Hello, I have an old plate that is marked Walace sterling. I have removed all the tarnished black stuff, but hazy, light-colored, dull patches were underneath the tarnish. How do I remove all that?
First things first. If this piece is marked “sterling,” it’s not plate. Sterling is solid, .925 fineness silver, worth quite a bit (about $1 per gram at the moment), no matter how tarnished or mangled. Plate, on the other hand, is a microscopic layer of silver electroplated onto some other base metal, with only decorative value. If plate is beaten up, it’s worth virtually nothing.
Please post some photos of the piece you’ve got. Take closeups of whatever marks you find on the bottom.
Finally, what have you been using to remove the tarnish?
I used Tarn-X originally. Then, I just tried white vinegar and baking soda, but that made no difference.
What you have done has probably ruined your silver. Read this piece by the late Jeffrey Herman: Tarn-X Tarnish Remover Review and Other Silver Dips - WARNING!. You may be able to mitigate the damage with a good quality silver polish and plenty of elbow grease; otherwise professonal polishing may be your only option.
1 Like
H103 - Halifax pattern.
What would a “good quality silver polish” be then? And how would I locate a “Professional polishing” service? This makes me sick. The Tarn-X was in my mother’s belongings. She passed away a year ago, and I brought the Tarn-X from her house.
Last question, are you saying the Sterling silver is now worthless?
Thank you
Take the Tarn-X to the nearest facility that accepts hazardous household waste. Don’t toss it in the trash, or pour it down the sink. Above all, never use it for anything again.
The sterling silver is still sterling silver, so it still has its melt value. It’s just that as a desirable object, it’s currently not worth anything more than the melt value. Chemical baths like Tarn-X etch the surface, making polishing a nightmare.
Unless you’re in love with the platter, Google “scrap silver dealer,” and cut your losses. This is not a piece of precious collectible antique silver, and probably isn’t worth what it would take to rescue it. From other sources, I believe this platter weighs about 8 troy ounces, so the scrap value is just a bit more than $200. In pristine condition, it would struggle to realize more than about $300 on eBay. In fact, looking at recently sold items, things like this sometimes go for less than their scrap value. Some savvy eBay buyers will pounce on things like this, take them to a scrap silver dealer, and turn a quick profit.
Just to avoid confusion, best to refer to this as a “platter,” not a “plate.” In the world of silver, “plate” refers not to a round, flat thing that one eats from, but to something that is made out of a low-value base metal, and is then silverplated. So, you can have a “plate teapot” or a “plate spoon.” Or, you can have a “plate platter!” But this one isn’t plate - it’s sterling.
2 Likes
I like Mothers, Mag and Aluminum Polish. For maintenance, place boiled water with bicarbonate in a container lined with aluminum foil and the silver piece inside. This is great for restoring its shine.
I wouldn’t recommend either of those “miracle cures!”
Mag wheel cleaner is designed to attack all manner of surface grime on aluminum alloy car wheels. These have nothing in common with sterling silver, and I hate to think what it might be doing, including removing significant amounts of the silver itself.
The problem with the “bicarb and foil” technique is that it leaves microscopic pits on the surface of the silver. Too small to see, but big enough to become the “seed sites” for future oxidation. In other words, the more often you use that cleaning technique, the more often you’ll have to clean the silver. It becomes a bit of a tail-chasing exercise.
1 Like
See you got some illumination on the use of the word “plate”.
It has been correctly pointed out to you that plate not only refers, as you did to a flattish round item used to eat off, once trenchers were dispensed with, but was also used to describe first Sheffield plate, a sandwich of welded silver and base metal usually copper and then EPNS or electro-plated nickel silver a process attaching a microscopic layer of pure silver or sometimes gold to the surface of a base metal.
There is a third much older use of the word “ Plate”.
I’ll let Leon Castner, ISA CAPP of National Appraisal Consultants set it out:
"…, the early English word plate was used to describe “solid” silver. (It was not to describe a dish to eat off of at the table.) So, when one hears or sees the phrase English plate, it refers to good, old silver that was made in England by their expert goldsmiths and then assayed or hallmarked in the appropriate manner. These items were usually 92.5% pure silver and 7.5% a copper or copper alloy. They were allowed to be called sterling although the technical jargon was silver plate. This standard has been in existence for over 600 years!
