'Nothing comes out of nothing. And nothing happens by chance. This becomes very clear when I look twenty years back, to the very beginning, when I worked in Juodkrantė (Lithuania) as a photographer and came across amber deposits while wandering in the neighbourhood. It was hiking along the shores of the Courland Lagoon that I found the first fossil insects: a flea, an ant as inclusions in pieces of amber. Then I understood WHAT amber is and WHERE it could be found - here, in the ground and sand underneath, in this depth. God sent it upon us and settled not some other nation but us on this piece of land not without reason…' - Kazimieras Mizgiris,who jointed his life with amber, is talking about.

With the beginning of perestroika many foreign tourists started to come to Nida. Most of them had emigrated from this country long time ago and their goal was to visit the land of their childhood and of their parents and grandparents. They would tell us how they gathered amber pieces 50 years ago and what kind of amber brooches or beads their mothers wore. They would also ask us many questions about amber and to some of them we did not know the answers. Therefore very soon books on amber with descriptions of colour and photographs as well as new objects started to appear. We started promoting professional jewwlllwrs, working in amber. Having some hesitancy at the very beginning, professional artists started joining us consequently. They were Birutė Stulgaitė and Vytautas Matulionis from Vilnius, Danguolė Baravykienė from Klaipėda, designers Algis Mikutis, Žilvinas Bautrėnas, Ažuolas Vaitukaitis, Vitalijus Mikintas and others. They took pieces of amber in their hands. Some of them added a very personal touch, some - left it almost unchanged.

This collection of unique objects was being built piece by piece in Juodkrantė and Nida over 20 years time. The biggest piece of amber weighs more than 3 kg, there are also other valuable pieces weighing 1,5 and 1kg. The collection of inclusions is in no way inferior to those of the best European museums.We have an unique inclusions with a shell, a lizard and a spider 'sosibijus mizgiris' in our collection. There are also rich collections of ancient artefacts made of amber, as well as natural amber drops. Restored archaeological amber jewellery and amulets from Juodkrantė treasure have been returned to the place they were moved from many years ago. We have gathered amber pieces of different colours - blue, white, green, transparent yellow and apart from Baltic amber we are showing a collection of amber from many different countries which was given to us by Wolfgang Weitschat, a professor of Hamburg Institute of Geology and Paleontology. The amber gallery of Nida and an out-door exhibition in this recreational town is part of the international project European Amber Road.

Our collection consist of artworks by the many artists, such as Feliksas Daukantas, Birutė Stulgaitė, Vytautas Matulionis, Žilvinas Bautrėnas, Sigitas Virpilaitis, Jonas Balčiūnas and Vaidilutė Vidugirytė, Ąžuolas Vaitukaitis, Algirdas Mikutis, Saulius Grinius, Adolfas Šaulys, Mari Relo - Šaulys and other.

Now that the galleries in Nida and in Vilnius and the Baltic Amber Art Centre in Vilnius have been opened, the jewellers can come and find a place for work in the house of artists in Nida, which has been established due to revival of Herman's Blode's idea about "Mecca of Artists", and our objects number in thousands, we may say that we have accomplished something in these last years. And if we have managed to inspire love to amber in someone - our efforts were not vain.

Virginija and Kazimieras Mizgiris