Cherry amber is a trade name applied historically to deep red, translucent amber, ranging in tone from a true cherry red through to a darker burgundy or garnet-like cast. It is distinct in colour from the familiar honey, cognac, or butterscotch tones associated with most Baltic amber, and although the material can be genuine fossilised resin, the name has long been used in a slippery and sometimes deceptive fashion to cover a range of products including heat-treated Baltic amber, pressed amber, and, with increasing frequency from the late nineteenth century onward, phenolic resins (Bakelite-type plastics) that simulate amber convincingly enough to have fooled generations of buyers.

Genuine cherry amber

True red amber occurs in nature but is rare. The colour deepens with age and oxidation, so amber that has spent centuries in Mediterranean, Ottoman, or Chinese collections sometimes acquires a reddened patina at the surface and through the body. More commonly, the deep red colour seen in modern cherry amber is the result of autoclave heat treatment, in which Baltic amber is held at controlled temperature and pressure for extended periods, often in an oxygen-rich environment. The treatment darkens the amber by oxidising the surface layers and by producing characteristic disc-shaped stress fractures known as sun-spangles, which are themselves a tell-tale sign of treated material. Heat-treated cherry amber is genuine amber and is widely sold as such; it is not regarded as a deception provided the treatment is disclosed.

The Ottoman and Islamic context

Cherry amber held particular status in the Ottoman world, where it was used extensively for the mouthpieces of pipes (chibouks and narghiles) and for prayer-bead strings (tesbih). The Turkish term kehribar covers amber generally, and kıraz kehribar the cherry-coloured variety. In the Ottoman trade the material was valued not only for its colour but for the belief that it would not transmit disease through shared pipe mouthpieces, a belief that gave it a practical premium in the bazaars of Istanbul, Cairo, and Damascus. Many of the carved pieces and prayer-bead strands in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century estate jewellery descend from this tradition.

The Bakelite problem

From around 1909, when Leo Baekeland's phenol-formaldehyde resin entered commercial production, imitation cherry amber made from cast phenolic resin began to appear in large quantities. By the 1920s and 1930s, Bakelite cherry-amber prayer-bead strings and necklaces were being produced in industrial volume in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, and exported to Turkey, the Levant, and East Asia. These pieces are now a century old themselves and have acquired their own collectability, particularly as Art Deco objects, but they are not amber. They can be distinguished by specific gravity (Bakelite, around 1.25 to 1.40, sinks in saturated salt solution where amber floats), by hot-point smell (phenolic plastic gives a sharp medicinal odour, amber a piney resin one), and by characteristic surface and inclusion features under magnification. Reputable dealers will test and disclose; the secondary market remains thick with mislabelled material.

Trade nomenclature today

Modern CIBJO and FTC guidelines require disclosure of treatment in amber, and the term "cherry amber" should properly be qualified as either "natural" or "heat-treated" where the latter applies. The name persists chiefly in the antique and prayer-bead trade, where the historical resonance of the term carries commercial weight, and the buyer's task is to determine which of the three categories - natural, treated, or imitation - the piece in hand belongs to.