Working with Amber in the Dominican Republic
In Europe, amber was already processed and decorated since the dawn of time. It was used for jewelry, carvings, magical necklaces and pendants. For thousands of years it was regarded as a precious substance, and for its mysterious origin considered as a divine protection from harm to the bearer of amber jewelry. Since it was easy to process using primitive tools, peoples inhabiting the southern shores of the Baltic in the New Stone Age (4000-1700 B. C.) used it as a raw material for making ornaments and talismans. It also came to be used as an ingredient in medicines and for religious purposes.
Already the Phoenicians traded amber as a prime commodity with the ancient Baltic peoples. Since about 3,000 B.C., Baltic amber was exchanged for goods from southern
Europe and there were even 'highways' or trade routes crossing Europe and leading into the Far East. Around 58 A.D., the Roman Emperor Nero sent a Roman knight on a
search for this "Gold of the North" and brought hundreds of pounds of amber to Rome.
In later days, from 1283 on, the Teutonic Knights, after returning from the crusades,
became absolute rulers of Prussia and the Baltic sources of amber, as well as the manufacture of objects made of amber, punishing transgressors with death by hanging.
For the next 500 years, amber was used again for mainly a religious purpose: Rosary beads.Therefore, in the old world the art of working with amber has much tradition and has been refined over the centuries. Nowadays, the amber industry in Pomerania (Gdansk, Poland) alone has 10,000 workers producing an export value of over 300 million dollars.
Not so in the New World, in countries like Mexico or the Dominican Republic.
Yes, it is true that in Central America, the Olmec civilization also was mining amber around 3000 B.C. There are legends in Mexico that mention the use of amber in adorning,
consuming and using it for stress reduction as a natural remedy. Already old cultures in this region used amber and worked with it, but it never had the importance and attention
it received on the other side of the great sea. Only since the middle of the last century amber from the Dominican Republic became to be an interesting commodity.
And Blue Amber is still not known by many up to this day.
But there are already some small shops where especially gifted craftsmen prepare the amber to be used mainly in jewelry. The tools are rather primitive:
a sometimes even diamond-tipped circular saw mounted on a small bench motor, often taken from an old water pump.
Thereafter, at the sanding wheel with sand
papers of different grits that have been glued on barrel shaped pieces of wood, the artisan first removes the hard hull and then with finer grades forms the amber into the designed piece.
Some additional sanding and filing is done by hand. Because the surface will still be rough, for the final polishing a cotton buffing wheel mounted on the bench motor and the proper polishing compound will do the job. A dental polishing compound from Germany is being used and some very sophisticated craftsmen apply "Dimantina", a diamond powder paste.
The drilling of holes is done with an imported Dremel tool. Maybe this is just primitvely mounted on an elastic base with a stripe of rubber cut from an
old bicycle neumatic. Many use old spokes of bicycle wheels which they file into sharp edged drillbits because the proper drillbits are not available or too expensive.
Against the high-Tec amber industry in Baltic countries we have no chance. But, do we need that? We are basically back at the roots of the amber art. Working the original way with this wonderful material. No computers, no "autoclave" (heating to produce certain effects), no artificial coloration. Just the plain amber as it comes from the mines with its 100 % natural colors and quality. And you would be surprised how inventive some of the craftsmen get when only the most basic tools are available. And what beautiful pieces of art they are able to produce miraculously.
This is the old meaning of handcraft, where the individual artist and his imagination still count more than sophisticated equipment and high-tec machinery backed up by an industry with mass production and a powerful marketing organization.
More
Blue Amber Information :
- Amber Turning Blue
- Physical Data
- How rare is it?
- Why so little known?
- Fake Blue Amber?
- Blue Amber Quality
- Blue Amber Mining
- Use of Blue Amber
- Cut and Polished
- Dominican Amber
- Home