Before a rough amber lump changes into a beautiful pendant or a ring it must go through a long process. At the beginning, extracted or bought amber is selected and sorted out. To make the best use of the raw material each amber lump, even the smallest one, is examined carefully, and such evaluation decides about the future of the individual amber lumps, and what will happen to them. The biggest lumps, called curios, are immediately sent to the warehouse at once without any treatment, becoming a material for a work of art or become a ready-made product for collectors. The rest of the raw material is segregated according to its size, shape and tenacity, and then sent to further stages of its treatment. The first stage is grinding an outer weather-beaten layer. The lumps destined to the production of semi-finished products are cut to achieve desired shapes with a stone cutting saw using water-coolant. Cut angular pieces of amber are further treated in ball- and cabochon-makers, where during grinding with appropriately selected and cambered diamond shields they change into spherical beads or classical jewellery “eyes”. The elements of amber achieved due to these treatments are polished manually or in polishing barrels. The final product of these processes are ready-to-use elements which are assembled manually or with the help of simple jewellery tools into silver or gold settings.
