Objectives This may seem like an obvious question, but before polishing any of your silver, consider what are your objectives in polishing and what do you want the final piece to look like? One person’s aesthetic can differ from another’s, and how far you polish your silver can dramatically alter the appearance of your piece. Whilst this is subjective, for arts and craft silver I would personally say do not over polish. You really do not want a modern shiny mirror like finish. I like a nice almost grey patina. Patina is not tarnish, it arises from the use of the silver over decades and centuries, forming tiny micro scratches on the silver that dull the surface. In my view you want to retain this through any polishing process. Each time a piece of silver [...]

When I first started out as a dealer in antique silver, without doubt the hardest aspect of my new career was photography. I tried using professional photographers but they were expensive, involved frustrating delays and ultimately took photos that I was not very happy with. It turns out photographing silver is just about the hardest thing to do in the world of photography. It requires a specialist professional photographer – not easy to find. It is not just the myriad of reflections you have to deal with, but getting silver to look like clean shiny silver in a photograph is in fact very tricky. Over the past five years I have crawled up, as well as down, the learning curve. I have reached the point where I am finally satisfied with most of my photographs. By [...]