Collecting as a Pastime

by Charles Rowed

CLEANING

This was a great source of trouble to me and to those associated with my home life, and it was not until I had strained their patience almost to the separation point that I was informed: “You really must make some arrangement for getting the pewter cleaned elsewhere, as the maids have given warning they cannot put up with the master messing up the kitchen any longer. Half the saucepans are ruined, as of course they could not be used after having that filthy stuff in them.”

I started boiling corroded pieces and letting them soak in washing soda all night, but found this made no impression on those which had been most neglected, while some came bright after a good scouring with hot water and Brookes’s soap, being later polished with methylated spirit and plate powder. I may here advise the reader that the latter treatment is all I now find necessary to furbish up my stock and keep it presentable.

I will not dwell further on my early difficulties, but relate how they were overcome. At the time I was almost overwhelmed with putrid plates, dishes, and other things I had received Mr. Redman came to my rescue with the following recipe:

“2 oz. rock lime, 2 oz. caustic soda, 6 oz. common salt, 8 oz. common soda, dissolve in 3 quarts of water in a saucepan on the fire. When dissolved pour into a bowl, and when cold add eight quarts of cold water. Steep as long as necessary as much pewter as the liquid will cover, and the bath can be used until the liquor has lost its nature.”

I had a mixture made in a bath and let the things lie in this until the corrosion was easily wiped off, and I entrusted this job to a man who had been used to cleaning machinery and whose practical knowledge and serviceable hands made him far more competent than his employer. I never had the surface of the pewter injured in any way with the strong solution, and so long as the rubbing with the coarse flannel and Brookes’s soap was done the way of the grain—that is, circular or round and round—no scratching was apparent. When I say I have dealt with no fewer than 1,450 pieces the reader may gather that the trouble and expense has not been trifling.

I hope this information in regard to cleaning may be of value to many amateurs, to whom I wish good luck.

In case some curious minds may wonder how I account for the difference between the total given and the 500 pieces I stated I now have I do not mind disclosing that I sent a lot of it to a friend at New York who was anxious to exhibit his old family plate, and I learnt when he was last over that as the brightness I had been at such pains to secure militated, in his opinion, against the appearance of antiquity he had abstained from further cleaning, and that the pewter was now looking quite old.

I believe I must have earned that friend’s undying gratitude, for did I not provide him with his great-great-grandfather’s clock, and further spared him and shipped out an early dated Broadwood grand piano, which I had previously converted into a dressing-table, and which he has since discovered is the identical instrument that his great-great-grandmother used for the five-finger exercise?