Amber by Rachel King

Author:Rachel King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books

69 Fulani girl wearing traditional hair decorations, Burkina Faso, West Africa.

The dainty beads of Queen Woyzaro Terunesh’s necklaces are unusual. European beads for export to Africa were generally much larger than beads consumed in Europe. In typically unfavourable language, an Englishwoman living in Sierra Leone in 1841 described the wearing there of ‘lumps of amber nearly as large as a hen’s egg’.91 In her 1858 account of a Danzig (Gdańsk) amber merchant’s shop, the Polish poet Jadwiga Łuszczewska also used ‘lump’ to describe beads which appeared close to amber in its natural state. She saw them ready for sale, ‘arranged so that the largest was in the centre of the string, and the others decreasing in size to the ends’, and described such a necklace pejoratively as a ‘colossal festoon of shapeless weights’. The merchant told her that beads like this were his main source of income and that they were destined for Africa.92

Today, amber beads continue to play a role in many places on the African continent. Many are, however, actually made of durable phenolic resin, of which Bakelite, a product developed in Europe in the period between the First and Second World Wars, is one type. Such ‘plastic’ beads can be adapted, reshaped and decorated, often with drills and hot needles, in ways that real amber could not withstand. These patterns and shapes, which are often particular to the culture in which they are used, are also telltale signs that the material is a manufactured amber substitute (illus. 70).93

Amber also plays a role where there is an African diaspora. Echoes of West African practices continue in Cuba. Beaded necklaces are a vital component of rituals associated with Santería, a religion melding Yoruba orisha (deity) worship and Spanish Catholicism. The necklaces for the orishas Obba, Ochosi, Ochun and Osain conventionally need amber beads, although amber-coloured glass beads, or even jet, are sometimes acceptable.94

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