書評

This hardcover book of 368 full color pages is entirely dedicated to Amber.
Amber is a unique material that has fascinated people since Antiquity. Light, aromatic, delicate, with electrical properties, it is available in a range of colors ranging from translucent dark red to opaque white.
From Roman times until the 18th century, scholars were lost in conjectures about its origin, some defining it as whale sperm, others as solidified lynx urine. Its mystery appears to have medicinal virtues. The inclusions of insects or small animals that are sometimes found trapped there make amber a symbol of immortality.
Pliny the Elder guesses its nature by seeing in it the result of a vegetable resin, but it was not until 1757 that the Russian scholar Mikhail Lomonosov determined its real origin. It is a fossilized resin coming, for the objects in this catalog, from a prehistoric forest dating back approximately 30 to 40 million years, located under the Baltic Sea, between the cities of Danzig (today Gdansk in Poland) and Königsberg (today Kaliningrad in Russia), then in East Prussia.
The presence of numerous jewelry and figurines in Baltic amber in the Greek and Roman world, in the tomb of Tutankhamun, and as far as China, offers fascinating insight into the exchanges trading sites of the time, along the "amber route" from the Baltic to the Adriatic. In the 16th century, the grand master Albert of Brandenburg-Ansbach converted to Protestantism and transformed the order of the Teutonic Knights into the Duchy of Prussia. Its doctors published the first books on the extraction of amber and its medicinal properties. This is the beginning of a tremendous expansion in the trade and production of amber art objects. They became the diplomatic gifts of Prussia par excellence and were sought after to adorn the Kunstkammern of the sovereigns and princes of Europe.
The Amber: Treasures of the Baltic Sea 16th-18th centuries exhibition is the first event dedicated to this subject in France. Combining sculptures, boxes, cups and games, the immense variety of pieces presented illustrates the fascination with amber from the 16th to the 18th century and the talent of artists to highlight all the nuances of this extraordinary material. This book brings together these exceptional objects and accompanies them with a scientific study on amber, its origins, its commercial and artistic use.

Contents:

Foreword

• Amber, a mysterious material
• Treasure from the Baltic sea
• The state of the Teutonic Knights
• Ducal Prussia and Brandeburg-Prussia
• The Kingdom of Prussia
• Northern gold transformed into precious objects
• Amber and Italy
• Amber and France

• TYPOLOGY

• CATALOGUE

• Chronology, Prussia and amber 13th - 18th century
• Appendices
• Bibliography

The Engkish texts are written by Alexis Kugel and Rahul Kulka.