Three Baltic Ambers, Coral & Glass necklace. The three Amber beads, all originating from the Baltic regions, have different stories. The centre bead, facetted honey-coloured, is from an English late Victorian graduated strand; the other honey-coloured bead, ovoid, is out of a string of such ovoid beads from Poland in the 1950s/1960s; the yellow Amber bead is presumed to be quite new, for it was out of a small collection of a dozen or so unfinished strands of this yellow Amber, stumbled upon in a shop near Bangkok’s Weekend Market a few years back; in the time it took to get two strands back to the city centre, have them tested as the genuine article, and get back to the shop, all the rest had been sold, to a European buyer.
The four gem-quality orange Corals in the above necklace, two flanking the centre Amber and two a little beyond the other two Ambers, are old handcut beads from South India.
The old glass beads that make up most of the necklace length are from a mid 1900s thick ropey multi-strand necklace from remote Nagaland in the far north-east of India.