The Gold of the Kurpie Region

Translucent, it reflects sunlight when slick with rain; striped and yellowish, you can feel its warmth against your bare foot as you traipse across a field. If you hold it in your hand and put it to your nose, you will detect its faint amber scent, as if sunlight itself was captured within the stone. After a downpour, you will see ribbons of fine, rainbow-colored dew hanging in the air where the ground underneath is rich in amber.

From the earth, not the sea

Amber, the fossilised resin of conifer trees, is found primarily in the Baltic Sea. Deposits have also been located away from the coast – Kashubia, the northern part of the Lublin region, the Masurian Lakeland, the Tuchola Forest, and the Kurpie region – a trace of the sea that once reached far inland.

In the ground, the resin typically appears in amber bands. The largest deposits have been found one or two metres deep in pits and wetlands, wrapped in greyish loam, sometimes in the beds of rivers and streams, in muddy pastures, and peat meadows. In marshland, its presence was suggested by water taking on the colour of rust.

The most valuable deposits come in the form of bands or veins (about a metre wide, and twenty to thirty metres long); diggers looking for amber would strike the ground with a pitchfork or a shovel to check for veins. In the sandy earth of the Kurpie region, which carries barely any rocks or boulders, striking something hard was taken as a sign that a pocket or a whole vein of amber was waiting beneath the topsoil. Sometimes, beads were found entirely by accident – when tilling the earth, digging ditches or wells, or working clay pits or quarries.

Amberers

In Polish, professional amber prospectors were called bursztyniarze, or amberers. In the early nineteenth century, the Kurpie region was home to several dozen or more amber mines (sources offer figures ranging from 30 to 130); sprawling pits left by the prospectors still exist today in the woods outside Kadzidło.

In the early twentieth century, the popularity of the profession prompted the emergence of companies, commonly called osmany, dealing with the mining and sale of amber. The largest manufactories that processed the extracted stone were in Myszyniec, Ostrołęka, Łomża, Nowogród, and Przasnysz, as well as in their surrounding towns and villages; their products were sold both in the Kingdom of Poland and in Prussia. The workshops were headed by locals and traders. The Bernstein manufactory, established in 1798, enjoyed continued prominence in the field up until World War I, and was widely renowned for its sophisticated products made from honey and green-hued amber (the latter called kapuściak, a reference to the green color of cabbage), which were received to great acclaim at the 1878 World Fair in Paris.

Before states began regulating the amber industry, there were no restrictions on who could mine the honey-hued beads, which encouraged people to try their luck. Today, deposits of the mineraloid are located using thermal imaging cameras.

Spinning the amber

Processing amber began with removing the bark, the rough, weathered exterior, by washing the stone and then using a file. Next, using a blade, the amberer would carve the beads into the desired shape. This required a variety of simple tools and resources: clay bowls, water, oil, soap, sometimes fine sand to polish flat surfaces, plates from coarse sandstone (donkey stones), marble plates for water polishing, ash, amber dust, river and marsh loams, dry and wet clay, chalk powder, brick dust, glass shards, and scraps of goat and sheepskin, broadcloth, and flannel to use when polishing with paste, kerosene, or pipe ash. More recently, the process began including pumices, sandpaper, and a range of files to polish out bumps, make grooves or indentations, or widen holes. Brushes of all sizes, used to clear out dust, were also an essential part of the toolkit.

The process became more efficient with the introduction of manually powered machine tools – like lathes and grinders. Thread holes were bored using a simple, makeshift hand drill tipped with a steel auger.

In the nineteenth century, artisans from the Kurpie region adopted the kółko – a modified spinning wheel traditionally used for spinning yarn from linen, hemp, or wool fibres – refitted to grind amber nuggets down to the desired shape; the modified wheel is still used today. Instead of the elements used for spinning yarn, the amber nugget is mounted on a special rod by the spindle and then ground and shaped using a glass shard. In the past, these shards were usually sourced from glass oil lampshades; later, they usually came from filament lightbulbs, a practice still used today. In the end, the amber is buffed, preferably with sheepskin with its natural oils, and then using felt with a little chalk paste. The smallest beads require two hours of work, medium ones need closer to five. Shaping and polishing the biggest may take anywhere from two to three days. To craft the nugget into the most desirable flat shape, each amberer must themselves find their feel for how to hold and turn the bead while grinding.

Beads, rosaries, and brooches

In the Kurpie region, the honey-hued, reddish, yellow-honey, and bright green kapuściak amber varieties were considered the most appealing. Bead necklaces, an essential part of the traditional Kurpie women’s folk outfit, were usually the most in-demand amber product in the region. They featured distinctive, flat beads and additions such as small crucifixes.

Crafting a necklace required hundreds of individual beads, which would then be selected for matching colour. Necklaces considered the prettiest had all the beads in a similar hue and arranged by size, with the biggest in the centre and shrinking outwards, preferably made from a milky variety of amber.

Amber was also used to make buttons for Kurpie jackets (either flat or with a stud), rosaries, crucifixes, snuff boxes, glasses, cigarette holders, thimbles, rings, inkwells, cane handles, and smoking pipes or their parts. From larger stones, artisans would craft mugs and cups. Amber was also used to make votive offerings, hung up in churches as an expression of appreciation for God’s grace. Flattened balls or discs were hung on ribbons to be used as teethers. Amber goods were sold at markets, fairs, and feast day festivals, with the most prominent held in the town of Myszyniec. Amber nuggets were also used as replacement currency in times of crisis, when physical money lost purchasing power.

