Tips on How to Clean Vintage Porcelain Jewelry

In the good old days a popular jewelry style included earrings, pendants, rings, brooches and pins that featured an inset porcelain disc that has been hand painted with beautiful designs. Many of these pieces are still popular and have been passed down to family members. Certain styles are very collectible and can be found in antique shops. Because of its age and structure, this type of vintage jewelry needs to be handled with care, especially when it comes to cleaning them.

Some of these inset discs of porcelain are simply just glued onto the base metal and others are prong-set into the metal just like real gemstone. For this simple reason, you never want to submerge these pieces in water nor let them sit out in extreme heat. Heat can loosen the glue and that will lead to your piece falling apart.

In addition, you do not want to use any type of chemicals or water while cleaning porcelain jewelry as those substances can actually wear away the hand painted design. To clean these types of jewelry pieces you want to gently rub them down with a dry soft cotton or chamois cloth.

If your jewelry piece is set into one of the precious metals like gold, silver or platinum you can use an anti-tarnish cloth on the metal portion of the jewelry piece. Please take great care to not use the cloth on the porcelain disc as it can rub off the design and ruin it forever.

Wearing these lovely pieces can bring back great memories and they still look great with today's fashion too. Take care of your antique porcelain jewelry pieces and you will ensure that your future generations can enjoy these beautiful items too.

by Jasmine Yesak, Contributing Editor at ChasingTreasure.com, online retailer of quality jewelry boxes, jewelry organizers and watch boxes. Jasmine is a Jewelry Enthusiast and Organization Consultant, she writes about Jewelry Care and Jewelry Storage Tips.