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- commodity again and large amber guilds were established to carve rosaries, vessels, religious figurines, handles, crucifixes, bottles, etc.
By the 17th and 18th centuries, northern Europe had an abundance of amber craftsmen, who brought the craft to a grand level of sophistication and perfection. They created marvellous sculptures and vessels from single pieces of amber as well as large decorative vessels, cabinets, altars, and game boards out of pieces or tiles of amber fitted together in mosaics on wooden frames. However, the best known and greatest triumph of amber art was the famous �Russian� Amber Room, an entire room made of amber including furniture and decorative objects.
This pinnacle of amber creation was commissioned by the Prussian King, Frederick I, in 1701. It took nearly ten years to complete and install the mosaic of multi coloured amber in the Main Palace in Berlin. In 1717 the Amber Room was given to Czar Peter I to commemorate the signing of the Prussian-Russian Alliance. It was first installed in the old Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, but later moved to the Catherine Palace in Pushkin (Tsarskoe Selo).
During World War II, the German advance was so rapid that they captured Pushkin before the Amber Room could be removed. The Nazis dismantled it and shipped it back to Germany, where it was to be taken to K�nigsberg Castle under the supervision of S.S. Commander Gauleiter Erich Koch. However, the Amber Room disappeared and Koch died in 1986 at age 90 in a prison for war crimes, without revealing the whereabouts of it. It is still the object of numerous searches to this day and even recently a German art dealer searching for the Amber Room, Georg Stein, was found stabbed to death. In 1979, the Russians began to create a replica of the original Amber Room from old photographs.
Throughout the 19th and into the 20th centuiy, amber has continued to be a popular material in Europe for the creation of jewellery and works of art.
Chinese Amber,
the Soul of the Tiger
According to Li Shizhen, who wrote the Bencao gangmu, a sixteenth century work on natural history �....When a tiger dies, its soul penetrates the earth, and becomes a stone. This object resembles amber, and is called hu po (tiger�s soul).� The character for tiger hu is combined with the radical yu (meaning jewel or jade), since it belongs to a class of jewels. The characters for amber in Chinese hu po have thus been derived from the term soul of the tiger�.
Amber in China is popularly regarded as a symbol of courage because it is associated with that fierce animal. In ancient times, the tiger was revered
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