NOT TODAY, EBAY (15)

By: Joshua Glenn
September 23, 2024

One in a series of posts via which Josh Glenn will share recent examples of stuff that he was tempted to purchase from eBay… but, heroically, didn’t.

AMBER Round Bead With INSECT DRILLED For Prayer Bracelet Necklace Baltic.

US $29.45

Last year, I published a series at HILOBROW’s sister site, SEMIOVOX, titled COLOR CODEX. The series — to which I invited my semiotician colleagues from around the world to contribute — explored the unexpected associations evoked for each of us by specific colors found in the material world. One of the installments, by Serdar Paktin, a semiotician from Turkey (now in London), was devoted to “Ambient Amber.”

I’ll let Serdar explain, in the following excerpt from his essay:

I first consciously engaged with this colour as a seven-year-old child, when I became fascinated with an elderly uncle’s prayer beads — which were made of amber stones in which insects were trapped. I was mesmerized by the beads’ transparency, and their ability to absorb and contain life. I wanted to own the beads, but they were too precious to be given to a child, and I didn’t use beads to pray anyway.

Amber — fossilized tree resin — is the colour of honey, and emits a lucid glow of a yellowish hue. When light hits an amber stone, that bright colour can imbibe you just as easily as the resin itself imbibes a fly or an ant. The glow can absorb you and all life around you into a golden moment that will last forever.

I was captivated by this essay, and every now and I then I scour eBay for a string of amber prayer beads containing insects… with the intention of gifting them to Serdar. (But would I have the strength to part with them? I wonder.) You can find resin versions of this sort of artifact for under $100… but the actual amber prayer beads with insects go for over $600, usually. Which makes me think that maybe the way to go is just a single bead….

So far, I’ve resisted the urge.

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NOT TODAY, EBAY (15)

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