Shabby Chic Polishing Technique for Vintage Silver

Vintage silver is a tricky beast for sellers. Some folks like their silver to have that aged look, others want it shiny like the day it left the factory. When you find a nice silver piece in the wild... it doesn't always look so nice. It might have spotty or weird looking tarnish. I've come up with a way of dealing with this dilemma that hopefully satisfies both camps.

I call it "shabby chic polishing"...

So here's an item we got in a box lot from Goodwill. It's a creamer made by Wallace in their popular "Baroque" pattern with pretty heavy tarnish.

This is a bit too dark to qualify for tastefully aged, so I'm going to give it my shabby chic treatment. The key to this strategy is to polish only the smooth surfaces. We're going to leave the fancy scrolled areas alone. This way I can bring out the shine but still leave some character.

Here's a photo of the same creamer with silver polish on it. You don't have to let it dry like I did, that just made the polish easier to see in the photo. Essentially you want to clean the white areas with your silver polish. Try to avoid buffing the areas with no polish - although you'll probably cross into them a bit. It's not important to be precise here, so don't fret if that happens.

Once it's clean your creamer should look like this one. You can see in this photo that the center section is much lighter while the handle/feet/rim are still dark. Now it still has some of that aged character that some vintage buyers like while still looking "clean" to the other buyers.

Here's a final photo for the actual listing which shows you how shiny and reflective the cleaned surfaces are now. It's basically a mirror, which is why the photos are taken outside instead of in a messy office!

I use Wright's Silver Cream for heavy tarnish situations, we also have Weiman's Silver Polish for light duty work. When polishing you need to wash and towel dry afterwards. Washing removes polish residue (that white stuff) and if you don't towel dry you'll leave water spots that over time turn into more ugly spotty tarnish. Also please don't use the aluminum foil dip method to clean silver, it can cause permanent damage.

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