Amber
with Jamey D. Allen
July 19, 2009 1 pm
Room OCC # 208
Oakland Marriott City Center Hotel
10th & Broadway
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Amber is an internationally popular decorative and bead material, known for thousands of years, thought to be both beautiful and pharmaceutical as well as amuletic; and has provided significant information to paleontologists about the ancient world. Amber is a fossil product, derived from the sap of long-dead trees, then thriving in Northern Europe (and much less frequently, from other locales).
As a "fossil resin", amber retains much of its innate characteristics—being translucent-to-opaque, resinous, tones of yellow (and other colors as well), but has become hard enough to be used as a lapidary or decorative material. It is also, perhaps, the most-imitated material in this field, having been substituted by many inferior resins, and copied with artificial plastics for over 100 years.
 Through color slides, and a large display of specimens, this seminar will explore the world-wide fascination and enjoyment spurred by amber, showing international expressions of use in jewelry and other artifacts; will discuss different varieties by locale; and will demonstrate how to distinguish between authentic and ersatz specimens, using simple tests.
Jamey D. Allen has been considered a world authority on amber for over thirty years, has written a significant series of articles (1976), and has lectured widely on this topic (most recently at Bead Expo in Santa Fe in 2006).
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