There is usually a box. Mine lives at the back of a cupboard and contains a set of teaspoons, two candlesticks and a small cup engraved with someone's initials who may or may not be a relative. Once a year I open it, find everything the colour of a storm cloud, and put it back. This autumn I finally dealt with it properly, and the main thing I learned is that most silver doesn't need heroic scrubbing. It needs the right order of operations.
Why silver goes dark in the first place
Tarnish is not dirt. It's a chemical reaction between silver and sulphur compounds in the air, which is why a piece can sit untouched in a drawer and still turn grey. Anything that releases sulphur speeds it up: rubber bands, newspaper, wool felt, egg yolk, onions, mustard, and the humid air of a kitchen. This is also why the inside of a salt cellar or the bowl of a spoon used for boiled eggs always looks worse than the handle.
Knowing that changes how you store things afterwards. The polishing is the easy part; keeping silver from re-darkening within a fortnight is where most of us go wrong. Once a piece is clean, wrap it in acid-free tissue or a dedicated anti-tarnish cloth, slide it into a sealed bag with the air pressed out, and keep it away from the bathroom and the hob. Never secure anything with an elastic band.
Start with a wash, not a polish
Polish applied over dust and grease just drags grit across the surface. Wash the piece first in warm water with a little washing-up liquid, using your hands or a soft cloth rather than an abrasive sponge. Rinse in clean warm water and dry immediately and thoroughly with a soft tea towel, getting into every crevice — water left to dry on its own leaves marks that look suspiciously like fresh tarnish.
Do this by hand, always. Silver and silver-plate should not go in the dishwasher: the detergent is harsh, and if silver touches stainless steel in a hot, wet environment you can get a reaction that pits the surface. Cutlery with glued-on or hollow handles should never be soaked either, because the filler and adhesive inside soften and the handle eventually works loose.
The foil bath: when it helps and when to keep it well away
The famous trick — a bowl lined with aluminium foil, hot water, a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda, items laid so they touch the foil — works by a genuine chemical exchange rather than abrasion, and it can lift light tarnish from plain, solid pieces in a minute or two. It's genuinely useful for a tangle of chains or a dozen uncomplicated teaspoons.
But it is indiscriminate, and that's the problem. If a piece has deliberate dark shading in its engraving or pattern — that oxidised detail is what gives antique designs their depth — the bath strips it out and the piece looks flat and strangely new. Keep it away from anything with pearls, opals, amber, turquoise, glued settings, wooden or bone handles, and from valuable antiques generally. If something is old, signed, or sentimental enough that you'd be upset to get it wrong, clean it with a cloth or ask a jeweller.
Polishing by hand without wearing the piece away
For everything else, a proper silver polish or an impregnated polishing cloth, used with a light hand, is the gentlest route. Work in straight lines rather than circles, turn to a clean part of the cloth often, and stop when the shine comes up rather than chasing every last shadow in the engraving. Rinse off any polish residue and dry completely. Remember that silver-plate has a finite layer of silver over a base metal: every aggressive polish takes a little of it, and once you see a warm coppery patch at a fork's tip, that area has gone.
How often should I actually clean my silver?
Less often than you'd think, if you store it well — once or twice a year is plenty for display pieces, plus a wash after each use. The counterintuitive truth is that silver used regularly tarnishes least, because washing and handling keep the surface clear, so taking the good cutlery out for an ordinary Tuesday dinner is maintenance, not recklessness.
Will toothpaste or a bicarbonate paste damage silver?
Both are abrasive, and while they'll certainly remove tarnish, they also leave a web of fine scratches that dulls the surface permanently and looks worse under lamplight each year. Save the bicarbonate for the foil bath, where it works chemically rather than by scrubbing, and keep toothpaste for your teeth.
