Black amber, how to recognize properties

For thousands of years, amber has been used as a decorative element in jewellery-making. It’s known in traditional medicine, in which it’s used in the production of medicinal tinctures.

Amber is sometimes used as a perfume component. Its extraordinary properties were appreciated in antiquity when Cleopatra burned it like incense. Thales from Miletus discovered electrostatic phenomenon observing the fossilized resin of coniferous trees. What is more, the Romans admired amber in shades of red. The stone gave also the name of electricity (Greek word electron = amber).

Today, we can distinguish about 60 varieties of amber including black white and blue color.

Amber was created when the resin leaking from coniferous trees solidified and stoned. Researchers assume that the process may have resulted from climate changes (volcanic activity and temperature fluctuations) or from the effect of the phenomenon that we observe today – the natural reaction of trees to cracks and wounds in their structure.

What does black amber look like?

 

Black amber includes the resin mixed with the remains of leaves, bark, and other impurities. It is estimated that in some specimens the content of a natural substance produced by trees reaches only 10%. Because of this, black amber is more delicate, fragile and also more difficult in the jewellery processing. This kind of amber is also defined as subjected to special thermal processes.