English Baltic Amber necklace, early 1900s, rounds and diamond-shapes alternating, all twenty-two beads hand-cut, all fine examples of the translucent honey-coloured variety of Amber from the Baltic Sea region, all linked together with hand-worked Silver leading to a lovely heart-shaped centre Amber.
In the early 1900s England’s increasing wealth, though still in large part in the hands of few, was spreading itself around more and a new echelon of society was on the move, a sort of lower middle class, with some disposable income and higher levels of expectation.
The above English Baltic Amber necklace was created for this new market: a necklace of real gemstones -relatively inexpensive but real, known and appreciated- and Silver, a noble metal, not base.
Note the round-wrapped Silver wire linkage at each end of the Ambers: effective as linkage but definitely a method chosen for its lower cost.
The Silver spring clasp on this necklace is new, the only new note in this century-old piece; the original was a mean little spring clasp, same type as this new one, but half the size, dinted and past its use-by date. All the rest of the necklace is as original and in very good condition.