How to Care for Gold Vermeil and Sterling Silver

Everything worth knowing about looking after demi-fine jewellery, and what Indian weather does to it.

Fine jewellery is something you protect. Demi-fine is something you wear, which means these pieces meet the world far more often than jewellery kept in a locker. Looking after them takes about a minute a week, and nearly all of it is habit rather than effort.

Showing care for

Shared guidance stays put

What your jewellery is made of

Sterling silver

Above 925Zinc-led alloyRhodium finished

Pure silver is beautiful and far too soft to hold a shape, so it is always alloyed for strength. Ours is alloyed with zinc, with less copper than conventional sterling, and carries a silver content above the 925 standard rather than merely meeting it.

That is deliberate. Copper is the element chiefly responsible for the darkening most people associate with silver. Leaning on zinc instead means the metal holds its brightness longer in humid, coastal and polluted air, which describes most Indian cities for most of the year.

Gold vermeil ver-may

2.5 microns5× the usual platingSolid sterling core

Vermeil is not gold plating in the ordinary sense. The word carries a standard: a solid sterling silver base, gold of at least 10 karat, and a layer at least 2.5 microns thick. Ours meets it in full, in 23 karat. A great deal of what is sold as gold at this price is plated at around 0.5 microns, a fifth of that, and flash plating thinner still.

Thickness is the only honest measure of how long a gold finish will last. It is also the figure most brands decline to publish. Ours is 2.5.

The four things that age jewellery

Almost every mark, dulling and loss of colour traces back to this list.

Sulphur in the air

Silver reacts with sulphur compounds, and that reaction is tarnish. Exhaust, urban pollution and coal-fired power all raise it. A piece worn daily in Delhi or Mumbai asks for attention sooner than the same piece somewhere drier.

Humidity

Moisture accelerates every reaction the metal is capable of. The monsoon is the hardest season for silver in India, and the humid weeks on either side of it are not much kinder.

Cosmetics and cleaners

Perfume, hairspray, sunscreen, hair oil and lotion all dull metal over time. Bleach and chlorine are more aggressive still. Chlorinated pool water is best avoided altogether.

Friction

Physical rather than chemical, and it matters most for vermeil. Jewellery loose in a drawer, the inside of a handbag, an over-enthusiastic cloth: each takes a little of the layer. Thickness buys years of that, not forever.

The daily habit

Last on

Once these have dried

01Perfume
02Moisturiser
03Sunscreen
04Hair products

First off

Before any of this

01Cleansing your face
02Showering or swimming
03Exercise
04Sleep
05Cooking, especially turmeric, onion, garlic and egg
06Cleaning with anything stronger than soap

Sweat is mildly acidic, and a night of it against metal does more than an ordinary day of wear. None of this needs thinking about once it settles into routine: it is the difference between jewellery that still looks new after two years and jewellery that looks tired after six months.

How to store

Dry

Somewhere genuinely dry, which rules out the bathroom shelf and the sunny windowsill. In a humid city, a silica gel sachet in the box does quiet and useful work.

Dark

Light and open air do the metal no favours. A closed box, rather than an open dish on the dressing table.

Separate

Each piece in its own pouch, or in a lined compartment where nothing can rub against anything else.

Every Solise order arrives with a pouch made for exactly this. Use it, rather than the dish by the sink.

How to clean

Wipe far more often than you polish. That single line covers most of it.

Sterling silver

Wipe gently with a soft, dry cloth after each wear. That alone prevents most tarnish from ever setting in.

If a piece has darkened, buff it lightly with a silver polishing cloth. If it needs more, a moment in warm water with a drop of mild soap will do. Dry it thoroughly with a soft cloth: silver must be completely dry before it goes back into storage.

Gold vermeil

Wipe with a soft, dry cloth. Polishing cloths are mildly abrasive by design, so use a light hand and stop the moment the shine returns. Over-polishing thins the gold layer, and that is the one thing you cannot undo.

Never on vermeil

Silver polish, dips and tarnish removers: they work by stripping a surface layer, and here the surface layer is the gold
Ultrasonic and steam cleaners: silver tolerates them, plated pieces do not

What is normal, and what is not

Normal

Tarnish. It is a surface reaction rather than damage, and it comes off.
A silver piece that has dulled over a season: that is precisely how silver behaves.
A gradual softening of colour on vermeil across years of daily wear. That is the plating doing its job slowly.

Not normal

Silver showing through at contact points within a few months.

If that happens, write to us

In short

Put them on last and take them off first. Keep them dry and keep them apart. Wipe them down far more often than you polish them.

Jewellery you actually wear will show that you wear it, and it should. The aim was never to keep a piece untouched. It was to keep it worth reaching for.

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