Video:How to Clean and Care for Turquoise

Transcript:How to Clean and Care for Turquoise

Hi! My name is Nanami Shiiki with Silverscape Designs in Northampton, MA and today I'm going to show you how to clean and care for your turquoise jewelry.

Wear Turquoise Carefully

Turquoise is very similar to pearls in the sense that it is easily scratched and should be kept away from other gem stones and metals. When you are putting your turquoise away, you should definitely keep it separated in a small pouch on its own. You should put on all your cosmetics and perfumes before putting on the turquoise jewelry. The chemicals in products such as hairspray and perfume can actually eat away at turquoise and that can't be restored. When you are finished wearing your turquoise jewelry its important to wipe it down with a soft cloth, make sure you get any of the body oils, any sort of residue from your skin off of the turquoise after you wear it.

Cleaning Turquoise

Every now and then you really should wash and cleanse your turquoise and doing that you really just want to use a lukewarm water with no detergent, not even a mild soap. You don't want to use any sort of jewelry cleaner. So you're not going to submerge your turquoise, but you're going to take a small baby's toothbrush, dip that into warm water and then scrub over the turquoise. Turquoise is very porous so you want to make sure after you thoroughly cleanse it that you wipe it down with a soft cloth and then lay it out to dry at least 24 hours. Most turquoise jewelry is also strung or set with sterling silver, and you want to make sure that when you are cleaning off the silver that you're not getting the silver cleaner on the turquoise itself.

Cleaning Silver and Turquoise

So to clean the silver, it's best if you use a silver polishing cloth to wipe down the silver individually, and if you are going to use a silver cleaner make sure that you are only cleaning the silver areas with the silver cleaner and not letting it touch the actual turquoise because the cleaner can damage the turquoise. And after you've polished the silver make sure you thoroughly remove all of the cleanser.

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