Amber

What it actually is

An organic polymer, fossilised tree resin, amorphous, hardness 2 to 2.5, with a specific gravity low enough that it floats in strong brine.

Amber is not sap. Sap is the sugary fluid that circulates in a tree; resin is the sticky defensive secretion that seals wounds, and it is resin that polymerises and fossilises over millions of years.

Baltic amber comes largely from an extinct conifer and contains succinic acid, which distinguishes it analytically from other ambers.

Rubbing amber on wool produces a static charge sufficient to lift paper and hair. The Greeks called amber elektron, and when William Gilbert coined a Latin term for that attractive force around 1600 he built it from the same root, which is how a fossil resin named electricity.

Amber burns with a pine smell, floats in saltwater, and is dissolved by acetone, alcohol and perfume.

Where it comes from

The Baltic coast, particularly the Kaliningrad region, Poland and Lithuania, produces around ninety per cent of world amber, aged roughly forty to fifty million years.

The Dominican Republic produces younger amber, around fifteen to twenty million years old, including the rare blue amber that fluoresces under ultraviolet light and in sunlight.

Myanmar produces burmite, around ninety-nine million years old and therefore Cretaceous, which contains the scientifically most significant inclusions, including feathered dinosaur tail material. Burmese amber also raises serious ethical questions, since much of it comes from conflict-affected areas of Kachin State.

Mexico's Chiapas produces amber of similar age to Dominican material.

The Baltic amber trade is one of the oldest documented long-distance routes in Europe, moving amber south to the Mediterranean from at least the Bronze Age.

What the traditions claimed

The Baltic amber route is the substantial history. Amber travelled from the North Sea and Baltic coasts to the Mediterranean and as far as Egypt, and it appears in Bronze Age burials across Europe. Pliny records a Roman expedition that returned with enough amber to decorate an entire gladiatorial display.

Classical sources give it medicinal uses, and it was ground and prescribed for a long list of complaints across Europe and the Islamic world.

Homer and Ovid record the story of the Heliades, sisters of Phaethon, transformed into poplars whose tears became amber, which is a striking image for a material that is literally a tree's response to injury.

The Amber Room, a chamber panelled entirely in amber built for the Prussian and then Russian courts, was looted in 1941 and has never been recovered.

Modern practice reads amber as a stone of warmth, memory and old wisdom, which fits the material better than most modern readings do.

How it is worked with

Hold a piece with an inclusion, if you can. An insect in amber died tens of millions of years before any primate existed, and there are few more direct ways to encounter deep time.

The memory reading follows naturally and is one of the better-grounded modern assignments: amber is literally preserved material.

For wear, it is very soft at 2.5, so it scratches easily and should be kept in a soft pouch away from harder stones. Perfume, hairspray, alcohol and acetone dissolve it, so put jewellery on last.

Clean with a soft damp cloth, never with solvents or ultrasonic cleaners.

One thing to avoid entirely: amber teething necklaces on infants. There is no evidence that succinic acid passes through skin in any useful amount, and paediatric and consumer safety bodies warn about strangulation and choking.

Buying it honestly

Copal is the main substitution: young resin, sometimes only a few hundred years old, not fully polymerised. A drop of acetone on a cotton bud softens copal and leaves amber unaffected.

Plastic and glass imitations are common. Real amber floats in a strong brine solution of roughly one part salt to two parts water; most plastics sink. Glass is cold and heavy and will not scratch with a pin.

Pressed or reconstituted amber is genuine amber melted and compressed, and it often shows flow lines and a slightly cloudy structure.

Inclusions are faked by drilling and inserting modern insects into copal or resin. Look for a perfectly positioned insect in a suspiciously clear medium; genuine inclusions are usually awkwardly placed, partial and accompanied by debris and bubbles.

Heat treatment is used to clarify amber and to produce sun spangles, which are disc-shaped internal fractures.