Free U.S. shipping over $100 · ★ 5.0 on Google (291 reviews)
Close-up of a hand-carved genuine Baltic amber chess piece by KIZIMA®

The Time Behind One Piece: An Honest Look at the Process

by Elena Kizima in The Amber Journal

People ask us this more than almost anything else: how long does it actually take to make one piece? There isn't a single answer — a choker takes an afternoon, a chess set can take weeks — but the honest version of that answer says a lot about why handmade amber costs what it costs, and why we've never tried to speed it up.

It starts before anyone picks up a tool

Before a single cut is made, a piece of Baltic amber has already been sorted, matched, and set aside for the right project. Color, clarity, and the natural shape of the raw stone all decide what it can become. For a simple bead necklace, this stage might take minutes. For a matched chess set — thirty-two pieces that need to read as one family of color and grain — sorting alone can take hours spread across several sittings, long before the amber is shaped at all.

Cutting, shaping, and carving

This is the part people picture when they imagine a workshop, and it's usually the longest. A pendant might be shaped and smoothed in under an hour. A carved figure — a chess knight, a rune symbol, a checker piece with any kind of relief detail — takes considerably longer, since amber is worked slowly by hand to avoid cracking or overheating the stone. A full 32-piece chess set, cut and carved one piece at a time in Brooklyn, can represent many hours of bench work before a single piece is polished.

Polishing and the checks before it ships

Polishing is where a piece either comes alive or doesn't. Amber is buffed in stages, from a dull cut surface to a clear, warm shine, with time built in between passes so the stone isn't stressed by heat. After polishing, every piece is checked by hand for cracks, clarity, and finish before it's approved to leave the workshop — a step we don't shortcut, even when an order is waiting.

Why the time is part of the piece

None of this is meant to sound dramatic — it's simply what handmade means in practice. A necklace and a chess set are not the same undertaking, and we'd rather be honest about that difference than pretend every piece takes the same afternoon. The time is part of what makes each KIZIMA® piece what it is: not mass-produced, not rushed, made by hand in Brooklyn from genuine Baltic amber.

You can see the full range of what comes out of that process at kizima.us.

Tags: Baltic Amber Behind the Scenes Craftsmanship Made in USA

Related Posts

Made in USA Baltic amber domino set by KIZIMA, Brooklyn, New York

Baltic Amber and America's Story of Making Things by Hand

On Constitution Day, a look at how Baltic amber found a home in American craftsmanship, and what "Made in the USA" means at a small Brooklyn workshop.

Learn more
Made in USA Baltic amber domino set by KIZIMA

The Amber Domino Set: Craftsmanship in Every Tile

Dominoes are one of the oldest tile games still played today, and at KIZIMA® we make ours the way the game deserves: cut, matched, and finished by hand from genuine Baltic amber. Each set starts as raw stone and ends as twenty-eight tiles that carry real weight, real color, and no two exactly alike. A Familiar Game in an Unfamiliar Material Most domino sets are wood, bone, or plastic. Ours are amber — fossilized tree resin between thirty and fifty million years old, sourced from the Baltic coast and worked in our Brooklyn studio. The material changes the game before a single tile is placed: amber carries natural inclusions, subtle color shifts, and a warmth to the touch that manufactured materials can't imitate. It's a small object with a long history behind it. Twenty-Eight Tiles, One at a Time Building a set means selecting pieces of amber close enough in tone to read as a set, then cutting, shaping, and polishing each tile individually. The pip markings are set into the stone rather than printed on it, so they hold up to handling for years. Because amber varies piece to piece, no two KIZIMA® domino sets come out quite the same — the honey, cognac, and amber tones shift slightly across the tiles, which is part of what makes a hand-assembled set different from a mass-produced one. Built for the Table, Not the Shelf We make our domino set for people who actually play — a family game night, a gift for someone who collects handmade objects, or a piece that simply looks right sitting on a desk between rounds. It's a game set first, but it's also a small display of what Baltic amber can be shaped into beyond jewelry, which is where most people first encounter it. The tiles are sized to sit comfortably in the hand, and the finished set comes ready for regular play rather than for a display case. As the only Baltic amber manufacturer in America, we handle every step of the process ourselves, from sorting the raw stone to the final polish, so a set like this never leaves the studio until it's ready. You can see the full domino set, along with the rest of our amber game collection, at kizima.us.

Learn more
Baltic Amber Heart Pendant Choker by KIZIMA

Setting Amber in Metal: Why the Mount Makes the Piece

An amber pendant is really two materials working together: the stone, and the metal that holds it. It's easy to focus on the amber itself — its color, its clarity, the way light moves through it — but the setting is what decides whether a piece survives daily wear, and whether the stone looks cared for or merely attached. The setting does more than decorate A bail or prong isn't just a frame around the amber; it's what carries the weight of the piece every time it's worn, clasped, or set down on a dresser. Amber is relatively soft as gemstones go, so the metal mount has to grip firmly enough to hold the stone securely through years of use, without clamping so tightly that it puts pressure on the amber itself. Getting that balance right is a large part of what separates a piece that lasts from one that doesn't. Fit is decided by hand Because natural amber varies slightly in shape and thickness from piece to piece, no two settings at KIZIMA® are adjusted in quite the same way. Each mount is fitted to its specific stone in our Brooklyn workshop, checked for a secure seat, and finished so the metal reads as part of the design rather than hardware bolted onto it. It's a slower way to work than stamping out identical settings for every stone, but it's the only way to get a proper fit on a material this individual — and it's one more reason mass production and genuine amber don't mix easily. What a good setting protects against A well-fitted mount does quiet, unglamorous work. It keeps the amber from shifting inside its frame, which over time is what causes stones to loosen or fall out. It also covers and smooths any edges that would otherwise catch on clothing, hair, or a scarf — small points of friction that, repeated daily, are enough to crack a stone eventually. None of this shows up in a photograph, but it's the difference a wearer feels a year or five years in. Why the mount decides the piece's future A well-fitted setting is also what makes an amber piece something you can hand down. Loose settings work stones free over time; poorly finished edges shorten a piece's working life no matter how fine the amber inside it is. A mount that's been fitted properly protects the stone from exactly the kind of everyday wear that would otherwise wear it down — which is really the quiet job of good metalwork: doing its part so the amber can do the rest. See the full collection of handmade Baltic amber jewelry at kizima.us.

Learn more