Somewhere in most homes there is a drawer or a box with silver in it: a set of cutlery from a grandmother, a teapot with a wobbly lid, a small dish that has gone the colour of a storm cloud. We take it out roughly twice a year, decide it is too far gone, and put it back. Then autumn arrives, we start cooking for people again, and the question returns.
The good news is that tarnish is not damage. It is a surface reaction between silver and tiny amounts of sulphur in the air, and it lifts off with far less effort than the black suggests. The bad news is that most of the drastic methods circulating online remove tarnish and a little of the silver with it, which is a one-way trip. So start gentle, always.
Wash first, polish second
Before you reach for anything clever, wash the piece in warm water with a small amount of mild washing-up liquid, using a soft cloth or your hands rather than anything abrasive. A surprising amount of what looks like tarnish is actually greasy film and dust. Rinse in clean warm water and dry immediately and thoroughly with a soft towel, because water spots on silver set fast and drip marks left to dry are their own kind of mark.
Only then assess what's left. If the piece is lightly dulled, a proper silver polishing cloth, worked in straight lines rather than circles, will often be the entire job. Circles create a swirl pattern that catches the light; straight strokes along the length of a handle or the curve of a bowl look far more natural.
