: a table with a fixed manual lathe, a set of sharp knives, gimlets and files, but rather about the raw amber and the harassment. Gdansk native Georg Schröder handed down a description of an amber workshop he visited in the mid-17th century.

The conditions for apprenticeship and the making of a masterpiece (Meisterstück)

The oldest founding statute of the Gdansk guild (from 1477) clearly defines the rights and obligations of its members. The statute provides the sales principles, the requirements for running a workshops and most importantly, the prerequisites for joining the guild. The guild itself, with membership not unlike that of a craftsmen’s fraternity, would protect its rights and fight off competition. The primary document required of a candidate for master craftsman was a certificate of legitimate birth as a freeman, then a baptism certificate and a certificate of the completion of apprenticeship (for locals) or references from the last place of work (for foreigners). In order to run his own workshop, a candidate had to obtain a craftsman’s citizenship (minor citizenship of the city), and then major, alternatively known as merchant citizenship. This entailed fees collected by the city treasury.

A candidate for apprenticeship presented his family credentials and baptism document, while a candidate for journeyman would present references from his master on his years of apprenticeship and impeccable behaviour. Apprenticeship in the Elblag guild (1539) would take four years. In the Gdansk amber guild, the training period (in the 15th century) would amount to a year-and-a-half, while in the early 16th century – to three years. It was best if these years were uninterrupted by journey, were spent at a single workshop and without incident. In the Gdansk guild (in 1616) a candidate was eligible for a journeyman’s examination upon reaching the age of 25. The candidate was obliged to notify his employer and the guild elders about his intention to be received as a master, by announcing (Heischumg) his decision at the quarterly guild meeting. In the Elblag guild he could make such an announcement only after four years of service. The exam was a skill test, so according to the earliest Gdansk statute (1477), a journeyman would have to work a pound of amber he bought himself. He would also have to pay the guild’s elders, who supervised the work, 2 marks of silver (1522). Next he was to treat the elders to a barrel of beer (in the Elblag guild, it was a barrel of beer and ham). According to Elblag’s “old guild roll” dated 1539, a master was not allowed to have more than two apprentices. According to the “new roll” of 1699, he was allowed to employ up to three journeymen at the same time. Some masters from the Slupsk guild would accept up to five apprentices per year (1571, 1603) in the 1596-1616 period, and so for 20 years 20 boys would be employed at Jacob Schmidt’s, one of the Slupsk masters, each of whom would serve a four-year apprenticeship.

The Engelbrecht family (Caspar, Tiburius, Thomas and Jacob) was the most famous. Caspar, an elder in the guild, accepted his last apprentice in 1584. Thomas and Jacob are mentioned only once in a while, while Tiburius, who ran his workshop for 40 years (1569 – 1609), accepted some 20 apprentices over this period, each for an apprenticeship of four years. More than 125 boys in all served as apprentices in 25 workshops in the 1569-1621 period. Some Slupsk masters, like Caspar Engelbrecht, would accept as many as five apprentices per year (1571); Jacob Schmidt also took in five boys (1603).

Selected affairs from the life of the guild

Guild directives strictly regulated the work time and free time for both apprentices and journeymen of the amber craft (and other crafts as well). They ordered them to lead a righteous life, be loyal to their employer and display moral and religious conduct away from the workshop; they also set the times for the beginning and end of work, mandatory participation in the funerals of guild members and their families, and established penalties for offences and serious misdemeanours. They detail separately the rights and obligations for elder and younger masters. According to the revised regulations from the 16th century, a young master of the Elblag amber guild was obliged to do military service in defence of the city. To this end, he was to allot 3 marks for the purchase of a cuirass (Harnisch) and harquebus, as well as 2 marks for naval equipment, and was obliged to donate 6 pounds of wax to the masters’ common counter.

The masters of the Slupsk amber guild were among the more affluent, the so-called merchants who had control over the trade in amber products and ... beer brewing. The right to brew and sell beer on equal footing with the brewers of Slupsk was a privilege given to them by West-Pomeranian Duke Barnim XI in 1534. The extra income helped the amber craftsmen survive in the hardest years when raw amber supplies from the Sambian deposits in Ducal Prussia were withheld. In the 1730s, three ranks of affluence emerged in Slupsk. The highest rank was occupied by five to seven master merchants, who were de-facto monopolists. In the 1740s some 40-45 workshops were dependent on these wholesalers. Two groups emerged from these workshops; the first comprised some 20-25 semi-independent amber craftsmen, who were still able purchase the raw material allotted to them by the guild. However, they had to sell their products to the merchants. The rest, who supported some 20 families, became labourers, and their living standards were no different than beggars’. These families suffered the most acute poverty during the Great Northern War of 1700-1721 (when Prussia obtained the status of kingdom).

Competition between the guilds for barrels with amber and the range of raw amber prospecting

During the Northern War, the two Prussian Baltic guilds of Slupsk and Königsberg* were competing for raw amber. A fair split was legally sanctioned by King Frederic II (June 6, 1764). In 1764-1790, Königsberg received 221 barrels of amber, while Slupsk got 209 of second-grade Tonnenstein (in a six-grade scale, from the most valuable Sortiment to the ‘amber sand’ known as Sangemü;hl). In 1767-1772 the Slupsk amber craftsmen purchased 681 barrels of amber in Königsberg, with 261 barrels purchased in 1778-1780; in total, they purchased as many as 2138 barrels over the 1764-1790 period. Over the same period, the purchases of raw amber by the Königsberg guild totalled 2181 barrels. The final two decades of the 18th century saw a gradual curbing of purchases. This was also the result of production capacity: while both guilds grew, extraction diminished by 45 percent, which was blamed on the exhaustion of the deposits. However, the difficult contentious matters between the merchant amber craftsmen and the manufacturers require separate mention.

The amber gatherers’ work was also subject to codification. By this term I refer to the amber miners and sea amber fishers – as opposed to the amber craftsmen, or the masters and manufacturers who run the workshops, as well as the journeymen who made amber products. The first decrees for these labourers date back to the 16th century. They specify the nature of the work, the prospecting area, the use of boats and their shape, the use of tools such as landing nets, regular nets, boathooks etc. These regulations were amended in 1725, while those for amber gatherers in Gdansk had their amendment in the 19th century. There were also separately compiled instructions for the inspectors (Kammerknechter) who patrolled the shore and monitored the fishing and gathering of amber on the sea coasts (1783).

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