Guide to Amber Imitations


Amber Imitations from Natural and Synthetic Resins

Baltic amber (succinite), which can only be found in a considerably small area in Central Europe, was not easily available and was precious to the rest of the world. In civilized countries amber has always been expensive. There have been long attempts to replace it with other (local) fossil resins, e.g. with rumanite in Romania, or burmite in China and Burma.
The last century saw an increasing use of copal (natural, at least 1 million years old fossil resin), hardened contemporary resins (e.g. kauri gum from Australia), as well as various types of amber-imitating plastics.
Today most amber imitations are made from plastics. These include natural and synthetic polymers, with macromolecular compounds constituting their most important ingredients. In order to improve their technical and aesthetic properties, plastics normally also contain some additives, such as:
• colorants,
• pigments-powdered colorful substances,
• stabilizers- chemical preventing unwanted changes, and weakening the impact of temperature and light,
• fillers- substances added to plastics to improve their properties.

Technological classification of plastics, based on their practical and technological properties, include elastomers(polymers which even after significant deformation return to their original or almost original shape) and plastomers, which are divided(depending on their behavior during heating) into: thermoplastics, which, when heated to the appropriately high temperature, may even melt, but after cooling once again become hard solids. The process is reversible (celluloid, novolak, plexiglas, polystyrene, and some polyesters);-thermosetting and chemically setting plastics (hardening plastics) marked by a network structure created in higher temperatures (thermosetting plastics) or by chemical factors (chemically setting plastics). They harden irreversibly and include phenoplasts, products of polycondensation of phenol with formaldehyde (bakelite, resolan), aminoplasts (galalith) and some polyesters.

Cellulosic plastics from the group of thermoplasts are easily moldable. They have been used as amber imitators since the end of the 19th century. They were used for the manufacture of amber-imitating cigarette holders, which were very fashionable at the beginning of the 20th century, as well as pipes and baby teethers. They were harmful to health.
Today such amber imitations are no longer offered on the market. However, significantly improved plastics based on cellulose have appeared, which made it possible for forgers to manufacture falsified raw amber nuggets which are difficult to identify.
Sometimes, when larger quantities of raw amber are offered for sale, some of them are falsifications. They are plastic nuggets very closely resembling raw amber. You may also find semi-finished products imitating natural amber and made of plastic. They have an interesting non-uniform internal structure similar to amber.
They are also similarly workable, but may be identified as falsifications due to their unpleasant smell- this accompanies all stages of amber processing: grinding (especially dry grinding), cutting, drilling, and polishing.
Bakelite, resolan and novalak are synthetic resins- phenoplasts. This type of material was formerly used most often in amber-imitating goods. These amber imitations were manufactured on a mass-scale between the two world wars in German factories in Prussia and in the Free City of Gdansk. It was there that the demand for amber was high, although people became poorer after the First World War. In the 1920’s amber-imitating goods, being cheaper, and therefore more popular, dominated the production of Staatliche Bernstein-Manufaktur Konigsberg – the biggest inter-war amber plant.
Now, although the plastic is available both for molding compositions and casting and is marked by ease of processing and low manufacturing cost, it is no longer used for the manufacture of amber imitations.
Phenolic resins, which change their properties during polycondensation depending on the additives used, used to be used for the manufacture of extraordinary imitations- ones manufactured not only for profit as a result of difference on the price of material, but also in order to replace natural amber and reach visual effect required by the then-fashion. For example, at the beginning on the 20th century necklaces of deep, dark-cherry color imitating the reddish hue of artifacts were kept in museums and as a result were referred to as “antique amber”.
After the war they were sold as old amber necklaces in the most elegant art shops of the period and were proudly worn in complete conviction that it was natural amber.
Today, when we already know that they were manufactured from novolak, synthetic resin, they are not treated as falsifications, but as imitations characteristic of the period gone-by. Their appearance has strongly imprinted itself on human minds and tradition. The goods are still displayed in specialist museums.
In Africa we find fossil resins from Tanzania and Congo (they are approx. 5 million years old), copal from Angola, as well as fossilized varieties of natural contemporary resins.
The name “African amber” is wrongly applied to the type of plastic from which the big countries almost all over the world were made. They are actually bakelite goods. They come in numerous varieties depending on the additives used.
Most probably, the necklaces were brought to the African continent as precious gifts as well as goods for exchange by Europeans, who in exchange obtained natural local products. Thinking that they owned something precious, Africans kept the goods, passing them on to subsequent generations. The necklaces are now coming back to Europeans antiquarian shops as ornaments made from the African amber.
Similarly, Spaniards took glass beads to the American continent during Columbus’ voyages.

Imitations from Colored Glass

Glass is made from melted minerals without crystallization. It belongs to the oldest amber imitations. Today, glass amber imitations are made through casting, with colorants, such as cadmium or titanium, added to the molten glass.
Currently the market offers small amber-imitating gemstones, necklaces and rosaries. In the case of rosaries it would seem that glass beads are superior to amber since they do not wear and tear. In reality the rubbing of an amber rosary during prayer is beneficial to human health. People of the East realized it very well and kept carrying Islamic rosaries in one hand and moving their beads.
Considerable difference in the density and heat conduction of glass and amber prevents attempts of sale of glass amber imitations as authentic amber goods.

Copyright by Bursztynowa Hossa & author 2003-Gabriela Gierlowska -“Bursztynowa Hossa” Publishing House