713 - VEB Ostsee-Schmuck Ribnitz-Damgarten, amber necklace with large pendant and fly inclusion, GDR

VEB Ostsee-Schmuck Ribnitz-Damgarten, amber necklace with large pendant and fly inclusion, GDR Amber. Necklace by VEB Ostsee-Schmuck Ribnitz-Damgarten of polished sea amber beads of olive shape and elongated rhombic shape, interspersed with small disc beads, strung as a continuous strand; at the centre, as pendant, a large, irregularly shaped and polished amber with cloudy areas and inclusions, drilled transversely at the top and threaded onto the necklace; the second bead to the left of the pendant with the inclusion of a fly, the head, wings and legs of the insect discernible. Good condition, one amber bead at the back repaired. L. 76 cm. VEB Ostsee-Schmuck in Ribnitz-Damgarten grew out of an old craft workshop which, after nationalisation, was expanded into one of the most important jewellery manufacturers of the GDR with up to 650 employees; it produced jewellery of silver and amber. Amber is the fossil resin of pine forests that formed around 50 million years ago in the Tertiary; the main deposit lies in the Samland, and sea amber is still washed ashore on the North Sea and Baltic coasts today, above all at the time of the winter storms. For the people of antiquity it was the “Gold of the North”: as early as the Neolithic, amber was worked into beads and small figures, often worn as amulets, and in the first millennium BC it travelled as a coveted trade good along the Amber Roads from the Baltic to the advanced civilisations of the Mediterranean. The Greeks called it “Elektron” because it attracts small particles of dust and paper, and this word gave rise to the term electricity; Ovid called amber the “tears of the gods”. Insects and plant parts enclosed in amber, so-called inclusions, are particularly sought after by collectors of amber jewellery and natural amber.