Amber

Gem Pursuit: An Antique Jewellery Podcast

This episode of Gem Pursuit features gemologist Colin Weldon joining host Matthew Weldon for a comprehensive exploration of amber, covering its organic formation, physical properties, and

Key takeaways

• Amber is polymerized tree resin rather than a mineral or stone, scoring only 2 to 2.5 on the Mohs hardness scale, making it exceptionally soft and warm to the touch compared to traditional gems like diamond.
• DNA cannot survive in amber due to its 521-year half-life; even testing younger copal failed to yield extractable genetic material, completely debunking the Jurassic Park cloning premise.

Main topics

• Amber formation and physical properties
• Historical trade routes and cultural significance

Notable quotes

"Amber is warm to the touch. Amber is a really, really bad conductor of heat."

Conclusion

Listeners gain actionable knowledge for identifying authentic amber, understanding its

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) Amber can preserve a 380 million year old moment, holds a static charge, can float in salt water, and has a sweet resinous scent. But it's actually not a mineral at all. This is Gem Pursuit, and I'm your host Matthew Weldon, and today we are going to be talking about amber. Today, I am welcoming for the first time onto Gem Pursuit, Colin Weldon. Colin, you're very welcome. Speaker 2 (0:26) Thank you, Matthew. Nice to be here. Nice to be here. Speaker 1 (0:28) Colin is a member of the Courtfield team and he's a senior dealer and a gemologist within the team. I couldn't think of any better episode to get you on board for Amber, especially because it also crosses over with some of your personal interests as well and some of your favorite movies. Speaker 2 (0:44) Oh, yeah. Oh, we've a lot to talk about today, Matthew. A lot to talk about. Amber's a great stone. Speaker 1 (0:49) Before we actually go through it in detail, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Like, have you any personal experience or interesting amber pieces you've had in the past? Like, you're in the business 20, 25 years Speaker 2 (1:00) now, is it? 25, 30 odd. We don't talk about that. Speaker 1 (1:03) Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:05) Some years. Some years. I'm not that old. Yeah, yeah. Most of the amber I've seen in jewellery is actually through stuff like George Jensen. He was very prolific in terms of selling amber with silver. We didn't used to do an awful lot of it. Our main focus was like antiques and diamonds and sapphires and stuff like that. So buying and selling amber, particularly in the antique world, is interesting because it's not as well known in the Irish trade for customers, really. I think a lot of customers see amber... as sort of a secondary jewel, sort of almost a costume jewel. And nothing could be further from the truth, Matthew. It's Speaker 1 (1:51) a Speaker 2 (1:51) fascinating story. Speaker 1 (1:52) And I think I 100 % agree. And when we go through all the different history and the lore and the identification and the value, I'm pretty sure it'll be clear why. Colin, you're a gemologist. I am almost a gemologist. I did all the gemology studies and then I opened the shop and I never did the final exam, but I did literally every single piece. I'd really love to go back and actually finish it. But looking to identify amber, what is it that we're looking at? Or looking for, should I say? Speaker 2 (2:24) Amber is one of the most faked stones in the world, right? Everyone thinks of amber, they think of this yellowy, extremely sort of clear substance and sometimes it has insects and things inside it. But to actually identify it isn't that complicated, particularly with the fakes, of which there are millions of fakes. First of all, amber is warm to the touch. Amber is a really, really bad conductor of heat. So actually just holding it in your hand is a really good indicator of whether something is amber or not. It's an extremely interesting substance because, you know, you can use electron microscopy on it, but nobody's going to do that. You can look for, you know, perfectly formed insects that look like, you know, almost... plastic inside them normally if you're looking at amber and you see insects inside them they're not perfect you'll get a half of an insect or a leg or something you can't really see there's Speaker 1 (3:25) a lot in there and we could talk i know before we went on air colin was uh at great length to explain to me the importance of jurassic park and oh that's really important so we're Speaker 2 (3:35) going Speaker 1 (3:35) to get to that but can Speaker 2 (3:36) we talk about jurassic park yes Speaker 1 (3:38) Yeah, just no aliens. Please, no aliens. No aliens, but Jurassic Park Speaker 2 (3:42) is Speaker 1 (3:43) totally okay. So you find insects and different things in it. And I suppose, how does that happen? Because you don't really find that in other gems. You get ammonites and you get fossilized other minerals, right? But amber is actually not a mineral. It's not a rock per se. It's hardened tree resin, which makes it one of very few organic gems. You've got your sapphires, your diamonds, your rubies, your emeralds. All these are minerals. But organic gems, coral and amber are basically the two main organic gems. That's the first thing that we're talking about here, which really separates us. You're out in the field and you're trying to ID and look for amber. Just bear in your mind that this is an organic gem. Exactly as you said, Colin, warm to the touch, unlike the other stones like diamonds and sapphire, which are fantastic conductors of heat. which will be cold to the touch. So that's the first one. Now, so what happens? The tree resin goes out, and then how do we get this beautiful, warm