5 best ways to care for your vintage and antique jewellery

Collecting antique and vintage jewellery is a special endeavour without a doubt. Owing to their rarity, each piece carries a visceral sense of legacy and heritage. However, with the singular beauty and uniqueness of these classical pieces, comes the great responsibility of keeping them safe and well preserved. Here are the five best ways to make sure these old beauties in your bijoux box remain in pristine condition. 

Maintaining your jewellery: Due to being around for several years, vintage and antique jewellery is susceptible to general wear and tear. These can include a loosened stone setting or a damaged clasp, among other things. Therefore, it is important to periodically check your collection for these signs of inevitable damage. Additionally, these pieces are executed with extreme intricateness and some minute erosion often escapes plain sight. So, it is advisable to get your vintage and antique pieces checked by a reputable jeweller at least once or twice a year.

Cleaning: Cleaning is an important part of keeping your antique and vintage jewellery in decent condition. While most jewellery executed with precious stones like sapphires, rubies, and diamonds can be cleaned with warm water and a soft brush at home, when it comes to delicate gems, it is best to go for professional handling which includes thorough technical know-how. For instance, one should take greater care while cleaning emerald jewellery as they are susceptible to being easily damaged by most cleaning products. It is not advisable to immerse your pieces in liquid while cleaning as it may cause erosion. One should also gently wipe their antique jewellery pieces with a soft cloth to remove the top layer of dust. 

Storage: Antique and vintage jewellery is special and is often not worn daily. This results in them being in storage for good intervals. Therefore, it is extremely imperative to have quality storage in place. One of the most important is to keep them away from direct sunlight, which can cause metals to tarnish and stones to crack. While specially customised jewellery boxes with temperature and humidity control, one can also keep them in soft velvet pouches. It is also important to make sure that your pieces are not bent or twisted while they lay waiting to be worn. Especially for elaborate items like Parures, one must have a box dedicated to all pieces of the jewellery set. For safety reasons, it is important to exercise caution and keep them in a safe and locked storage.

Caring While Wearing: A simple rule of putting on your vintage and antique jewellery and taking them off first after wearing can go a long way in keeping their beauty and quality intact. Products like perfume, deodorant, and lotions can tend to get damaged jewellery pieces and also make them greasy, which can attract more dust and grime. Wearing them last also protects these old pieces from getting entangled with hairbrushes or clothing. One must also check for wobbly stones and insecure clasps before donning vintage jewellery to avoid losing them. Additionally, it is highly damaging to enter water bodies while wearing jewellery. Natural minerals and chemicals can immediately damage precious stones and can cause discolouration.

Restoration and Repair: Restoration and repair of vintage and antique jewellery are certainly two different things. It is always hard to fully repair a piece of jewellery owing to the uniqueness and rarity of its components. This is when restoration comes in place, where pieces are carefully mended with slight alterations to keep the originality intact. However, one thing that remains common between restoration and repair is that one must not try to do it on their own and it should be deposited to a specialist workshop in safe packaging for the same.

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