When autumn arrives on Poland's Baltic coast, the first storms of the season are churning up a prehistoric treasure on the sandy shore. Here, amber is worth about 13 dollars a gram, which explains why some people refer to it as 'Baltic gold'.
Watch the video and answer the questions below. Decide if the statements are True or False.
1.The Amber hunters along Poland's Baltic Sea coast provide enough amber for market demands in Gdansk.
a. True
b. False
2.Gdansk is the world's number one city for amber.
a. True
b. False
3. Amber has more tones and colours than any other
material.
a. True
b. False
Transcript and Answers:
In November, amber hunters scour the beaches along Poland's Baltic Sea coast. Wlodek Janowski has been fishing out this fossilized resin known locally as 'Baltic Gold' for forty years. A gold rush of sorts comes as the first autumn storms wash up amber, from the sea floor onto the shore.
"It's a good day's catch! This piece will sell for 80 zloty and these for about 50 a piece, and that big one will be at least 150. If you find two or three pieces weighing 200 or 300 grams each, it’s a few thousand zloty in just one day."
But the amber collected by hunters like Janowski is just a fraction of what the market needs. Poland's Baltic port city of Gdansk is the world's amber capital, and demand here for this ancient treasure is high. Most of the amber in this jewellery shop is imported from the nearby Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. But these gems are entirely crafted in Gdansk, where expertise in amber work stretches back to before the Middle Ages.
"The tradition of amber work was totally lost under communism in the former Soviet countries but even then in Poland the amber workshops were preserved. Even though access to amber was limited, craftsmen could still develop their skills and traditions."
In Gdansk, this man is known as the king of amber. At 66, Lucjan Myrta has devoted his life to working wonders with Baltic gold. In total, he's transformed over three hundred tonnes of raw amber into priceless works of art. His piece de resistance is this Biblically-themed treasure chest. At nearly 3 metres high, and weighing in at eight tonnes, it took 12 years to complete.
"No other material has such a rich variety of tones and colours. Amber has more than 300 variations! Amber is the hero of my work. It decides for me what I'll do, it shapes my ideas and the designs I create."
Having already been on exhibition in Poland's historic southern city of Krakow, plans are afoot to see Myrta's entire collection on display in Russia, before future stops, possibly in Saudi Arabia and France.
1. b
2. a
3. a
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