While choosing a subject matter of this year’s 15th scientific colloquium on amber, which has been accompanying the fair incessantly since its first edition, professor Barbara Kosmowska-Ceranowicz bore in mind such choice of contents which could provide a versatility of a five-year series. The five-year period between 2004 and 2008 will be recorded in a book, published like during the previous 10 years by the International Amber Association.
A seminar room was full of excellent albeit varied audience. Young people from secondary schools of Gdansk associated in a club of amber lovers (actually fond experts), supervised by Malgorzata Befinger, were sitting next to high class people of science, amber researchers from many countries and equally numerous research disciplines;
I cannot abstain from mentioning some of them even before the speakers:
• from Germany: dr. Brigitte and dr. Günter Krumbiegel together with a group of scientists from Bitterfeld, a Saxon centre of amber output; dr. Wolfgang Weitschat, a researcher and an animator of amber nature specimens collecting; Ulf Erichson, a director of the German Museum of Amber in Ribnitz-Damgarten, with W. Weitschat a co-author of a newly published and modernly edited catalogue with the collections of this museum
• from Russian Federation: dr. Zoja Kostiaszowa, an associate director for scientific matters of the biggest Russian museum of amber in Kaliningrad and dr. Jelena Jezowa and dr. Andranik Manukyan, biologists, specialists of organic inclusions in amber. There were also Aleksander Zurawlow and Aleksander Krylow, the highest class researchers of amber conservation, co-authors of the Amber Chamber reconstruction
• from Ukraine: dr. Olena Bieliczenko – a head of the expert department of the National Gemmological Centre of Ukraine
• from Canada: prof. Alicja Zobel – a member of the New York Science Association and the World Amber Council
• from all over Poland: professors – Wieslaw Krzeminski from Krakow, Andrzej Szadkowski from Lodz, Ryszard Szadziewski from Gdansk and many other scientists, including dr. enginer Slawomir Safarzynski – an expert of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage on work of arts made of precious metals and dr. Regina Kramarska from the Sea Geology Department of the Polish Geological Institute.
The speakers presented subjects that Polish audience had not been previously familiar with. And for example prof. Eugenio Ragazzi presented the oldest fossil Triassic resins (235 million years old) from the Alps, and dr. Maksim Bogdasarow amber pieces from Belarus which were relatively young – a few hundred thousand years old at the most.
The similar age contrasts had: a problem of trade and amber manufacture functioning at the time of the Roman Empire presented by Marcin Staporek with a presentation of a triptych by Mariusz Drapikowski, presenting 4th Station of the Way of the Cross to be created in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem with the use of amber, gold, silver and titanium. This last task will constitute a continuance of the work of Polish soldiers from 2nd Corps during their complicated way back to their motherland in 2nd World War.
Dr. Elzbieta Sontag presented a study entitled “Descriptive types and syninclusions in the Museum of Inclusion at the Gdansk University”. Everyone was convinced by her arguments for usefulness of gathering collections in university laboratories. A quality of a study of the collection, which consists mainly of the gifts by Pomeranian amber people (including an impressive donation by Bozena and Wojciech Kalandyk) and the efficiency to catalogue the collection in a way enabling common access gained widespread acknowledgement.
The colloquium was finished with an economic accent – my study on the reasons of huge fluctuations of supply of the raw material (succinite) in the previous thirty years.
A detailed synopsis of the reports is published at www.amberif.pl. The amber.com.pl portal is planning to place abstracts of the reports plus the results of the colloquium discussions and a thorough illustrative material.
Photo: Drops of Triassic resins from the Alps (top) and a project of a triptych presenting 4th Station of the Way of the Cross in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by Mariusz Drapikowski (bottom).
