Yucatan’s Surprising Stores of Amber Jewelry : The fossilized resin is sometimes passed over by tourists looking for silver and turquoise.

Some of my most treasured childhood memories come from the rainy days when my mother would bring out an old wooden box and allow us to greedily handle Aunt Sonya’s jewels.

Sonya had been a ballerina with the Kirov Ballet in St. Petersburg before the Russian Revolution--a real White Russian who spoke English with a thick accent long after she abandoned her homeland to open a ballet school in Hollywood.

Along the way, she collected a lot of jewelry, but the piece that most captivated us was a necklace made of amber: translucent, yellowish-bronze chunks of fossilized tree resin strung together in a long strand.

The necklace had graced Sonya’s neck in the early part of this century and in the mid-1960s it still glowed in our moist hands like the light of expiring stars. We were only children but we were captivated by the myths that had long endowed amber with good fortune and curative powers.

For years afterward, amber conjured up for me images of cold, birch-covered steppes, beautiful, doomed ballerinas and a lifestyle that the modern world has long since vanquished.

So you can imagine my surprise when I traveled to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula this spring and found the stuff of my childhood fantasies spread out among the wares of artisans and street vendors.

Like many people, I thought amber came from more exotic, far-off places. Likewise, when I considered Mexican jewelry, I thought of hammered silver and turquoise, with maybe a little red or black coral thrown in. Little did I know that long before Columbus ventured west, the indigenous people of what is today Mexico cherished amber and adorned themselves with jewelry fashioned from it, which they endowed with supernatural powers for healing and banishing evil.

Today, Mexico remains one of the few places in the world where amber--the up to 50-million year-old petrified resin of pine trees--is found in large quantities. (The Baltic Sea is better known for its amber, but New Zealand, Burma, China, Romania and the Dominican Republic are also producers.)

Most Mexican amber comes from the mines in the southeastern state of Chiapas, but artisans buy it and fashion it into jewelry to sell throughout the Yucatan. Yet wander into the majority of the jewelry stores in Merida, the Yucatan’s gracious colonial capital, and you’ll find little amber jewelry. Mainstream merchants prefer to offer tourists predictable silver and turquoise.

It wasn’t until Sunday, when we ventured into the Plaza de Santa Lucia--one of Merida’s squares where craftspeople from all over sell hand-embroidered huipils (the white Yucatecan dresses with the colorful floral borders) and hamacas (hammocks made from the strong local fiber henequen)--that my husband and I found Luz del Carmen.

Luz and her daughter stood behind a table spread with hand-made jewelry that included a hefty selection of amber necklaces, earrings and brooches. Prices ranged from $10 to $300, and many of Luz’s designs incorporated silver and semi-precious stones from coral to obsidian. But simple amber earrings could be had for about $35-$50.

Luz grew up in Tuxtla Gutierrez--the capital of the state of Chiapas, just south of Yucatan. A professionally trained artist, she graduated from the Instituto de la Artesanea Chiapaneca, she said proudly, but moved to Merida when she married a Yucatecan man.

Unable to afford the rent of a retail store, she turned a room in her house into an artist’s studio where she designs and makes all of her jewelry. She buys much of her amber from the mines of Simojovel in Chiapas.

It takes Luz several hours to prepare the amber and several more to fashion the silver into intricate designs. First, she chips the amber into a rough shape with a knife. She then gives it a more precise shape by grinding it against steel files and sandpaper. Last, it is polished with gasoline.

“Amber has a long tradition in Mexican culture,” Luz said. “It contains good energy, like crystals, and we use it for many things.”

Indeed, amber has long had folkloric properties of restitution. In Poland and Russia, loose granules of amber were ground into alcohol and drunk to stave off rheumatism and colds. Amber was found at Stonehenge and in ancient Greek tombs. In Biblical times, a slave could be purchased for the price of an amber statue.

In Mexico, some Mayan groups made bracelets of amber to protect their children from the evil eye. Amber beads and earrings dating from about AD 1100 were part of the treasure found in tombs in the ancient city of Monte Alban near Oaxaca.

Archeologists also use amber to trace ancient Mayan and Aztec trade routes across Central America. The trade magazine, Lapidary Journal, reports that amber was among the tributes required from southern coastal towns each year by Montezuma.

