Amber Listserv / Amber Care

[Lester Sayetta]

Well, John, I cannot imagine what happened to all of that beautiful Dominican amber described by Rafael Jie and Chiang Wu.  I would say that 90% of my collection, which I referred to in a previous letter, is the Dominican amber.

To repeat myself, my collection has been kept in boxes and cloth bags for over 40 years, with no change in color or The slightest trace of crazing.

 I would also add,  that in my humble opinion , any evidence of coating of the amber with epoxy or anything else, detracts from the original character of the amber.

Best

Lester
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: JOHN FUDALA 
  To: Maury Bramson 
  Cc: amber at ambericawest.com 
  Sent: Friday, March 09, 2007 11:27 PM
  Subject: Re: Amber Listserv / Amber Care


  Since you have most pieces of Dominican amber, I will quote from the book by Rafael Jie and Chiang Wu: "Dominican Amber and its inclusions".

  "I have witnessed some situations in which a million-dollars-worth of amber became worthless, with no hope of repair. A 1965 amber collection, for example, was badly damaged because the owner kept it in open trays, exposed to light and, worse still, to air currents. As a result of evaporation and oxidation, the surfaces became crazed and the amber turned dark red and obscured the inclusions. This was quite a waste, because some pieces of the collection had been reported in the National Geographic magazine and Geo magazine. The loss of such a collection is a sad story in the history of Dominican amber. There was another case in which the owner was extremely careful. All the amber pieces were well polished and waxed, tightly sealed in black plastic bags and securely locked in a safety box. The amber was found to have turned brown four years later. The owner found that the problem was improper waxing. The wax contained cleaning chemicals, which caused the damage to the collection. Luckily the amber was saved after the wax was removed and the amber repolished."

  What might add to the mystery is that the Dominican mines do not produce consistent material- some yield a mix of amber and copal, some copal only. Perhaps the pieces prone to crazing are "copal"?

  Many scientists have turned to coating valuable pieces with epoxy resins. Clear, virtually invisible and hopefully durable for decades, at least. I believe in this listserve archives there should be posts on this referring to methods used by Grimaldi (?), the Hoffeinses and Hans Henderickx.
  Hans stabilises valuable pieces of Madagascar copal this way.

  John


  On 3/9/07, Maury Bramson < bramson at math.umn.edu> wrote:

    I have recently begun an amber collection (mostly Dominican), and have
    some questions about care/preservation.  Hopefully, some of you will be
    kind enough to share some of your experiences.  I have gone through 
    literature on this, but still have questions.

    What causes the crazing in amber and how can one avoid it?  Exposure to
    sun and wind are bad and are easy to avoid.  Is it enough to keep the
    amber in a dark place inside the standard small rectangular plastic boxes? 
    Is there still too much air there that can dry the specimen out?  Or is it
    the oxygen, or maybe its most active component, ozone, that causes the
    problems?  Is "stale" air (with the ozone having dissipated) okay?  Will 
    packing in cotton to remove most of the air help?  Are the answers to
    these questions really known, or is there mostly just folklore?

    How important is temperature?  Will indoor summer temperatures in the 80+ 
    range cause more rapid decay?  Is the colder, the better (down to 50 or
    so) accurate?

    One can go through extra effort to preserve amber, such as keeping the
    surrounding air moist and perhaps applying a sealant to the amber.  Both 
    mean more effort, and I'm not sure I'm in a position to do the latter.
    (In addition to safety issues, the latter would presumably involve a
    certain amount of trial and error, and possibly ruining specimens.)  How 
    important is this?

    What do museums do to preserve their amber?  Do they all more or less
    follow the same procedure?

    Under normal circumstances, what is a reasonable expectation for the
    lifetime of amber, once it has been excavated? 


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