Kuji City, Iwate Prefecture, has the largest amber quarry in Japan. The tradition of passing down amber jewelry from parents to their children is one of the cultures rooted in the region and is still celebrated today.
Amber is like no other gemstone. It is natural tree sap fossilized underground, meaning it is entirely plant-derived. It’s a long journey to form into a gem that the oldest from Kuji is said to be sleeping deep in the ground for as long as 90 million years.

90MM is a jewelry brand established by a young female director from Kuji with an ambition to spread the beauty of Kuji amber. In the production of amber jewelry, there was a time when a large part of it was discarded due to the impurity and scratch of the natural stone, as well as cracks that occurred while mining and tiny broken pieces derived during the molding process. 90MM uses “refined amber,” a sustainable amber made with a molding technology original to Kuji, enabling using every little piece of amber while keeping amber purity at 100% and it also gives strength in density and flexibility in design.

In designing the brand, the beauty of the 90MM jewelry was highlighted in various tools, while the brand vision of ‘better relationship values between people and finite resources’ was considered a foundational concept. The brand visual depicts a scene in which the beautiful glow of natural amber colour softly sinks into the skin, expressing how it blends in with people of all skin tones, ages, and genders. The visual was developed for multiple tools such as printed posters, web banners, brochures, leaflets, and websites. The case, made entirely out of paper, was inspired by how a rough amber stone lay in many layers underground, with the jewelry sitting half-buried in the layers of paper. This layer structure to hold the jewelry is also used in exhibition fixtures.