Old Yellow Tibetan Amber. For thousands of years the most favoured Tibetan gemstone has been Turquoise, mined in a number of regions in Tibet and revered in a spiritual sense. Two other gemstones are highly prized in Tibet, gemstone Coral and the yellow Baltic Amber of the above necklace. In Tibet, these three gemstones are often worn simultaneously, in necklaces or as adornments for the hair or for clothing, and the colour combination in a profusion of the three, is riotous.
Gemstone Coral has been known and a favourite in Tibet for a very long time, through trade with India and with China, both of which countries appreciated the gemstone Coral of the China Sea. The yellow Amber of the Baltic, however, was scarcely known in Tibet until the arrival of the British traders of the mid 1800s; it was an instant hit. The other primary colour of Baltic Amber, “honey”, was of no interest to the Tibetans: they were beguiled by the colour fit of the yellow Amber with their Turquoise and their Coral, and the colour mesh it set up with their cloths of reds and browns and saffrons.