Older texts on silver invariably refer to “Plate” meaning sterling or sometimes Britannia silver.
Where domestic silver is specified in 19th century and sometimes 20th century wills or other testamentary documents again the reference is to " …a boxed quantity of silver plate manufactured by Rundell & Bridge for 24 persons which I leave to my nephew…" That will was hand written on vellum and dated London 1858. My great-grandfather was the fortunate nephew! A cousin of mine has the box of flatware marked PS for Paul Storr who worked for Rundell.
On the matter of cleaning which is what you asked about not the term plate or its tripartite use; the best rule is let a professional do it. Silver in the smelly industrial age picks up all sorts of atmospheric impurities, sulphites being but the most obvious. Indeed this was its job.
Death by poisoning was very common and sometimes even accidental. The silver plate (round thing to eat off) or goblet colored if it came into contact and a life was saved. Well sometimes.
Silver was also recognized by the medics for its antibiotic capabilities before antibiotics were ever invented. A relative of my mother’s, Thomas Horrocks Openshaw CB CMG FRCS TD was an English Victorian and Edwardian era surgeon perhaps best known for his brief involvement in attempting to solve the notorious Jack the Ripper murders of 1888, employed silver extensively. He once used it after boring a hole in a longshoreman’s head to relieve some dysfunction of the brain. The silver plate was used to repair the hole.
The longshoreman in question survived the surgery and died 14 year later when pack of gypsum was unloaded on top of him instead of the Tilbury dock.
Back to cleaning, first all that black or grey stuff you are rubbing away frantically to reveal the silver underneath is actually just silver, in the same way red rust is just iron. A lot of the stuff caked into crevices in the design is old jewellers’ polish abandoned there by footmen decades or even centuries ago. Much of it will just wash out. I use a soft older toothbrush. But there are specially made brushes if you prefer to use something purpose built.
There are two ways of removing the dark layers forming on the surface of plate (old term meaning sterling or modern term meaning electroplate – same difference for. the purpose of this sentence) you can do it chemically or by abrasion.
Goddard’s and other makers manufacture "silver dip” a chemical solution that contains a strong acid and a sequestering agent, usually thiourea. The acid dissolves tarnish from the surface of silver, while the thiourea holds silver ions in suspension so the acid can remove more tarnish.
One problem with it is it pits the surface and immediately after use you will need to use a jeweller’s paste to restore sheen. Collectors worrying about patina will discourage all of these activities. Also it is highly carcinogenic so don’t drink too much of it and use rubber gloves.
But silver sometimes had a very hard life and may need fairly intense measures to restore it.
I recently picked up a very heavy soup ladle by William Eaton. It was badly pitted and tarnished. Someone had used it as an impromptu mallet, I think. Anyway, I weighed it at 13.4 troy oz and then buffed it restored the surface to the mirror image when it emerged from the Eaton workshop some 200 years earlier. I weighed it again. Still 13.4 troy oz. Basically, I had moved the molecular surface of the metal so the holes were filled in without removing any of the silver.
What was lost was years of butler polishing and evidence of some rather inappropriate use. What the collectors call patina. I might not treat a William and Mary porringer the same way, but then I wouldn’t be using the porringer to serve up the seasonal eggnog or dish out a fine mulligatawny soup.
There are two ways of preventing silver needing cleaning. By far the best is to use it. Throw lots of dinner parties, set out the places, light the candles and if you can still afford to after that lavish display, serve some food. The other way is to keep it in an airless container. The container should be made of anything that does not off-gas. Wood off- gases which is probably why all the silver boxes you see made by silver manufacturers are of wood. They are counting on speeding up resales.
Today silver is very cheap and there is lots off it, usually created as a by-product of something else like lead zinc or cobalt. I live in a country where it is produced so prodigiously we have dedicated the national mint to making coins with your king’s head on them to sell to Americans.
But while the raw material is cheap, the craftsmen who made it into items for use and pleasure were and are very talented and also some of the worst paid artisans in the world. A step above Persian children patterning tribal rugs for our hallways but that’s about it.
So clean carefully and use gratefully.
Christopher Wilson
Guildhall Antiques
Toronto.
1 Like