31 July 2006 - 21:21True Beauty Lies Beneath

How about a tragic love-story?After all, Amber and Love exist symbiotically.

Once upon a time Robert Carr, a handsome Scottish adviser on the court of King James I, fell for the charms of the beautiful Frances Howard, Countess of Essex. They were young, they were beautiful, they were in love. All was set for a fairy-tale, were it not for real-life intervening.

Real-life usually does.

Carr was known for climbing the grease-pole and the countess for her scandalous immodesties (not to mention the minor detail of still being married to some other poor klutz). A match made in heck. Many feared a disaster approaching, among them Thomas Overbury, another adviser and Carr’s best friend since childhood.

Overbury, an intelligent young poet, advised his friend not to be swayed by the countess’ beauty. He even went so far as to pen a poem, his famous “The Wife”, to explain to Carr just how a woman is to be judged, stressing quite forcefully the point that exterior appearances are deceiving.

How is this story relevant to Blue Amber?

True Beauty lies Within

One of the reasons why Dominican Amber and Blue Amber in particular are not as well known as other types of Amber is because the valuable nature of it was never quite apparent.

Although the native (now extinct) Taino Indians gave samples of it to Columbus, the Dominican Amber trade did not truly pick up until sixty or seventy years ago. That is because in its pure form Amber does not look like much at all, and since people judge beauty by the exterior as did the hapless Carr, Dominican Amber remained elusive and a collector secret for a long time.

It was different with Baltic amber where nature mined and exposed the stones for us. For centuries amber chunks have washed up along shorelines, clean and shiny. Long before Baltic amber mines came to be, the sea was already harvested of its deposits.

Dominican Amber however, when hewn out of the mountains, does not glitter or shine like gold, a metal that was already mined by the conquistadors just months after Columbus’ landfall. It doesn’t even have the dull transparency of raw diamonds, or the sky-blue hue of Larimar, another unique gem found in the DR.

In fact Dominican Amber, particularly Blue Amber, looks utterly boring and is easily confused with the strata surrounding it, unless chipped or broken up. One of our neighbors here at the ambarazul.com Amber Ranch once dug a ditch, hurling stone after stone away to get rid of them. After a moment he realized that something was wrong with the last stone he had tossed: it had been too light for its size. He went after it and discovered that the stone was a large specimen of Amber.

The experienced ambero will of course recognize the rounded lines and soft features of a glob of fossilized resin and separate it cautiously from the dirt. But even at this point it is still uncertain if the Amber lump is blue, green, yellow or, well, amber.

Going Deeper

So how can anyone tell what is underneath that thick shell of ugliness? One of Overbury’s points in the poem to his friend Carr — besides ignoring the exterior — was to look into the beauty of a woman’s soul. This applies as well to Blue Amber.

To understand the soul of Amber the amberos chip into the rock. These small ‘windows’ help grade color and quality. Based on this information the value can be estimated, as well as the extent of purity.

But is a mere peek at a corner of the stone enough? Not always. As was explained in a previous article, the blue coloration does not always extend to the entire stone. Also, the small window sometimes creates a type of optical illusion: the blue stone may look deep blue, but by the time the entire shell has been polished, the blue glow diminishes.

It is also difficult to tell if the stone has inclusions, usually dirt. If it doesn’t, then it may very well be of a yellow or amber coloration and only a blue hue under sunlight –- in itself a valuable and much sought-after variation. It can happen that a large blue piece is cut apart and looses most of its glow, since the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause the blue reduces.

Most collectors refuse to cut a great blue piece into smaller chunks for this very reason, keeping it in its original size but with enlarged windows. Yet often we still come across rocks so blue, they continue to keep their blue glow even after being drawn and quartered. But from the outside one would have never guessed its beautiful soul.

Like a hidden treasure or a mysterious woman, Dominican Amber haunts collectors and scientists alike. One never knows what lies beneath the layers of dirt. More than once a chunk of ugly revealed to be a deep gorgeous blue; chips of cloudy Amber revealed to contain rare insects. As with women, one has to take risks to find the truly unique gems and not be swayed by exterior appearances –- be they beautiful or ugly.

Disappointments happen, but they are seldom and never severe. Most of the time the pieces hold souls so beautiful and unique, Overbury, had he written of Amber and not women, would have been proud.

Beauty is only skin-deep… ugliness goes to the bone

So how did the love-story end? Did they live happily ever after?

Are you sure you want to know? Thomas Overbury, the wild card in this story, may have been too adamant in making his point. Some historians describe him as arrogant, which may not have helped him at all. He was determined to turn his friend Carr from the evil countess, going so far as to describing the young woman as a “filthy, base woman“. Carr, infatuated, bewitched and entirely gaga-ed, repeated this to the countess one night in her boudoir (over a game of Scrabble, I’m sure). Big mistake.

At once the scorned Lady Essex set a plot into motion to disgrace Overbury, and before long Overbury found himself dishonored and imprisoned. But the countess was still not satisfied.

Revenge — as the ancient saying goes — is a dish best served… poisoned. She called upon her evil minions and replaced the kind warden with a creature of her own and soon Overbury doubled over and died, after several painful days, in the Tower. With Overbury out of the way and Lady Essex’s previous marriage annulled they were free to wed. But what goes around comes around and eventually the murder blew sky-high and the couple were sentenced to death. After some time in the Tower both were pardoned but faded from English society. Void of both Carr and Overbury, two of his most important advisers, King James’ reign went sailing up creek.

Few remember the Overbury Affair to this day, but a detail of it has found its way into popular culture, an expression that can be traced back to Overbury’s poem ‘The Wife’: “beauty is only skin-deep.”

It is the other way around with Blue Amber: true beauty lies within.