The traditional Kurpie necklaces, with beads made from actual amber and ground into their trademark flattened shape, would often cost as much as a cow, and only the wealthiest local women could afford them. Worn in odd numbers – either three or five – the necklaces (the larger of which could weigh up to a kilogram) telegraphed the material status of both maidens and wives, or their families. Today, necklaces like that carry a price tag of over 10,000 złoty each. It was believed that a well-off maiden should have at least three necklaces, which would serve as her dowry. Amber was passed down in Kurpie families from mothers to daughters, often for generations. If there were no female heirs to pass them on to, or they fell out of favour with their older owners, amber stones or ornaments would be buried with the dead. According to Adam Chętnik, a researcher focused on the Kurpie region, before the war, local women could have had as many as 100,000 individual necklaces.

To this day, ornamental Kurpie amber necklaces are still acclaimed and celebrated in the region and beyond.

Prominent amberers

Prior to World War II, there were as many as 30 amberers active in the Kurpie region. After the conflict ended, few names remained. According to local legend, the most acclaimed of them was Wiktor Deptuła of Surowe, who died in 1975. He famously crafted the amber necklaces for the Mazowsze National Folk Song and Dance Ensemble and the Kurpianka Folk Ensemble from Kadzidło. In 1969, the National Museum of Ethnography produced a film about the artist, called “Wiktor Deptuła – bursztyniarz [Wiktor Deptuła – Amber Artist]”.

After the war, the number of amber artisans began waning. Women in the region rarely wore their traditional folk outfits, thus amber necklaces lost their place as markers of family care, status, and Kurpie tradition. Fashion also changed, and amber was no longer an indispensable part of a future bride’s dowry.

Presently, only two families continue the generational traditions of amber craftsmanship – the family of Tadeusz Konopka from Kadzidło, and that of Zdzisław Bziukiewicz of Wach (the owner of the private Kurpie Museum in Wach).

Tadeusz Konopka went into the amber industry because he wanted the women in his family – his mother, wife, and aunt (the Kurpie artist Czesława Konopka, famous in Poland and abroad, 1925–1993) – to own the finest amber ornaments in the region. To that end, he modified his grandmother’s spinning wheel and began crafting goods out of amber in 1969. He’s still working as an artisan to this day. His wife, Stanisława, also learned to use the spinning wheel, but she mostly assists Tadeusz in the final stages of the crafting process, meticulously buffing the fruits of his labours with felt. Thanks to her husband’s skill, she now owns the loveliest necklaces in the Kurpie region.

In the 1990s, Konopka travelled to Germany to showcase his spinning-wheel-amber-grinding technique, unique to the region and unknown in the wider world. His wares are on display at the Adam Chętnik Open-Air Kurpie Museum in Nowogród, the National Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw, the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in Łódź, the North-Masovian Museum in Łomża, and the Amber Museum in Gdańsk. In 2023, the latter hosted an exhibition called “The Amber Crafter of the Kurpie Forest.”

The works of Tadeusz Konopka are acclaimed for their meticulous craftsmanship and precise attention to detail. He’s known for particularly striking ornaments: necklaces of milky amber and smaller accessories, including heart pendants, crucifixes, beads, and earrings. Konopka wastes not even a shred of the precious stone. The amber dust produced by grinding is mixed with beeswax, which he and his wife mould by hand into candles. The resulting gromnice, or “thunder candles,” and the coiling Saint Blaise candles (according to folk belief, they help ward off sore throats) are taken to church on February 3, the feast day of Saint Blaise.

Zdzisław Bziukiewicz first began training to be an amber artisan when he was a child, as the Bziukiewicz family has been in the industry for generations. His father learned the art of spinning-wheel grinding when he apprenticed for the aforementioned Wiktor Deptuła, and later worked as an artisan for over 70 years, starting off crafting pipes and cigarette cases with his own father, Konstanty. Later, the family business was taken over by Zdzisław. He works with mined amber to create a variety of goods: from brooches and traditional Kurpie necklaces (with beads shaped into spheres, more natural-looking nuggets, leaves, and plums) to original jewellery and accessories (including crucifixes, earrings, clasps, pendants, rosaries, and bracelets). He’s also been deeply involved with teaching the art of amber craft, holding workshops in schools, cultural centres, and museums.

Both artists are also known to be fond of a challenge: in 2016, they participated in a project called Tradycyjne trendy. Nauka mody u polskich twórców ludowych [Traditional Trends. Learning Fashion from Polish Folk Artists], organised by the National Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw, where they taught young artists the traditional Kurpie art of grinding amber.

The phenomenon of amber

When rubbed, the surface of amber develops a negative electrostatic charge. Thanks to its "electrostatic properties, amber is also believed to have therapeutic qualities. Worn around the neck, it was supposed to help with all sorts of throat ailments – and children were often given larger beads to bolster their resilience and immunity. Amber was also believed to alleviate ulcers and prevent headaches and strokes. Amber bracelets allegedly calmed the nerves, while amber dust mixed with cold water was used in treating injuries, fractures, and internal bleeding. In the Kurpie region, amber was mixed in with incense for church services. Some believed that smoke from burned amber dust helped alleviate labour pains and warded off germs and disease. Older Kurpie women often wore their amber necklaces as part of their everyday garb.

Heritage

In 2022, Polish authorities included the amber industry of the Kurpie Forest on the national list of intangible cultural heritage, recognising the region’s unique – or even endemic – craft. Infused with tradition and ages-old artisanal techniques, this singular art has remained mostly unchanged over the centuries, unlike the amber industry on the Baltic coast, which has adopted more specialist techniques and equipment. The amber craft of the Kurpie Forest has survived thanks to the determination of two families, standing today as a testament to the unique nature of Kurpie region amber – the only one of its kind in the world.