Rare Vintage Natural Baltic Honey Amber Beaded Necklace, 98 g, 31 long

Rare Vintage Baltic Honey Amber Beaded Necklace, 98 g, 31 long. This genuine Baltic amber necklace measures 31 (78 cm) long. The large whimsically almond-shaped beads have a graceful cognac/honey color, and vary in size and shape from 22 mm to 40 mm long and 15 mm to 24 mm wide. The total weight is 98 g.

Some of the larger beads measure. 40 mm x 20 mm (equivalent to 1 1/2" x 3/4"). 35 mm x 20 mm. 33 mm x 22 mm.

34 mm x 24 mm. 32.5 mm x 22.5 mm. The beads carry a lot of light, with quiet sungles occurring randomly in the clear Baltic amber matrix. This clear style of amber typically uses old trade secrets to release tiny air bubbles present in opaque samples--"egg yolk", etc. The result is a traditional style of amber called "modified amber": single nuggets of amber subjected to thermal and/or high-pressure treatments often involving oil baths, although modern amber is often subjected to other kinds of treatments that I'm not familiar with. "Modified amber" is to be distinguished from "reconstructed amber", or "amberoid", which fuses multiple pieces of amber under heat and pressure to create a final product that often shows some bands of undulation and flow lines in the underlying structure.

It is also to be distinguished from "bonded Baltic amber" which uses minute amounts of bonding agent to bond together two or more pieces of natural, modified, or reconstructed amber. The result often presents with a kind of manic sparkly internal texture--lots of willy nilly itty bitty sparkles. The beads in this necklace are either naturally occurring clear amber or, more likely, amber subjected to a certain amount of heat and pressure using traditional methods to help clarify the matrix.

Ungles in these beads may be naturally-occurring (characterized by a more random distribution), though this would be considered rare. "Sungles" created under man-made conditions are generally uniformly present throughout the matrix, and these are not. The necklace is 30 - 35 years old, in beautiful condition, without any kind of surface pitting, crazing, or wear. A little bit about amber in general.

Natural Amber has been around and widely used for thousands of years for the decorative, healing and even presumed magic qualities. This beautiful gemstone is associated with saturated orange-yellow hues (hence amber as colour adjective) but amber can appear in a variety of colours. Rich in detail and nuances, amber inspired many tales about its origin. Folklore called it mermaids gift, still tears of the sea, marine incense or sunray sap, and many other names. Chemically, amber is organic resin that hardened through process of polymerization.

Amber is more than 15 million years old, some amber as old as 250 million, a natures time capsule as it often contains entombed life-forms called inclusions. Baltic amber is composed of tree-resin of now extinct species of pine. The natural polymerization reaction induced by biological and physical causes is very slow and takes eras. Anything younger than the estimated age for amber is referred to as copal or amber in an intermediate state of polymerization. In lay terms copal is still too soft and would become amber in some more million years. White, creamy, almost clear, greenish, yellow, orange, dark-brown, even red-tinted amber can be found in the area around the Baltic Sea. Amber is the fossilized resin from ancient trees. In the Dominican Republic, the tree is Hyemnaea (a leguminous trees). Most modern legumes are smaller plants that have nodules in the roots which contain bacteria that put nitrogen back into the soil; peas, and clover are legumes. Modern day legume trees are common in South America. In the Baltic area, millions of years ago, either pine trees or eucalyptus (gum) trees probably produced the resin that turned into amber. Resin from either of these types of trees, when placed in the proper conditions, turns into amber.

There is an intermediate stage where the resin might look like amber, but is not changed enough (polymerized) to be considered real amber. This'young' resin is called copal. Copal is always much younger than amber and has some characteristics which distinguish it from real amber. For instance, copal is generally less dense than amber.

Copal is mined in many regions and can be passed for amber. Although it is easily detected if raw, copal can be processed in autoclave and polymerization speeded up exponentially.

Chemically copal and amber are almost the same and even specialists sometimes have difficulties telling processed copal from authentic amber. In fact, processed copal is now a big problem for the European market. There is very little copal among gems of Baltic origin.

If you're interested to know more about sungles, here's a bit more technical informatiom. Sungles, or nasturtium leaves develop in cloud amber during the heating stage of the clarification process where countless minute bubbles migrate to the surface and escape their host when the host is sufficiently softened. A slight vacuum can help in this process if essentially clear treated amber is the goal. In many cases however, totally clarified amber is not the goal, since some feel that so-called nasturtium leaves or sungles look natural, and add a natural aspect to the treated material.

These treatment-induced features are nothing more than discoid decrepitation halos, really no different in many respects from that those that occasionally occur in peridot and feldspars, and. Also in many heat-treated corundums. During the clarification process many bubbles can coalesce into one and then expand rapidly as pressure builds causing a rupture in the form of a disk. As cooling takes place the disk shrinks and wrinkles in a uniform manner producing the texture on the inner walls that, to some observers, make it look like a natural inclusion of organic origin. A great deal of fraud has resulted, either because of complete dishonesty, or through ignorance.

Please note however that not all discoid inclusions in amber are the result of treatment (although, certainly the vast majority are). Most are obvious indicators of treatment, but when only one or two discoid features are present as inclusions a close microscopic inspection of the host material is required. The item "Rare Vintage Natural Baltic Honey Amber Beaded Necklace, 98 g, 31 long" is in sale since Monday, May 15, 2017.

This item is in the category "Jewelry & Watches\Vintage & Antique Jewelry\Fine\Retro, Vintage 1930s-1980s\Necklaces & Pendants". The seller is "lfors7" and is located in Fairfield, Iowa. This item can be shipped worldwide.

Main Stone: Amber