stone? Speaker 2 (4:46) Okay, so a lot of people think amber is tree sap. It's not. Tree sap is a sugary substance that just transports, you know, minor minerals around the tree. Maple Speaker 1 (4:58) syrup. Speaker 2 (4:58) Maple syrup, there you go. That's it. That's it, yeah. labels here and now i want pancakes um the what was i talking about resin yes Speaker 2 (5:11) Resin, it's tree resin. It's a defense mechanism by the tree. Basically, when a tree gets injured, it creates this sort of resin, which is amorphous, right? Over millions of years, it then polymerizes, okay? Which makes it incredibly hard. This takes millions and millions of years. When it drops off the tree, it then is sometimes confused. as a gemstone, which actually leads into something we might talk about later on, the definition of a gemstone versus a fossil. I've always thought of amber actually as a fossilized stone, but that's not entirely true because it's not a stone. It is organic. And because it's organic, it does decay and it does secrete oxygen and all sorts of other things within the inclusion inside the stone, which is actually a really good way of detecting whether amber is... organic or not. So it's basically a defense mechanism from the tree to stop it from getting infected by surrounding air or fire or that sort of stuff. Speaker 1 (6:17) Humans, when we get an injury, our body tries and fix it, basically. Same thing. But polyamorizing, which is certainly the word of the day, right? Polyamorizing is essentially when that tree resin, the tree releases this resin. And over time, it bonds. So it bonds in lines and then it makes three-dimensional bonds. So it forms a hard structure. Basically how plastic goes from soft plastic to hard plastic. It's still the same stuff, but it basically solidifies into amber. And obviously a long, long time passes from, and this happens over a long time. It doesn't just happen overnight. Okay, so it's a defense mechanism for trees. Speaker 2 (7:06) that happens to trap little insects that are wandering past going about their day, you know, and unfortunately they get trapped inside this amber and they're basically perfectly mummified for millions and millions of years, which is amazing. Speaker 1 (7:22) So colour range, right, with that in mind, again, we're talking about, you know, someone who's in the field, they're looking around and they look into a gem. encounter and we can talk about how to differentiate in a moment but colour range, what are you going to see? What are you going to see in amber? I mean it is a colour in itself. If you say to someone paint that wall amber they're going to have a colour in mind. Oh Speaker 2 (7:48) yeah, they're going to have orangey yellowy, that sort of colour that everyone thinks of amber they think of orange or yellowy orange or that kind of stuff. But depending on where it's from it can be a range of colours. You know, if, for example, the Dominican amber fluoresces blue. Now, it's brown, the original stone, but it fluoresces blue, which if you can imagine, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago would have been a very mysterious and mystical property from the stone. But yeah, it comes in a range of colors, but predominantly the most recognizable form of amber is this orangey. yellowy, sort of maple syrupy, amber-y color. It's Speaker 1 (8:33) hard to get away from the word amber when describing the color. Speaker 2 (8:35) It looks like Speaker 1 (8:35) amber, yeah. It looks like amber. Yeah, it looks like amber. You know, and you've Speaker 2 (8:38) got Speaker 1 (8:38) Dominican amber that you mentioned. You've got Sicilian. You've got Baltic amber, which is very popular. A lot of it is in Kaliningrad, which is a little Russian enclave. And my amber is called Burmite. And that is just a trade term for... amber from Burma. It's called Burmite. Speaker 2 (8:58) Which is red, right? Speaker 1 (8:59) It's, yeah, it's a good, it's Speaker 2 (9:01) a Speaker 1 (9:01) very desirable color as well. Very, that's, I think, top of the line. We can talk about the different, you know, values and so on. But, now the one thing to remember in amber, identifying it, it is quite a soft gem. In our last episode, we were talking about lapis lazuli, which is a, which was, I think, I believe a five to five and a half on the Mohs scale of hardness. Amber is quite down there in around a two to two and a half. Explain to us, Mo's scale of hardness in two to two and a half, what are we looking at here? Speaker 2 (9:35) Mo's scale of hardness two to two and a half is very, very soft. Some people have compared it to the same level of hardness as a human nail. Now, that's a tricky one to judge because the human nail is a bit of two and a half. You can't really scratch amber with your fingernail, but any metal will scratch it, which makes it very difficult to set, extremely difficult to set. And that softness in amber is one of the reasons why it can be quite malleable and easy to carve and make into interesting shapes. What you'll notice possibly in a lot of antique jewellery is because amber is so soft, a lot of it has been repolished. over time to get that luster back. So it's a tricky little, it's a tricky thing to try and make jewelry out of really. Speaker 1 (10:25) Diamond is 500 to 750 times harder than amber. It's hard to actually get your head around that. Yeah. It goes Speaker 2 (10:33) to show like how hard diamond actually is. Speaker 1 (10:37) It's quite Speaker 2 (10:38) incredible. Speaker 1 (10:38) And that begs the question kind of like, why do people use it in jewelry if it's so soft, right? I think... I mean, I think it's the color is a very attractive color. Okay, we know that. I also think the organic nature of it gives it a special draw. It's particular. It's almost like a living