The only beads to be found in St Petersburg are amber, so amber I bought. After bringing it home my friends and I tried the burning needle test: you touch a hot needle to the bead and smell. If it smells nasty it is plastic, if like incense it is amber. Sounds easy, but all carbon-based materials will eventually burn and smell like--burning carbon. And the incense we buy at Hallmark is heavily scented with other perfumes, so the smell from an amber bead isn't all that familiar. But anyway, we all agreed it was real. So here we go.

1) Spiral rope amber: the Russians are skilled bead crafters and this spiral-rope beauty is a good example. The seed beads are glass, the embellishments are little amber beads. This one was from a tourist store.

2) Pressed amber: the Russians are clever in manipulating amber. "Milk" amber is made by mixing amber with chalk, "black" amber is made by mixing amber with soil, and "red" amber is made by heat treating the amber in chemicals. Pressed amber is made by softening and compacting the leftovers into beads. These beauties came from The Hermitage gift shop.

3) Green amber: Green amber is a crystal clear amber with an olive hue. These beads faceted then heat-treated to turn the ends red, or were they heat-treated to turn a "cane" red and then cut and faceted? I'm not sure, but the red sides make the beads opaque from the side and transpared head-on. Wow! These are also from The Hermitage gift shop.

All the amber was excavated at Kaliningrad.

Nancy