[Jewelry making - Article 01630] - Re: [Orchid] Amber colors....

[Derek]

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    I have done a little research into amber colors. Wrote a piece a few
    years ago for Lapidary Journal on that, now Jewelry Artist for which
    I've started writing again. 

    There are all sorts of treatments for amber to change its colors.
    The natural colors are somewhat more complicated. There is natural
    green Dominican amber but being rare, it's expensive. Along with a
    geology professor at Dartmouth, I believe we pretty well determined
    that natural green is colored by very small bright green chlorite
    crystals, interspersed through the amber. They are smaller than 50
    microns. 

    Natrual Blue amber is rarer still, no one yet knows for sure what
    makes it blue. There were some blue sort of blade looking things in
    the blue amber, but they appeared to be organic. However they were
    still in the smaller than 50 micron range and we couldn't determine
    either what they were or whether they were responible for the blue
    color. 

    Red amber is most likely as a result of aging and oxidation of
    yellow/orange/amber and every color in between those fits into that
    continuum. 

    White amber is probably from tiny air bubbles, and is pretty rare. 

    Black amber is very rare and is probably a high concentration of
    organic matter. 

    Copal, which is most likely the forerunner of amber is nearly always
    yellow and much softer. 

    Incidentally, natural blue and green show up best in full spectrum
    light and are most obvious in sunlight. 

    I personally have all these colors and some are for sale. A very few
    pieces even come multicolored. 

Derek Levin
www.gemmaker.com
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