The Analysis, Identification and Treatment of an Amber Artifact

Abstract

This study describes the identification and treatment of an amber necklace, which came into the conservation lab of Conservation Art Service, with an opaque bloom caused by a previous cleaning with a household ammonia cleanser. There was no information given its origin available from the owner. Prior to the conservation intervention, it is accepted practice to identify correctly the material the beads were made of and, depending on the results, research the past treatment of the amber to identify the most appropriate means to remove the opaque bloom. A review of the literature of both the amber conservation treatments and identification of false amber indicated little useful published work on these topics in conservation journals, particularly in the form of a single, comprehensive review. Treatment and retreatment issues have become a significant subject in conservation in the past two decades (Caldararo, 1997; Caple, 2000). The goals of treatment or “no treatment,” must be clearly discovered and developed in each case. This prompted us to assemble a list of relevant articles on various methods for testing and identifying amber. This paper also includes an overview of amber and its historical use, methods to definitively identify amber, and the identification and treatment of this particular object using infrared spectroscopy.

Keywords

• amber
• analysis
• conservation
• ft-ir