Take part in the amber workshops, where you'll grind and polish Baltic amber together under the guidance of Robert Pytlos, plenipotentiary of the Mayor of the City of Gdańsk for amber. Every participant will leave the workshop with an amber pendant they made themselves. We guarantee a good time!
Take part in the workshop and create your own amber piece. We guarantee a break from everyday duties and worries, conversations about our dreams in good company, and the chance to learn the basic methods of hand-working Baltic amber, which contains succinic acid – a feature that sets it apart from around a hundred other fossil resins. Although it is an acid, it has a positive effect on people: it stimulates, regulates, disinfects and detoxifies. Amber has a distinctive scent and is a source of energy. Rubbed by hand, it smells similarly and is friendly to people. Thanks to these properties, people have attributed healing and magical properties to it for centuries. They call it the “stone of life”, an amulet that heals, helps and protects.
Natural Baltic amber from Gdańsk and the Vistula Delta stands out for its incense-like scent and attracts flecks of dry grass and scraps of paper. This is how it becomes negatively charged electrically, but positively rich in its variety, range of colours and degree of transparency. It is a hardened resin, yet light and brittle. It acquired these characteristics over millions of years, warmed by the sun's rays in the dunes, weathering in the sands or compressed under the pressure of a glacier. No two pieces of amber are the same – each one is unique and of exceptional beauty, with a colour that changes over the years. Thanks to this, Baltic amber has for centuries been a valuable jewellery material, and it is not without reason that it is called the noble resin.
Feel this magic, touch our cultural heritage and take part in the workshop.
Aim of the workshop: Creating a piece from Baltic amber, taking a break from everyday duties, gaining positive energy, and seeing exhibitions of artistic jewellery as well as the amber and jewellery fair.
Using simple tools and materials – such as files for shaping and forming, sandpaper for grinding amber, and chamois leather, flannel and polishing pastes for the final finish – workshop participants will create a piece of Baltic amber themselves from scratch.
The meeting will be an opportunity to take a break from everyday duties and gain positive energy, as well as to visit the exceptional exhibitions of artistic jewellery prepared as part of the GDAŃSK JEWELLERY WEEK festival and the world's largest amber fair: the AMBERIF Amber and Jewellery Fair.
The workshop was designed and will be led by: Robert Pytlos, longtime secretary of the World Amber Council, awarded the Amber Circle Medal by the International Amber Association, honorary member of the National Amber Chamber of Commerce, awarded the Honorary Badge of the Polish Craft Association, author of entries on amber and amber craft in the Encyclopaedia of Gdańsk, member of the Gdańsk Museum Council.
Dates:
Number of participants: max 20 people per group