Care
Washing and wearing: how silver likes to be kept
Part of the case for solid silver is how little it wants from you. No coatings to preserve, no seams to mind, nothing that ages in the wash. But the small routine it does want is specific, and the mistakes people make are always the same three.
The everyday rinse
Between wears, hold each piece under running water and rub it with your thumb. That is genuinely the whole wash. Milk left to dry on metal turns filmy and dull, so the rinse works best soon after the cup comes off rather than at the end of the day. Pat dry with a soft towel and set the pair somewhere with air. If your cups wear silicone rings, slide the rings off first and rinse both parts; the groove under the ring is the one spot worth an extra pass of the thumb.
What stays away from the polish
- Scouring pads and the rough side of the kitchen sponge. They write fine scratches into a mirror finish that no cloth will take back out.
- Strong dish soaps and abrasive silver creams. Plain water covers the daily need; save anything stronger for the flatware drawer.
- Dips and dunking solutions. They strip tarnish by eating the surface, which is a fair trade on a candlestick and a poor one on a polished dome.
- The bottom of a purse. Keys and coins dent fine silver in particular; the metal that presses so nicely also marks.
Tarnish, and why it is boring
Left out in ordinary air, silver slowly picks up a yellowish then gray film. Sterling shows it sooner because of its copper; fine silver holds out longer. Either way the fix is a soft jewelry cloth and half a minute. Tarnish sits on the surface and comes off the surface. It says nothing about the purity underneath, and a pair in daily rotation, rinsed and handled, often barely tarnishes at all because the routine itself keeps the surface fresh.
Storing between seasons
If the pair is going in a drawer for a while, wash it, dry it fully, and close it in a small zip bag with the air pressed out. Tarnish needs air; take the air away and the polish you stored is the polish you find. A dry bag in a drawer beats a damp bathroom shelf by a wide margin.
