Choosing & Caring

Three cleaners sit on the same shelf for silver, and they do not do the same thing. A polishing cloth rubs tarnish off, gently, taking a microscopic layer of metal with it. A paste rubs it off faster — and reaches into engraved lines and dark recesses a cloth would leave alone. A dip does…

Sooner or later, someone hands over a piece of silver that has gone grey, then brown, then nearly black, and asks, with real worry in it: is it ruined? It isn’t. Tarnish is not dirt, and it is not the metal rotting. It is a film of silver sulfide at the surface — at its…