I grew up on a coast where amber washes up after a storm. My father walked the tideline at dawn and I went with him — and I was the one who found it, because on a beach of grey wet stones, amber is the only thing the light goes through.
I came over at nineteen with a coffee tin of it. That tin still sits on my bench.
For thirty years women have brought me their mother's beads to ask if they're real, and more often than not I've had to tell them no. Nobody can make amber. So everybody fakes it.
That's why I cut every piece here myself — and why I'd rather you tested yours before you believed a word of it. Drop it in salt water. Real amber floats.
What's in my drawers is the last of it. When a colour runs out, I have no way of getting more.
— Astrid