Indigenous amber jewelry designs include red currant berries, feathers, scarabs, raindrops, fangs, triangles, leaves, flowers and tears. After the Spanish conquest, the Indians added feet, hands, hearts, crosses and other shapes common on Christian medals.

Amber was once commonly classified with mineral gemstones, but is now known to be a fossil resin--mostly from the pine trees that covered vast areas of the Earth from 10 to 50 million years ago. Mexican amber dates from the late Oligocene to early Miocene period, (25 to 35 million years old), making it about half as old as Baltic amber, according to Lapidary Journal.

Amber is hard and brittle and generally has a yellow cast, although it can be golden orange, deep red, clear, brown, milky white, pink or black. It can also be opaque or translucent, depending on the kind and purity. Amber with insects in it is especially prized and valuable--both because of its rarity and because it allows scientists a window into the past since the creature’s molecular structure is preserved. Some pieces in museums or private collections contain entire small creatures such as newts, mollusks, lizards, spiders and flies. Indeed, entomologists have used amber to help classify up to 70 species of insect.

Visitors to Tuxtla Gutierrez will find that merchants tantalize you with amber in the local square, offering it in chunks wrapped in brown paper. You can also go to the Bazar Ishcanal, which displays crafts from Chiapas and is located on the first floor of the Plaza de Instituciones, which also houses the state tourism bureau.

To find Chiapas amber, miners search loose terrain where landslides are a constant concern. Amber is also gathered by farmers after it washes out of the hillsides following the rainy season.

Experts say tourists should be wary of fake amber. While government shops might offer a safer bet than a street-corner merchant, there are several ways to test amber to make sure it’s the real thing.

In “Treasury of Jewels and Gems,” author Nona Curran suggests rubbing a piece of amber over the palm of your hand and then holding it over a piece of tissue paper. A genuine piece of amber will stick to the paper as a magnet does a metal object. (The word electricity evolved from electron, the Greek name for amber.)

Yet another characteristic of authentic amber is the sharp odor of pine resin that occurs when you rub amber against an abrasive surface or place it against heated metal. Amber also dissolves slowly in alcohol. Of course, some of these tests are obviously not practical since they will also ruin the just-purchased jewelry.

Artisans who travel throughout the Yucatan peninsula ensure that amber jewelry can be found in many resort areas. One is the former fishing village of Playa del Carmen, about a 45-minute drive south of Cancun.

If you’re staying in Cancun, Playa del Carmen is a lovely day trip even if you aren’t interested in amber. It has small, funky hotels and restaurants on the ocean, pristine white shores and a sleepy, bohemian feel--down to the coffeehouse called Sabor that sells home-made granola and Kahlua cheesecake each day.

One shop that sells amber jewelry--plus everything from woven Guatemalan shorts to batik dresses from Bali--is called El Baul Boutique. El Baul is located on Playa del Carmen’s main drag, Avenue 5.

Owner Esthela Barragan has an unusual selection of locally made amber jewelry. A bracelet made of two curving pieces of black coral that fasten with silver latches has an amber stone in the center the size of a half-dollar. It costs $320.

A heavily-worked silver necklace studded with amber and other semi-precious jewels and matching earrings goes for about $225. Another set of earrings, with amethyst, crystal, amber and wrought silver, sells for about $47.

Many of these are unique designs and some of the more fantastic are made by a Rasta transplant from Brazil named Jorge, El Baul’s saleswoman said.

Each evening, Jorge and other merchants line Avenue 5 to sell their wares. One hot May night, as the smell of grilling seafood wafted up the street, we met Lucia Contreras, who learned jewelry-making from street artisans in Mexico City and moved to Playa del Carmen only three months before.

She stood before a table displayed with a variety of amber jewelry, some unadorned, others set off by coral, amethyst and crystal, which is also big.

Another merchant suggested we buy a piece as a souvenir of our trip but I had already purchased some smoky-brown amber earrings. They dangled from my ears, my own private talisman.

Amber Artisans

On most Sundays, Luz del Carmen can be found in the Plaza Municipal. Her home and workshop is Calle 16, 202 C between 23rd and 25th streets in Colonia Garcia Gineres, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. Prices range from $10 to $300.

El Baul Boutique is at Avenue 5 between 4 and 6 North, Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo, Mexico. Prices range from $50 to $350.

The Plaza de Instituciones is located in the State Tourist Office of Chiapas, la Av. Pte 1482, Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico.