Video:How to Care for Antique China
with Eron JohnsonIf you're lucky enough to own pieces or a set of antique china, you likely want to have it for years to come. Find out how to properly care for your antique china.See Transcript
Transcript:How to Care for Antique China
Hi, I’m Eron Johnson from Eron Johnson Antiques in Denver, Colorado. I’d like to talk to you about the care of antique porcelain.Why Antique China Is So Fragile
Antique porcelain is prone to damage mainly because of the wonderful glazes that were used in the 18th and 19th centuries, which are a little bit softer than the porcelain itself, and therefore, when you store it and clean it, are prone to having some wear, or chips, or damage.How to Clean Antique China
When you’re cleaning them after say, Thanksgiving dinner, put a plastic tub in your sink. This keeps you from accidentally banging the sink with the edge of the porcelain or perhaps the faucet. Just be careful - the edges are where they tend to chip.Don’t use any abrasive cleansers as that will certainly take the gold off. And if you use Windex or something like that, spray it on the paper towel first and then wipe it.
Store Antique China with Care
After dinner, when you’ve taken good care of your pieces as you’ve washed them and you want to put them away, just use a little bit of caution in that as well. And mainly, the biggest thing is just to separate them from the piece above them by using a paper towel or paper plate. That way as you stack them up and something gets moved, you don’t end up with a lot of scrapes on the porcelain.This way you can go ahead and store your pieces in the cabinet. Just be careful that you also don’t put anything too heavy on top of the stack.
How NOT to Treat Antique China
Here’s an example of what happens if you don’t put a divider in and the bottom of the rim scratches the top of the plate down below it. And it actually abrades away the glaze.The biggest thing in using your antique china is to remember that microwaves didn’t exist back in the 19th and 18th centuries when they used a lot of gold on the surface. And certainly if you put this in the microwave, you will see a spark show that you’ll never forget. It certainly will damage the piece as well.
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